Indian armed forces hit Pakistan air defence again, blunt drone attacks

Hours after India announced it had targeted four air defence sites in Pakistan with armed drones, destroying a radar system, Pakistani drones were sighted over Jammu, Samba, and Pathankot Friday night and were engaged by the armed forces. India’s strikes earlier on Friday had come in response to the Pakistan military’s multiple failed violations of Indian airspace along the entire western border, aimed at targeting military infrastructure on the intervening night of Thursday and Friday. Friday night’s provocation marked the third such aerial attack by Pakistan in as many nights.

 

At a briefing Friday evening on the ongoing Operation Sindoor, the Indian Army’s Colonel Sofiya Qureshi, the Indian Air Force’s (IAF’s) Wing Commander Vyomika Singh, and Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri outlined the magnitude of Pakistan’s infiltration of Thursday night and India’s response. Wing Commander Singh said Pakistan attempted intrusions at 36 locations along the International Border and the Line of Control (LoC) — stretching from Leh in Ladakh to Sir Creek in Gujarat — using 300-400 drones. Crediting the armed forces with bringing down a number of these drones using both kinetic (hard kill) and non-kinetic (soft kill) means, she said the possible purpose of Pakistan’s large-scale aerial intrusions was to test India’s air defence systems and gather intelligence.

 

Stating that forensic examination of the drone debris was underway, with preliminary reports suggesting Pakistan employed Turkish Asisguard Songar quadrotor drones, Wing Commander Singh highlighted that an armed Pakistani unmanned aerial vehicle attempted to target the Bathinda military station in Punjab later on Thursday night. It was “detected and neutralised”, she added.

 

“The IAF thwarted the attacks on Thursday night using air defence controlled by its Integrated Air Command and Control System (IACCS), an automated command and control system for defending the country’s airspace,” said a source in the know. Adding that India’s calibrated response to such Pakistani provocations included the use of the IAF’s long-range loitering munitions, the source explained that the air defence network’s frontline protection system included the Russian-designed “Igla” man-portable surface-to-air missile (SAM) system, along with counter-unmanned aircraft systems (CUAS) — jammers like “SNS”, “Gypsy”, and “ECGNSS”, and also jamming rifles. Together, the SAMs and the jamming gear provide both hard and soft kill CUAS capabilities, with the latter disabling incoming threats without necessarily destroying them physically.

 

Another source explained that while the IAF had overall responsibility for India’s air defence, Thursday night’s Pakistani aerial infiltration was also countered by the Indian Army’s air defence guns — the L70, ZU-23, and “Shilka” systems — and low-level, lightweight radars calibrated for the exact purpose of detecting small drones, both of which worked in concert with the IAF’s IACCS-controlled sensors and systems. “Thursday night’s threat was sub-conventional, and the Army neutralised it using its CUAS and air defence guns,” said that source.

 

At Friday’s briefing, New Delhi said armed drones had been launched at four air defence sites in Pakistan in response to the latter’s Thursday night attack. “One of the drones was able to destroy an air defence radar,” added the official statement.

 

India had on Thursday said its armed forces targeted air defence radars and systems at multiple locations within Pakistan, neutralising at least one such system in Lahore. This was after thwarting Pakistan’s bid to strike several military targets at 15 locations in northern and western India, including Srinagar, Amritsar, and Chandigarh, using drones and missiles on the intervening night of Wednesday and Thursday.