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Indian strikes then a response
According to the IAF, retaliatory strikes took place at 11 different military air bases, on May 10. The bases included PAF Base Nur Khan near Rawalpindi, which was, according to the PAF, struck by Spice 2000 PGMs released by Mirage 2000s. It missed the HQ-9 missile battery at the facility.

Rafiqui was also struck, as was a hangar at PAF Base Murid, the home to four squadrons of UAVs, and the runway at Rahim Yar airfield that the IAF says plays a strategic role in Pakistan¡¯s air defences, but is a civil airport used by the UAE Royal family for hunting trips.

PAF Base Bholari was subjected to an attack on one of its hangars, that claimed the lives of five PAF personnel and damaged a Saab 2000 Erieye that the PAF says has been repaired. The runway at PAF Base Mushaf was struck but was made operational again within a few hours.

A 16 Squadron JF-17C Thunder Block 3 taxies back to the unit¡¯s shelter area at Kamra-Minhas. The Black Panthers played a major part in the air defence of Pakistan on May 6/7.

In retaliation to the IAF offensive and loss of civilian lives, the PAF sent indigenous killer drones assembled by the NASTP into India flying over the bases at Adampur, Agra, Bhantral, Bhatwala, Bhuj, Gujrat, Srinagar and even the capital, Delhi, where they flew orbits overhead, packed with 20kg explosives. The drones with PAF¡¯s homegrown front and back-end technologies were not met with any resistance because the IAF¡¯s air defences had been blocked, and as a result the IAF was practically grounded.

Over the next few hours on May 10 the PAF hit 34 targets on different bases, half were by fighters, the rest were struck by the killer drones. While the PAF was initially aggressive, everything became measured, and more could have been taken out, according to a PAF senior officer, who told me they even had a lock on a A-50 AWACS lining up at Agra, but the attack was stopped, according to the PAF, so the IAF could save face.

For seven days, after the strikes ended, only one aircraft flew from Western Command and that was a Rafale that dropped a Scalp EG/ Storm Shadow cruise missile, working with an A-50 AWACS.

SEAD
One of the biggest threats to the PAF, alongside the Rafale, is the mobile S-400 air defence system. They needed them to be destroyed, because they are extremely dangerous. So much so, the PAF was monitoring their every move in Western Command ¨C at Adampur, Bhuj and Bikaner. The S-400 is a long-range Russian mobile surface-to-air missile (SAM) system - the SA-21 Growler - designed to destroy a wide range of aerial threats, including ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, aircraft and drones. It is considered one of the most advanced SAMs in the world, capable of engaging multiple targets simultaneously. Most NATO fighter forces train to counter the S-400 and will be very interested in how the PAF fared. The system has a range of up to 400km (250 miles), engage targets up to 100,000ft (30km) and track up to 300 targets, engaging 36 of them simultaneously. It is deadly.

The PAF was not keen to share the S-400¡¯s MAR (the distance from which the SAM can hit its target). Needless to say, the JF-17s needed to get close to the range of the S-400 to fire its two long-range supersonic Chinese-made CM-400AKG missiles.

In the early morning of May 10, a JF-17C Thunder Block 3 of 14 Sqn ¡®Tail Choppers¡¯ departed Rafiqui on a deadly Destruction of Enemy Air Defence (DEAD) mission, to destroy the S-400 system deployed to Adampur. As the JF-17 headed towards the target, the S-400¡¯s radars were being saturated by a substantial amount of jamming and other electronic warfare methods. At the same time, the JF-17 was spitting out decoys coupled with evasive manoeuvres.

As it got inside the S-400¡¯s firing range, the pilot was ordered to fire his CM400AKGs. He flew well inside the Rafale¡¯s Meteor¡¯s MAR but thankfully for the pilot, there was no resistance. According to the PAF, the CM-400AKGs scored a direct hit on the ¡®Cheese Board¡¯ low altitude tracker and ¡®Big Bird¡¯ early warning and broad surveillance radars, and as a result put the S-400 missile launchers out of action. Three days later, the Indian PM, Narendra Modi, visited Adampur AFS, where he posed for a photo in front of a S-400 missile system to show that it was still operational. But as the PAF Commander said: ¡°They didn¡¯t show him with the radar systems ¨C without them it is useless.¡±

The CM-400AKG is China¡¯s long-range air-launched air-to-ground weapon, powered by a solid-fuel rocket that can reach supersonic speeds of Mach 5. It is passive, so doesn¡¯t need to be guided onto the target by radar. The range of the S-400 missiles (up to 400km) is the same as the JF-17¡¯s CM-400AKG. As the senior officer told me: ¡°To get inside the range of an S-400 radar and come back alive is quite an achievement because you are giving the missile a chance to shoot you down. You must employ your game plan and the maximum range you can go. We employ scenarios through ACE and Combat Commanders School (CCS), flying them regularly again and again as we do on the squadrons.¡± So, what happened was no different than what the PAF had trained for. Similarly, the PAF gave a crippling blow to the IAF by destroying the IACCS at Barnala.