Balakot strikes: ‘Should have used bombs that destroyed buildings,’ says Air Force chief BS Dhanoa
The air chief marshal told NDTV that clouds had hindered satellites from capturing images of the impact of the Indian strikes on Jaish’s training camp.
Air Chief Marshal BS Dhanoa on Friday said Indian fighter jets should have dropped bombs that would have destroyed entire structures during the air strikes on a terrorist camp in Balakot, Pakistan, in February, NDTV reported. The air strikes on a Jaish-e-Mohammad camp were carried out days after the terrorist group killed 40 security personnel in Jammu and Kashmir’s Pulwama district. The fighter jets had dropped a penetrator variant of the Israeli-made Spice 2000 bomb on the training camp.
“On hindsight, if you see the propaganda war, we should have dropped the other Spice bomb, one which would have devastated the buildings,” Dhanoa said in an interview to the news channel on the occassion of the 20th anniversary of India’s victory in the Kargil conflict.
Dhanoa confirmed that imagery of the strikes’ impact from Indian satellites would have been helpful. “We counted on the satellites and all the clouds came... it happens,” he said. “This is war. Things don’t happen exactly as per plan. We went about...that we need to kill the guys – the terrorists – we never went around destroying buildings.”
After the strikes, Pakistan had claimed there were “no casualties or damage”, and later released photos of open areas and trees that were purportedly struck by the Indian bombs.
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