Having met humiliating defeat at the hands of Paki-stan Air Force on February 27, 2019, Indian Air Force has planned a large-scale Offensive Combat Air (OCA) exercises over Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir, parts of the disturbed states of Punjab and Himachal Pradesh from May 6, 2023 to test its capabilities afresh.
The two-week long exercise is also meant to as-sess newly-formed and existing IAF tactics to pro-vide effective and contemporary OCA (Offensive Counter Air) airpower in the Kashmir theatre. On February 27, 2019 PAF drowned two Indian fighter planes and arrested one of Indian pilots, Abhinandan.
Additionally newly-acquired IAF long range standoff strike capabilities like Hammer missiles, SCALP cruise missiles etcetera will be used to en-sure proper usage and pilot training in mountain-ous/high-altitude environments after the major na-tional-level embarrassment of the IAF’s Operation Bandar where 5 of the 6 released smart munitions, Israeli SPICE kits, overshot and missed intended strike location due to wrongly-entered target elevation coordinates, and one weapon failed to release from aircraft.
The assault was launched near ‘Balakot’ On Feb 26, 2019, which received a prompt response from Pakistan Air Force, the very next day and that too in the broad daylight.
The other major IAF objective is use of Rafale’s BVR capabilities alongside integrated offensive air operations with IAF Su-30s and Mirage-2000s, it is learnt.—KMS
