OPERATION SINDOOR: A NAVAL OFFICER’S MISFIRE ON AIRPOWER

 

AN ADROIT REJOINDER BY THE HERO OF KARGIL

“Operation Sindoor: A Naval Officer’s Misfire on Airpower”

By Air Tiger

In the wake of Operation Sindoor, India’s most sophisticated air campaign to date, one would expect thoughtful analyses from our military veterans. Instead, we are treated to a foghorn of confusion from Vice Admiral Harinder Singh (Retd), whose recent article reads less like strategic insight and more like a misguided attempt to fly a submarine through hostile airspace.

Let’s dissect his claims — line by line — and expose the intellectual vacuity and concomitant turbulence beneath the surface.

1. Prestige Platforms And Solitary Glory?

The Admiral accuses the Indian Air Force of clinging to “prestige platforms” and “solitary glory.” Apparently, investing in Rafales — aircraft with Active Electronically Scanned Array (AESA) radars, Spectra EW suites, sensor fusion and Meteor BVR missiles — is vanity, not capability. One wonders if he’d prefer we fight future wars with vintage Gnats and a prayer.

2. Pakistan Anticipated The Strike?

Yes, and still failed to prevent precision strikes on nine terror infrastructure sites. The IAF executed its mission with surgical accuracy, avoiding escalation and civilian casualties. That’s not failure — that’s textbook airpower.

3. Rafale Downed?

Official briefings clearly indicate the entire strike package recovered to base. Even if a Rafale was lost, what’s the big deal? This was air combat, not a walk in the park. What must be remembered is the speed at which the PAF folded and cried uncle within just 90 hours of offensive air operations. Separately, the IAF has stated that long-range SAM engagements, including S-400 shots at extreme ranges, constrained PAF freedom of action, with 12 PAF aircraft destroyed. Debate the figures, but not the deterrent effect.But sure, if the Admiral insists let’s just pretend the PAF had a field day.

4.     Shift To Standoff Weapons

Correct—and prudent. Adapting to high-threat airspace with BrahMos, SCALP, and similar standoff munitions is doctrinal evolution, not retreat. The aim was precision effects without opening every ladder of escalation.

5.     Operational Shortcomings

Every Service has history to study. The IAF has publicly absorbed lessons from Balakot to Sindoor and is deepening AI-enabled intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR), BVR doctrine, and safety culture. What needs to be remembered is that Balakot brought us six years of relative peace, despite the revocation of Article 370. The IAF’s transparency is visible in briefings, awards for specific units, and rapid remediation actions.

6.     Failure To Break Fighter Defences

The mission was to punish terror infrastructure and degrade enabling military nodes, not stage gratuitous within-visual-range Top Gun style dogfights. Effects on Command and Control, radars, runways, and logistics mattered more than airshow-style engagements.

7.     Disconnect Between Missiles And Fighters

This sweeping allegation demonstrates a clear misunderstanding of integrated air operations. Standoff missiles, fighters, Ground-Based Air Defense, Electronic Warfare (EW), and ISR were sequenced to suppress, strike, and assess in a single kill web. That is the point of joint air planning.

8.     Dogfights Are Obsolete

They are rarer, not extinct. BVR dominance is now the new normal in 2025; Meteor-class weapons, networked sensors, and EW give the IAF decisive reach while keeping pilots outside the densest threat rings.

9.     Lesser Aircraft With Superior Weapons

Weapons demand platforms with appropriate sensors, processing, self-protection and endurance to make them count. The Rafale and the Su-30MKI aircraft bring that ecosystem; one cannot bolt a Meteor to a basic airframe and expect parity.

10.   BrahMos Could Have Done It Alone

BrahMos was a key tool—and many of those strikes were air-launched. By Pakistani accounts, the Indian carrier group stayed near Mumbai and, at its closest, safely around 400 nm off Pakistan’s coast. The decisive effects in this window came from air-delivered precision and layered air defence.

11.   Why Invest In Expensive Aircraft?

This implied question betrays a singular lack of forward thinking and contemporary strategic overview. The said investment is essential because deterrence rests on credible, repeatable options across the spectrum—penetration, standoff, escort, suppression, and time-sensitive targeting. The mere availability of such options, albeit big-ticket, alters the adversary’s calculus before a shot is fired.

12.   Resistance To Jointness

The IAF has repeatedly asserted that it supports joint operations while insisting on clear command relationships and unity of effort—eminently reasonable conditions for complex, time-compressed missions. Jointness means common plans, interoperable C2 and rehearsed tactics, not token participation.

Invoking 1971 half-century-old episodes to judge 2025 is not a proxy for today’s force design. The relevant present is that the IAF leads in ISR integration, EW, precision strike, and air defence networking under contested conditions.

13.   Drumbeat Of Victories

Calling Sindoor a success is not chest-thumping; it reflects calibrated objectives achieved in days, validated by official citations and operational outcomes. Pride and professional self-critique can—and should—coexist.

Final Approach

Vice Admiral Singh’s article is a masterclass inmisdirection—a naval officer critiquing Air Power with all the irrelevance of using sonar in a Mach 2 dogfight. His arguments are riddled with factual errors, strategic blunders, and a flawed grasp of modern aerial warfare. The IAF doesn’t need to “come clean.” It needs to keep doing what it did during Operation Sindoor: adapt, integrate, and dominate—from 300 km away if necessary.

The next step for the joint force is straightforward: harden ISR against third-party surveillance, tighten cross-service kill chains, and ensure maritime posture is visibly aligned with the tempo and aims of the air campaign. Until then, the airspace will be commanded by those who can sense earliest, shoot first, and remain unseen the longest.

AIR MARSHAL RAGHUNATH NAMBIAR
PVSM, AVSM, VM & BAR (Ret’d) 

Air Marshal Raghunath Nambiar is an Experimental Test Pilot who has flown 52 types of aircraft, logging more than 5,200 flying hours. He has held numerous prestigious Service appointments in his distinguished 40-year career, ultimately retiring in 2019 as the Air Officer Commanding-in-Chief of Western Air Command. He commanded No. 1 Squadron AF, flying the Mirage 2000 aircraft; was Defence Attaché of India in Israel; Air Officer Commanding of Air Force Station Jamnagar and Commandant of the Aircraft and Systems Testing Establishment (ASTE) in Bangalore, the IAF’s premier flight test organisation. He was awarded the Vayu Sena Medal (Gallantry) for his legendary exploits during the 1999 Kargil  Conflict, a Bar to his Vayu Sena Medal for his pioneering work on the Tejas as well as the Ati Vishisht Seva Medal (AVSM) and the Param Vishisht Seva Medal (PVSM) for distinguished service of an        exceptional order.