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Dogfight Over Kashmir: Evaluation of Indian case for shooting downing an F-16

On Feb 27th, PAF launched an operation in response to Indian so called
pre-emptive non-military strike against alleged madrassah at Balokot. In the ensuing dogfight that pitched two Airforces, almost after half a century of direct confrontation, both sides made claims and counter claims. Pakistan made a claim of shooting down two Indian aircrafts, and India claimed to have shot down PAF's F-16. This writing aims at evaluating this Indian claim. 
Indian Foreign Office press briefing
  • India made the claim 6 hours after the incident in a hurried press conference. Given the fact that the pilot which India claimed to have shot down the F-16 was in Pakistani custody, specifying the type of aircraft within hours of the engagement made the whole claim immediately suspect for those with some technical background.  Pakistan, on its side, only claimed that two Indian planes were shot down. They did not know at that time the type of the second aircraft, as the analysis had not been completed, which involved detailed viewing of the engagement recordings both from the aircraft and the AWACS platform. It is only weeks after the engagement that Pakistan officially claimed - in CAS interview with Alan Warnes- that the second aircraft shot down was SU-30MKI, though from the wreckage captured in odd footage to an Indian media reports in the early hours showing a widow of the pilot, there was enough circumstantial evidence to support it.
           

   Indian Fighter wreckage on the indian side
The wife of the second pilot shot and killed talking to India media. India never owned him and revealed his name.
  • Tellingly no question was taken in the press conference by the Indian foreign office representative. The body language, and mood was not that of elation and sense of victory - as would have been the case if India had been able to shoot down an F-16 - but of a team that had suffered a terrible setback and was literally in a state of “shock and awe.”
  • No picture of F-16 wreckage was ever presented. Given that there has to be satellites focused on the conflict area, especially from United States and even India, since the two nuclear armed rivals were going head to head there, it is beyond belief that none was able to capture *any* picture of the wreckage
  • The areas where the conflict took place and where the alleged wreckage fell down, is in a highly populated area of Pakistan Kashmir. Given that, it is surprising no video on any social media forum emerged of the downed Pakistan F-16. Not even any credible footage of Pakistan pilot bailing out and coming down in a parachute ever came out. What we have instead are one sided claims by Indian side, backed by an extremely flimsy evidence.
  • The claim of F-16 being shot by an Indian pilot who was in turn shot down by Pakistani plane was too convenient and seem like an afterthought to provide an alibi for providing a hard evidence from the aircraft video itself. It sounds like my dog ate my homework kind of excuse. 
  • India removed its AOC western command immediately after the air battle, indication of a lack of confidence in his command, when the tensions were still sky high, and both the Air Forces were eyeball to eyeball. It is hard to square with an Indian claims of a) successful Balakot strike 2) downing of a frontline PAF aircraft by a relatively less modern IAF plane. It seemed like IAF command did not want to take any more chances with the failed commander, when the hostilities have not yet subsided. Even if his retirement was due on Feb 28th, as Indian media hurriedly reported to provide fig cover to this revealing change of command, it does not make any military sense to change a victorious commander in the midst of battle.  Moreover, the Army code, which covers both the armed forces of India and Pakistan, has no provision for retirement in a state of war. Not only that, the state has the power to recall retired servicemen in case of war. In the light of all this, if one is to look for one clinching argument to establish the falsity of not only all Indian claims, but also the total failure of the IAF mission on 25th, one does not have to look any further.                         
                
  • All 4 missiles carried by Mig-21 bison have been accounted for and displayed by the PAF. The seeker heads of these missiles were intact, proving conclusively that the pilot did not even get an opportunity to fire them.                                   
  • Any country operating F-16 always have representatives from Lockheed Martin stationed in that country, working closely with the receiving Air Force to ensure technical support and continuity of supplies. It is near impossible for them not to know if the F-16 had crashed. And if they had known, it would not have been possible for them to keep it hidden from Pentagon and to prevent it from being leaked to media.. As there is no dearth of pro India supporters in media, and American establishment, it is beyond belief that this information would have been kept under the carpet.
  • To argue that US would hide this news to save itself the embarrassment of having their vaunted aircraft shot down by an old Soviet Mig also does not hold water. For one, US in a previous incident of their F-16 being shot down by an old Soviet style SAM did not hide it. For another, US is not that naive not to know that such things could not be hidden and would have been forthcoming with the information for the sake of its credibility. The credibility of information about weapons systems matter a lot in a highly competitive arms market. Such childish acts of dissimulation, as implied in this argument, can never stand any serious scrutiny and end up damaging the seller.
  • Another argument offered is that US wanted to sell F-16s to India, hence it did not want to give that aircraft a bad press. There can be nothing more ridiculous than that claim. Obviously, if India had shot the aircraft, any attempt to hide flies in the face of basic reality of the situation. Moreover, one can argue the exact opposite if the intention is to win India goodwill for the future sales: why not support India in its “true” claim in the most important aerial conflict of the last 40+ years between the two countries? Surely, that would have gone a long way towards securing a great pre-sales pitch.
  • Apart from vague and highly circumstantial evidence, India Air Force also presented a concrete evidence backing its claims. Much in the vein of a practitioner of a pseudoscience- astrology- who tries to impart an aura of scientific respectability to its non-scientific claims by throwing in calculations and formulae, IAF’s so called concrete evidence was confined to showing two still pictures from AWACS recording of the engagement. That evidence purportedly showed an F-16 showing on the screen and then going out in a later capture. It is hard to believe that this evidence is touted by a professional Air Force, the fourth biggest in the world- as an incontrovertible proof of its claims. It is well known even to non-technical novices that these AWACS recordings can be simulations, which are performed day in and day out for training purposes. Even taken at the face, minus the context they reveal nothing. There is no continuous video- never mind the simulation part- to show a live action and actual interval between two captures. For all we know, these could be separated by few seconds or minutes, an eternity an air combat. The claim of recordings by pilot is neither here nor there. It is not made public, and even if it did, it is known to all professionals that such recordings are regularly done during peacetime by both the Air Forces. Any recording can be plucked from there and presented as an inconvertible evidence. It is interesting to quote at length two military experts from warzone, Joseph Trevithick and Tyler Rogoway, on this radar data presented by IAF:                                                      
"It's also worth pointing out that India has not provided any evidence of the F-16 shootdown beyond the radar track "vanishing." Kapoor only showed two still radar images, as well. Without having more data and context, we have no way of knowing conclusively that the contact disappeared and never reappeared or that it was an F-16, to begin with. Electronic warfare and the limitations of the airborne early warning and control system could have been factors, as well. The mountainous terrain and other ground clutter may have masked the Viper's radar signatures temporarily and the fighter could have dropped into the doppler notch of the airborne radar system. There are so many possible explanations that cannot be ruled out without more information and at the very least, full motion video of the tactical picture, not just a few hand-picked screenshots.There is no indication that Pakistan launched any combat search and rescue effort to recover the crew of the purportedly downed F-16, which one might have expected to see, either. There is an unsubstantiated report that a group of civilians on the ground lynched a Pakistani pilot after his plane got shot down, mistaking him for an Indian aviator, but this is incredibly hard to believe."       

  • The fact- acknowledged by IAF too- that it shot down its own MI-17 helicopter in a fratricide speaks of panic and confusion in Indian command and control, radar operations and situational awareness of the pilot. This a far cry from the textbook kind of calm and cool, Indian post skirmish debriefing was trying to convey.  This kind of situation could only have been created by a “surprise and awe” impact of PAF blitzkrieg, and the resultant attrition on the Indian side, that threw them in a state of utter confusion.
  • Indian media and official version tried to make a big deal of the announcement by ISPR of the second downed pilot being taken to the CMH. How this story could have been stretched to imply confession on the part of Pakistan that it lost its F-16 is a feat of typical “Indian logic”, defying both common sense and basic rules of deduction. If Pakistan had known its F-16, how it served its purpose to announce that, what would have been its own pilots, was being transported to CMH? Even after many hours have elapsed, the PM of Pakistan also made the claim about two pilots in custody in his address. If it wanted a coverup, the wisest strategy would have been to not even mention the second pilot. It is clear that there was a second pilot and because of the sensitivity of the identity of that pilot, that matter was not broached again. Indians know very well who that second pilot was, so do Pakistanis. Let us leave it at that.
  • Finally Indian claim was dealt an almost fatal blow when the prestigious foreign policy magazine came out with a report in which its investigative journalist quoted the US defense officials as carrying out the count of Pakistan F-16s as per end user agreement, and found none missing. It is clear that FP was not making up the story- it had no incentive to do and damage its credibility- and short of implying some kind of far fetched conspiracy, it is hard to shoot down that report, pun intended. Pakistan’s willingness to go through that count speaks for the veracity of its stand, and shows the confidence of the party that has nothing to hide. 

Conclusion

In short Indian claim is based on a combination of lame assertions,
pseudo technical evidence, and plain distortions. That Indian media thrives on this staple is a well known fact- as in this episode it descended into the depths of absurdity (even by very low Indian standards) showing footage from PAF August 14 night flying to video game to snack packing with F-16 picture in a desperate attempt to sell its falsehood. But for the fourth largest Air Force in the world, which claims to be a highly professional outfit and have ambitions of being a global power to reckon with, to stake its claims on such grounds bespeaks of an utter sense of humiliation and desperate attempts to cover it, howsoever. It only manages to dig a hole deeper than it founds itself in. 
Though Modi, with the help of Indian media and defense establishment, might have been able to sell this nonsense to its masses and got the political capital out of it, none in the serious international journalistic and professional community fell for it. Perhaps, none of that matter to the Indian civil and military establishment, as in a Bollywood fashion, it seeked solace from the ugly reality in a fantasy world. But, the future historians would not be that forgiving or deluded, and would surely regard IAF’s performance on the battlefield as dismal, as it regards its performance off the battlefield dishonorable.   

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