I see some are still living in a “Fantasy World”???

Sorry, the N-LCA is dead and the Indian Navy has “no intention” of buying it. While, the LCA MKII (i.e. MWF) is nothing but a pipe dream. Mark my words it will “never” see series production….

:rolleyes:

LOL, don’t know why the LCA has you so butthurt.

The IAF has asked for the LCA Mk2. It will happen irrespective how much you rant.

Go troll elsewhere.

My knowledge of such things is rather limited. But from your informative essays over the years, I had expected PAF to have been obliterated after their stupid unsuccessful attack on India on the morning of 27 Feb. Obviously this did not happen and I salute Indian magnanimity for not teaching stupid pakistanis a lesson for downing their Mig-21. Perhaps India did not feel the need to do so because (as you said) Mig-21 is so close to retirement or perhaps Modi ji is waiting for the delivery of Rafale before IAF obliterates PAF (I think it was Modi Ji, who said to the effect that this would not have happened if IAF had Rafale…whatever that meant).

The Indian side decimated a Pakistani terrorist camp,, held off a Pakistani counter-attack & got their pilot back (for the loss of an obsolete fighter which they would have retired anyhow).

The Pakistani side loses vital terror assets which it was training & gets egg on its face with those asset’s handlers who are now upset with the ISI for their lack of protection. Loses an expensive, prized F-16, loses 4-5 AMRAAMs which are no longer “silver bullets” and also uses up a fair number of DENEL Raptors, carefully hoarded for such an event. Either which didn’t guide through, or which were jettisoned in panic as Mirage fighter bombers tried to avoid Mirage 2000s. Take your pick.

Now, given there was no successful strike on Indian assets, India has a choice. Escalate & have an all-out conflict. Or call it stops, since it anyway achieved its objective of hitting within Pakistan, for the 3rd time in a row, in a response to a terror attack.

Can you please inform me why, would the evil, dastardly, machiavellian, Modi-ji, waste any more time on further attacks into Pakistan, this time around, when his limited objectives have been met?

Now Modi-ji could definitely have been waiting for the Rafale. As the IAF will be taking delivery of 36x Rafale, 5 squadrons (i.e. 10 battalions) of the S-400, additional Su-30, Tejas etc. But I suspect his needs were more mundane. His doctrine, of hitting within Pakistan to avenge terror strikes within India, had been met with minimal cost, so why bother with further escalation?

Now, if your Pakistani Army strategists, decided to have a 4th attack inside India, then yes Modi-ji, the evil mastermind he is, has far more assets at hand within the next few years to conduct yet another strike.

But being an evil mastermind, Modi ji (and his establishment) may choose not to use the AF at all. He may well decide to use IA SF. Or do a Naval strike. Or even resort to open economic measures of force.

As the evil American Ashley Tellis noted in a recent informative essay recently, it is in the Indian establishment’s interest to a) Not become predictable and b) Not lock itself into a single course of action when responding to the threat of terrorism from Pakistan.

What he notes is important though, is that the doctrine of strategic, never ending restraint, is over. And as an Indian citizen (with my sorry hide/skin in the game) who was appalled that even after 26/11 terror attacks in Mumbai, conducted by Pakistani terrorists, the then pusillanimous Indian establishment chose to run to the US for “do something” rather than listen to its own Air Chief, I approve of this end to GOI’s illogical cowardice.

Thanks!

PS: I again request you to find out what’s happening on the LOC. Correlate that to the loss of revenue Pakistan had when it shut down its airspace to preserve aviation fuel etc, its overall impact on its economy, and then think about whether the course of current action for Pakistan is indeed sustainable. Hey, we didn’t shut down our airspace when Balakote/Feb27th occurred.

Food for thought? I suspect, the evil Modi-ji’s alien handlers too have come to the same realization viz. dealing with Pakistan. India doesn’t really need an all out war to cause Pakistan significant economic distress, or even military distress. Question is, who can sustain it better. Compare the respective nations economic indices.

Or Pakistan changes its policy on terror..

Which proves my point about Pakistani efficiency because they found those motors and seeker heads in the same mountainous state. I just thought Indian forces, having successfully dodged several AMRAAMs, may have a decent notion of their whereabouts. Perhaps not.

Quite interesting indeed, because some of those were obtained from one wreckage, I leave it to you to decide which other wreckage the destroyed missiles were part of. That’s even assuming the DGISPRs images which miraculously turned up on twitter, re-arranged several times whenever questions were raised, are even accurate.

I am also amazed by your awareness of BVR combat. I didn’t know the Indian Su-30s (2 x of them), the Mirage 2000s (2x of them) and the Bisons (4 ) would break off trying to get nose hot on their Pakistani opponents and then go tracking where the AMRAAMs went. Its so silly of them to not have realized this.

And of course, Pakistani efficiency is amazing. As we all know about Pakistan the world leading economic power which dwarfs India in economic etc development, one soldier is equal to 10 Indians ..and Musharraf even said Pakistan is a space power and its satellites are better than India’s. We shouldn’t even debate this point! Its just what it is.

In honor of your point, I state this edifying quote from his sagacious highness.

“Pakistan’s space programme is now ahead of India after the formal launching of Paksat-I and this is due to the hard work of our scientists and I am sure Indians would take another 30 months to do the job,” Gen Musharraf claimed.

I am sure everything Pakistani is better than Indian stuff.

You forgot to mention that Abhinandan’s Mig-21 went down because of mechanical failure.

Didn’t know that. Since you were flying with him on his wing, all the way from the (where exactly?), you know this for sure.

Pakistanis were stupid they should have painted the Turkish F-16 (that was in Pakistan on 23 March) green and used it to tally up the whole thing.

If they had, the incompetent DGISPR, the propaganda flack who got some medal recently, would have justified his award and made up for his gaffe revealing multiple pilots were down. Yet. Pakistan which frequently brags about its close relations with Turkey, Jordan, all Islamic nations, could not get a single Viper operator to lend it a single fighter for a few weeks..what a far cry from Jordan sending Pakistan fighters in secrecy in previous Indo-Pak wars.

On a side note, it was the ‘ordinary kashmiris’ who captured Abhinandan and handed him to Pakistan army. Do you still consider POK as integral part of India or would India be able to integrate Kashmiris from POK?

The Pakistani Army policies have brutalized and also literally changed the regions inhabitants into a rather violent, uncivilized bunch. So I can well appreciate the Counter Insurgency point of view of the Indian establishment which supports tactical ops and holds off from literally changing the border unless the ground situation demands it. Why burden yourself with another bunch of fanatical folks you have to de-radicalize?

You are often daring people to go and find out what’s happening on the LOC and so on. Are you willing to come to Kashmir yourself sir?

Been to Kashmir many times. Its easier when you are sitting in your country, and are not some expat sitting far far away, pretending to be oh so detached and simultaneously playing the “I am so patriotic game”. Do return to Pakistan. Perhaps it may open your eyes about the big picture above and beyond the great F-16.

Pakistanis are extremely efficient when it comes to finding small seeker heads and motors. Unfortunately our Indian friends have been so inefficient that they have been unable to find several intact AMRAAMs that were fired on that day (even after 5 weeks) apart from that single piece of AMRAAM with serial numbers and everything that fell on some poor villager’s head on the day.

My goodness. And here I was told by the DGISPR no less, that paragon of truth and objectivity, like our Pakistani expats that “No F-16s were used in the operation, no, never”, with that said how are the poor Indians supposed to find F-16 fragments?

And of course, in a state which is mostly mountainous, India should deploy its forces to find AMRAAM fragments.. because … because… that one AMRAAM doesn’t prove anything. Nothing.

The dastardly jews of the IDFAF gave India the AMRAAM. The same way the PAF captured an IDFAF pilot and is keeping him captured. Heard it from a Pakistani bigwig on TV.

Summarizing the rant.

The evidence alleged by India is so circumstantial and weak that it didn’t warrant a serious response. Pakistan still put forward so much out there because India painted itself in a corner and it was a good opportunity to stick it to India. Had India only said they shot down a PAF jet, they wouldn’t be in this situation today. But they had to be specific enough to say a 2 seater F-16. How their ‘electronic evidence’ picks up one seater or two, we will never know.

Buran, the fact is this, India went 100 km deep into Pakistan, killed a bunch of your establishment’s beloved Lashkar this that, held off a great Pakistani strike the next day with a 3rd of the aircraft (DIGSPR: we only bombed an empty field, by design, really really) and shot down a F-16 with a fighter its retiring in a couple of years time. And dodged your silver bullet AMRAAMs.

As regards electronic evidence, do you really think that the COMINT on the Phalcon, the extensive sensor grid India has acquired with a tie-in to the IACCS was not put in place on the 27th of Feb? You guys go on and on and on about your Blinders, this, that .. its humorous really because in your national pride, you have completely forgotten to track what your opponent has put in place. Here’s a hint about merely *one* such system copy pasted on your own defence forum.
https://defence.pk/pdf/threads/border-communication-intelligence-gathering-system-may-be-inducted-by-next-year.68017/

Now, if you really exercised your grey cells, none of that really looks good for Pakistan.

India has said it shot down a F-16, and it has. And your guys are so weak kneed, that approaching a month after the shootdown, they still couldn’t get Jordan or Turkey to lend them a single F-16 to put together in a mass fly off and convince everyone all was well. That was the *least* that could have been done. But even that wasn’t.

Just a bit of thought for you. India has struck 3x times within Pakistan and your military hasn’t been able to do diddly squat. India has been completely open about it all 3 times. People, location, even the personnel taking part have been openly mentioned.

Your threats of nuking India aren’t working either. And here you are obsessed about one F-16, because, because national ego is tied to that stupid aircraft.

Can you look at the big picture and realize how badly it is your establishment is screwed? Like, literally, you have provoked a nation and establishment several times bigger than you are, able to out gun, out-afford you to give up talks and now consistently resort to force.

Are you even aware of the manner in which the IA is sticking it to the PA on the LOC? Just go find out. Might wake you up out of this discussion and look at the big picture.

The US State Dept’s response to the Indian media “hey we stopped supporting Pakistan in January 2018”. Not, they didn’t get their F-16 shoot down. Not, peace y’all. Think about it.

On an aside, the venom of Indian citizens attacks on Lara Seligman’s twitter after she posted the news story was disheartening to read. She is a reporter, writing about information she received. The notion that the USG or Lockheed is behind a false report is absurd. The US isn’t trying to sell F-16’s to Pakistan, US foreign policy isn’t advocating a reproachment with Pakistan, the US and Pakistan are not allies and have suspended many previous defense arrangements. The US is courting India, Lockheed is trying to sell the F-16 to India, can someone explain how the US being complicit in Pakistan lying about losing an F-16 helps the US or Lockheed in regard to India?

That’s one reason I doubt you will see any official statements from the US state dept. or any other agency in regards to this incident. The above vague comments from DoD and State is about all I’d expect. We are not looking to cut off our nose to spite our face in regards to closer ties with India over positive/negative publicity regarding US weapon system that was designed in the 1970’s.

Lara Seligman brought in the worst kind of politics into her reportage when on her social media account, she retweeted three accounts all with a political intent.

First, she retweeted an account which said Modi would be politically hardpressed because of this and implied he had an agenda to fulfill via this single event. The same kind of drivel the left in the US press aka NYT et al have been pushing all throughout his admin. For a so called neutral defense journalist, that kind of partisan idiocy is inexcusable. Then she quotes a Pakistani, who has been engaged in the most dubious kind of pyswar throughout the Balakot episode, natsecjeff, overtly taking his side that “nationalist Indians” will be against her. Then she goes ahead and takes one more account which repeats much the same and repeats it.

Unbiased? Hardly. She’s taken an asinine political stand well in line with the other idiots at WaPo and other left liberal establishments who have been busy trying to run down India’s elected Govt for several years now. She can do what she wants for her paycheck, irrespective of how idiotic and unethical it is, but please don’t try to signal on her behalf.

Here’s the deal, its quite obvious from your posts that you are as nationalist as any Indian out there and will equally do everything to claim no F-16 was shot down etc. That’s fine, that’s your prerogative, but please lay off the spiel about 4x missiles (when 2 are clearly missing significant portions which would well indicate they are wreckage from an intercept), heck, the Pak side even has access to the PRC to get a handful of low cost R-73Es to play around with it as it sees fit. Lets even discount the amount of consistent evidence the Indian side has provided (AWACS footage, R/T calls, AMRAAM wreckage) while the Pakistani side has been making inconsistent remarks from day one and has provided NO evidence to point out that all its F-16s were safe. Now you want the Indian side to not even mention that. Whereas if it were a US Russian conflict or anything of the sort, you would be the first to constantly point out the obvious discrepancies.

From the US’s inconsistent remarks about the F-16s and AMRAAMs not being used against India offensively (which was said even while the US ambassador was busy making a business case that the F-16s would buy time for Pakistan in an Indo-Pak conflict and which has now come out in WikiLeaks) to many other remarks of these nature, the Indian establishment simply doesn’t trust what the US stands for at any given time.

And then there is the all-out joke that is your divided establishment. Your President spends more time on twitter taking down his domestic opponents than running the country. And that’s because your so called establishment is spending all its time trying to run him and whatever he tries, for better or worse, down.

Your NASA guys go all-outraged on India’s carefully thought out ASAT test, are contradicted by the Pentagon, and then a day later “under guidance”, the pompous twit who is the NASA head sends a message to ISRO stating he will “resume cooperation”. From ISRO’s point of view, it got attacked even though it, was an organization which wasn’t even in the test, it was DRDO. So the US establishment or at least significant sections of it, came across as giant sized morons. First, posture, then climb down. The same time while your guys have been making all sorts of claims about being allies, standing against Chinese hegemony etc, your guys denied the DRDO chief and another scientist visas to visit the US. Not any guy, but the head of India’s state R&D which shephards and leads the entire Indian strat deterrent to most of its conventional arms. I mean, there is brilliantly stupid, and then there is this. That’s bye bye DTTI.

If Dale Carnegie was around he’d be rolling around on the floor, laughing, with a copy of “How to make friends” clutched in his hand.

Even as your establishment chews itself up and speaks out of both sides of its mouth, India just purchased 24 MH-60s from Lock Mart. That’s pretty much how we have learnt to deal with it. Transactionally, purchase what we need, and then not count on you for anything else. To demonstrate any true relationship, the simple fact is your establishment or sections of it, have to get out of the asinine cold war mindset, and stop talking down to the natives.

Last, you want us to stop pouncing on the contradictions in the PAF’s assessment and PR speak about shot down pilots? Why? Because it clearly shows that the Pakistanis had an extra pilot down and can’t account for it? And here you are, your entire establishment which analyzes every Russian statement threadbare and then points out discrepancies.

It is this entire “do as I say, not do as I do” attitude that the US has displayed in this matter, which ends up being a microcosm of how the US behaves with other countries which ends up making independent democracies like India look twice and decide to handle their own defense by themselves.

And frankly, with this latest arrogant gaffe by Lara Seligman, and the clear fact that she was fed some grade A horse manure by “sources” who then used her as a stalking horse, and the speed of the Indian response clearly demonstrates, that whichever of the US establishment’s grade A dunderheads came up with this idea, have burnt even more bridges in India.

Perhaps it was a deliberate attempt by FP to run down a prospective arms deal totalling in the tens of billions which would have been a huge Trump establishment success, and your guys sabotaged it or attempted to. Congrats, your guys own it, and your establishment has to fix the damage. And it can’t because right now what Mueller did next is running 24/7 on your FB feeds. Sounds pretty much like any “developing nation”, with better infra, thanks much. So much for leading the free world.

Your strategic dunderheads have armed an Islamist theocracy, led by a rabid military elite who use terror as an element of state policy, who are posturing using your weapons and you have the least interest in reining them in and sections of your establishment driven by an urge to either show up the current US admin or cold war animus keep playing stupid games.

All I can see is the Indian side was so fed up with the anonymous BS, that they authorized the IAF to carry out a detailed briefing at short notice sharing classified capabilities from Phalcon footage, RT intercept capability & other items, which they would have shared with the US privately but would rather have not made public.

There is a good reason we wouldn’t want to. These are carefully husbanded capabilities, from the resolution on our Sats, to which munitions we possess, what the Phalcons we have can really “see” and so forth.

And yes, if history has anything to go by, I wouldn’t now count on either the F-16 or F-18 being seen in Indian colors anytime soon. The facts are these, the US sold a country hostile to India, arms, made commitments and agreements about the usage of those arms which were not adhered to, and instead of taking any sort of principled stand on the matter, have let elements of your media establishment run their mouth, claiming classified access to serving USG officials, without providing any evidence to the Indian side that they were indeed speaking the truth. Good show. In return, you have just set diplomatic relations and even otherwise, with India by a significant amount.

And here you are concerned about “nationalist Indians” attacking poor Lara Seligman, when that dunce has been responsible for a significant diplomatic gaffe just to further her own ambitions. Good show.

With the Indo-Pak conflict being driven by the IAF’s offensive stance driving into Pakistan proper for any conflict, chances are that this issue will recur all too many times. The Pakistani side will never admit to its foibles and folks like you will play along. We understand this and don’t care much.

On Feb 27th, 8x IAF fighters held off a PAF strike package 3x times that number and the SOPs/IACCS/skill levels/investment in airframes all held up well. Now it will be taken further, but with the US probably staying far away from the whole upgrade but for subsytems.

Last, I do think its high time the US started re-evaluating its role in the world wide pecking order. Your Afghanistan intervention wherein you sent in thousands of troops, had huge casualties from the Pakistani establishment, and yet, in return you *bribed them* has to be the singular most self-defeating act by any world power ever.

I was a critic of the cringe worthy manner in which India would merely retaliate proportionately to Pakistani antics via extracting its pound of flesh so to speak via cross LOC actions, arty attacks etc, but at least we struck back! You guys just bribed them and in return you just got to drone a few insignificant tier 2/3 Taliban guys while the Pakistani generals laughed at you day in and night out, sipping their whiskies and Musharraf, the author of that entire action is even sitting in the west and enjoying his time there.

To India at least, it just demonstrated the limits to which you’d go to defend Pakistan. The architect of 9/11 sits in Pakistan, and all you could do was just take him out, call it mission accomplished and do nothing against the real architects of his protection sitting a few km away.

Unfrikking believable. It is this unfortunate play along with Pakistan no matter what attitude your strategic guys display, that has ensured India goes to France for the Rafale, buys the S-400, doesn’t even look at the F-35 etc. They simply cannot be trusted to do the right thing and the love of real-politik is so much that the US ended up sacrificing its own troops in the Ghan, without even taking retribution, even when unlike India, you had the power to do so much more. Actions speak louder than words.

Or even worse, Pak has such a strong lobby in the US, that it gets a free pass no matter what.

This kind of stupidity don’t let me feel relax. Sorry. You don’t need an actual kinetic impact to prove you can hit a floating object in space: you use a radar (or any other suitable sensor) and an offset coordinate. 😡

Actually you do. Otherwise it is just notional capability. India wants to be a party to all the negotiations on space deweaponization and to get invited to that table, sometimes you have to place all your cards on the table.