Twenty years after the Kargil conflict, May to July 1999, the Indian Air Force today attributed the firing of precision guided bombs on Tiger Hill and Muntho Dhalo as the \u201cturning point\u201d in the war.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Mirage 2000 fighter jets, based here, were advance-located to Ambala and Adampur to carry out the first laser-guided precision strikes exactly on this day 20 years ago. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Tiger Hill, a 16,600-ft-high massif located in front of Drass in J&K, was targeted, hitting Pakistani Army position that had been pounding the national highway. Existing 1,000-pound \u201cdumb bombs\u201d were retro-fitted with a \u201ckit\u201d within 12 days, and converted into bombs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Air Chief Marshal BS Dhanoa today said, \u201cIt was a turning point, it helped ground forces in their advance.\u201d The conversion of a 1,000-pound bomb into a laser-guided one was done within 12 days.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Chief of the Western Air Command R Nambiar leading the \u201cBattle Axes\u201d squadron to strike Tiger Hill said: \u201cThe strikes on the supply base at Mutho Dhalo on June 17 and that on Tiger Hill on June 24 changed the course of battle.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
India had purchased \u201cPaveway\u201d bombs from the US. The first tranche came in 1997, the imposition of sanctions following the May 1998 nuclear tests, meant the integration was incomplete. The Mirage software was of 1985 vintage. \u201cIsraelis helped us,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The IAF today showcased how Tiger Hill and Tololing were attacked by Mirage 2000 fighter jets by replicating the features of the Himalayan range on a \u201cscale\u201d model at Gwalior. The IAF lost two fighter jets on May 27, 1999, and a helicopter the next day. In all, the IAF carried out 578 strikes, 462 combat air patrols and 149 reconnaissance sorties during the Kargil conflict.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Twenty years later, after the Pulwama terror attack on February 14, the same Mirage 2000 jets were tasked to undertake combat air patrols. This time, these were no \u201churriedly assembled\u201d weaponry. The Spice 2000 long-range stand-off weapon was dropped to strike at Jaish-e-Mohammed terror camp at Balakot.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Twenty years after the Kargil conflict, May to July 1999, the Indian Air Force today attributed the firing of precision guided bombs on Tiger Hill and Muntho Dhalo as the \u201cturning point\u201d in the war. The Mirage 2000 fighter jets, based here, were advance-located to Ambala and Adampur to carry out the first laser-guided precision […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":64526,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[312,315],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-64525","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-india","category-top-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64525","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=64525"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64525\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":64527,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64525\/revisions\/64527"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/64526"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=64525"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=64525"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=64525"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}