New Delhi: The Indian Air Force (IAF) has submitted a “battle damage” dossier to the government on the pre-dawn strikes by its dozen Mirage-2000 jets on the Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) training facility on a hill off Pakistan’s Balakot town last week, debunking the foreign news agencies using a private American satellite’s pictures to claim all six buildings are intact with no visible damage. The dossier reportedly shows clearer satellite photos of the bombs hitting four of the six buildings in the terror training and indoctrination facility.
The IAF sources said the international media is not completely wrong in claiming the buildings were not damaged. They said the Israeli-make Spice 2000 precision munitions fitted with penetration war heads are designed to pierce through the roofs and floors below and detonate only once inside.
“The only tell-tale signs would be small ‘entry holes’ in the roofs with hardly any structural damage to the buildings,” an IAF office said, pointing out that the IAF had decided to use Spice 2000 munitions specifically to cause terror casualties within the structures and not necessarily to destroy the buildings themselves. He said the dossier contains 12 high-resolution Indian satellite images and an unspecified number of “synthetic aperture radar” images taken from a surveillance jet that had accompanied the Mirage-2000 fighter aircraft.
A comprehensive analysis of all photographs and intelligence led the Air Force headquarters to conclude and convey to the government its weapons had an 80% strike rate, hitting four buildings on the Jaba Top hill, the officer said, adding the casualty figures doing the rounds since the day of the air strike have no firm basis in the dossier based on a technical battle damage assessment.
