IAF chief asked Modi to delay Balakot attack by 2 days: Analyst

The IAF felt cloud cover would hamper guidance of the SPICE bomb, claimed Karnad

Mirage Karnad Collage A collage of a Mirage 2000 (Indian Air Force) and Bharat Karnad (supplied)

Prime Minister Narendra Modi's claim in an interview in May that cloud cover could help Indian Air Force jets evade Pakistani radar detection during the Balakot air strike continues to provoke debate.

If the 'cloud cover' claim was the subject of memes early on, now an eminent strategic analyst claims the Indian Air Force actually wanted to delay the attack on Balakot on account of cloud cover hampering guidance of the SPICE air-to-ground munition.

Bharat Karnad, professor for National Security Studies, Centre for Policy Research, made the claim in an entry in his blog Security Wise on Friday. The post was about service chiefs being “pliable” before politicians.

Karnad claimed, “Air Chief Marshal B.S. Dhanoa asked the PM for a delay of two days for the strike mission to go in.”

Karnad claimed the Indian Air Force sought the delay on the grounds the targeting system used by the pilots on the Mirage 2000 fighters to guide the SPICE munitions would “function sub-optimally with cloud cover as the pilot would not be able clearly to see the target”.

Karnad claimed Dhanoa had preferred the “original IAF plan” to deploy a “more accurate munition” instead of the SPICE. This was because, Karnad said, the more accurate weapon had a lower circular error probability (CEP) than the SPICE munition. CEP is the radius of a theoretical circle within which half of a weapon's projectiles are expected to fall; a lower CEP denotes a more accurate weapon.

Karnad claimed the more accurate weapon, which he did not identify, also needed better weather. Karnad wrote, “The meteorological department said that the clouds would clear starting Feb 28”.

Karnad also dismissed Modi's contention that bad weather would hamper Pakistan's radars, noting that Islamabad had deployed modern radars that were not adversely affected by atmospheric factors.

In his post, Karnad questioned Dhanoa's decision to agree to carry out the strike on Balakot on February 26.

“If Dhanoa was convinced that delaying the attack on Balakot was best, why didn’t he stick to it, after all it was his service that would execute the strike and how and when to do it was his call, not the PM's. Especially because there was no real urgency as postponing the mission by two days wouldn’t have altered its political profile or in any way complicated the diplomatic dynamic then in play,” Karnad argued.

Karnad cited the example of late Field Marshal Sam Manekshaw, who managed to convince then prime minister Indira Gandhi in 1971 to delay her plans for operations against the Pakistan Army in what was then East Pakistan, from April to December. Karnad wrote Manekshaw “informed the prime minister his forces weren’t ready or mobilised and if Mrs Gandhi still insisted on the early dateline for action, she’d have to find another Army chief”.

Karnad declared the Bangladesh War was a “far bigger” issue for the chief of Army Staff to stake his career and reputation on, compared with the attack on Balakot.