Balakot: How India Planned IAF Airstrike In Pakistan

Exclusive insights on how the Balakot operation was planned with detailed intelligence on the targets and a combination of sophisticated weaponry and aerial strategy.

- Raj Chengappa

Hours before the Balakot strike deep in the heart of Pakistan, Prime Minister Narendra Modi gave no indication to those who met him that he had taken such a momentous decision. One that would push the two countries closest to a war since the stand-off in 2002 after the Pakistan-backed Jaishe-Mohammed terrorists attacked Kaluchak in J&K and killed 30 people. It would be the first time that India was conducting an air strike in mainland Pakistan since 1971. It was a decision as far-reaching as overtly declaring India’s nuclear capability, like Indira Gandhi and Atal Bihari Vajpayee did with the nuclear tests in 1974 and 1998. It signalled a paradigm shift in the way India would deal with Pakistan in future when it came to terror attacks.

Modi, though, appeared as collected as ever when he returned to his official residence—7, Lok Kalyan Marg—at 9.30 pm after a speaking engagement. The tense relations between India and Pakistan after the Pulwama attack on February 14 that saw 40 security personnel killed in a suicide bomb attack by the JeM had barely found a mention in his address. But his staff found it strange that the prime minister did not go to bed at midnight as usual. Instead, he kept working on files in his study while monitoring the progress of the air strikes on a JeM camp in Balakot.