Kargil War for IAF and for PAF

Kargil war was an important lesson for India. A war that was seen by Indians through live TV. A war in which IAF lost:

1. MiG 21: Pilot shot in the air.
2. MiG 23: Crashed due to engine catching fire. Pilot returned by Pakistan.
3. Mi 17: Shot by a stinger. All onboard perished.

After making no gains IAF finally deployed Mirage 2000 and MiG-29s.

Lets discuss the war from air force point of view. Lets take into account at things from both IAF and PAF point of view.

The Best thing of Kargil war is the indian defence forces intergation into one fighting unit .Thats the intergation of airforce air amry and co-ordinated statergy or .

Indian air force has learnt a good lesson to fight a low intensity warfare .
as every one know, all most all the future battle will be a low intensity warfare.
So its better that Indian air force should prepare itself for this type of warfare too..

I think the AF was foolish to send old planes with old bombs. They took it like a picnic and 3 planes were shot down. Lousy plan of a lousy air marshal. Shows their inability to know the ground realities. The AF bosses failed to see the threat. I wonder how good they are at making strategies.

Look at it this way. When you don't know the degree of threat , which weapon do you use first , the nuke ?

Due to lack of intel , IAF may not have known that there were MANPADs in the area . The shootdown of a jet confirms that the enemy has credible threat to aircraft, following which they likely changed tactics to high level LGB attacks .

The point is, that with old bombs they were not able to make a hit. Wind, terrain... and stinger, they were obvious. To me, it shows the lack of professionalism.
1. Wind: They knew it cud be windy... it was.
2. None of the bombs hit the target.
3. And when they knew that pak army is there then didnt it occur to anyone that they could have a stinger. If it didn't then I am sorry for their lack of logic.

Another shameful fact was that the IAF pulled out all attack helicopters only after the loss of one chopper. Compare this with the Americans who take repeated losses in terms of choppers and yet use them extensively.

I don't think pulling the helicopters out was shameful thing. The heli used was Mi17 with unguided weapons on board. So they were basically hitting nothing. There is difference of impact of any weapon in level field to impact in hills. In level field, when a bomb is dropped or rockets hit, the impact is in 360 degrees. But on hills the person has a protection due to height. Another thing is that on level ground a bomb if even dropped 10 meters off, will kill you, in hills 10 meters mean 10 meters off sideways and 15 meters down. So the effective area of blast is very less.

And like Rohan says, i would also say that IAF should have done a thorough flights, asses the situation and then accordingly retaliated with LGBs. Only after destroying the bunkers and their morale the Indian army should have marched its troops. We had all the time in the world. It was upto us to choose when and how we would attack.

In my opinion MiG25 flights, satellite imagery should have been used extensively just to gather positions. After accessing that, attack on the bunkers by air should have been done. Cut the supply lines, then wait, after that destroy their bunker. Do artillery fire, and keep them guessing when we would attack. Put them under pressure and attack when completely ready.

I presume it was the political pressure to get quick results. The decision at the end was with our Generals and Air Marshals. Gen Maneshaw when asked to attack Bangladesh refused to attack. He said I will attack when we are ready. Our Gens and Marshals of 99 should have taken a stand. Their are stories of soldiers being killed by mere stones. Why was Indian army fighting the war as if it was not 1999 but 1899?