2019 India-Pakistani border clash

Yes they allowed access after a long delay. Which read the whole statement not just the bold portion.

Indians may claim that delay was a damage clean up but satellite imagery says no to that.

If the Indian original claim had anything to it that delay could have allowed relocation of a staging area.

Of course you can feel free to call me on that. I have no evidence. I admit that. It's pure conjecture.

You claim security which is also conjecture.
All we know is that they took their time.

The Pakistan ispr case is like the boy who cried wolf. He gives so many official statements and then discredits them by changing them.
A official statement is called " official" for a reason. Its supposed to have some gravity and reliability behind it. Or it becomes a case of Baghdad Bob junior.
I see many Pakistani and Chinese posters trying to excuse the delay and brevity of media visit to the madrassa by saying their could be many reasons.
What logically could be the reason ? Just saying security reasons is not enough. Who's security ?Ignoring the uncomfortable questions won't make them disappear.

Use your imagination. Are you seriously that far up India's ass you can't think of any good strategic reasons at all? I'm not referring to security. Maybe they don't want to reveal what is actually there. A terrorist training ground or not... details are important. No one but you is ignoring the important questions. Can you please answer the questions I raised? You can't even answer one satisfactorily and you have been ignoring all of them so far. Refer to posts 552, 563, 566, and 569. Start by addressing the questions raised in those posts please.

maint1234 said:

The Pakistan ispr case is like the boy who cried wolf.

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Don't rely on the ISPR. I don't, and I'm a Pakistani. I've been telling other Pakistanis the same thing from Day 0. The problem for you is not the ISPR. It's Reuters, BBC, NY Times, and independent teams like BellingCat and The War Zone and the private Satellite Imagery firms. In fact, even pro-Indian US analysts like Christine Fair and Michael Kugleman who regularly appear on Indian news channels. Even some very senior Indian defense analysts like Praveen Sawhney.

At the end of the day, the known facts are as follows:

• 1 Mig downed
• 1 pilot captured
• 1 frat Mi17, killing all on board
• no evidence of a successful bombing by the IAF
• no evidence of a downed Viper

Everything else is conjecture. For example, my side's claim of downing a Flanker (of which our pilots are convinced, and I've spoken to one) I still do not believe, for the same reasons that I do not believe your IAF's story. They might have thought they were successful at doing something, but I'm not gonna take their word for it. I need verifiable evidence of confirmed kills, before I give credit to anyone (including my own side.) This happens all the time in every military conflict. There is a counter for "claimed kills" and a separate counter for "confirmed kills." You're basing everything of the former counter, when everyone else is going by the latter. That's your problem.

You are not applying this same principle of rigor. But most 3rd parties are, including members of this forum. For example, you're pointing to the screenshots of the "radar images" even after independent analysts have rejected them. If you have the radar scope data, you have the video, so release the video, don't selectively cherry pick screenshots because that doesn't prove anything. Contacts pop in and out of radar all the time. But even if you did that, it wouldn't prove a Viper kill, until there's evidence of a wreckage, a missing Viper, or a confirmation from our side, none of which exist.

As for the Balakot strike, it's been debunked ad nauseum, so I will not go over this again. Now instead of throwing mud on the members here, realize that everything you are saying is based on conjecture. Regardless of what the ISPR or the IAF has said, the known facts which I listed, are undisputed. And they are enough to paint a very damning picture. If you want to change that picture, conjecture will not be enough.

By the way, here's Sawhney, a senior Indian analyst talking about this whole episode. And he is specifically talking about "deterrence" (which you are so interested in) so you should pay close attention. Notice how his conclusion is the exact opposite of yours:

ougoah said:

Use your imagination. Are you seriously that far up India's ass you can't think of any good strategic reasons at all? I'm not referring to security. Maybe they don't want to reveal what is actually there. A terrorist training ground or not... details are important. No one but you is ignoring the important questions. Can you please answer the questions I raised? You can't even answer one satisfactorily and you have been ignoring all of them so far. Refer to posts 552, 563, 566, and 569. Start by addressing the questions raised in those posts please.

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Their logic circuit shortcircuited ever since 2/27.

jatt said:

What US count? The Pentagon or Lockhead have made no official statement.

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These:



So the Pentagon didn't make an official statement because it wasn't important enough. They didn't contradict the media statement. There is no reason to doubt these articles.

jatt said:

But that doesn't even matter. Within the first 2 hours of the the engagment of the aircraft, Pakistan made a statement of having Pilots! not a single pilot, until after India's MEA made a statement of loosing 1 aircraft 1 pilot and claim. The Indians Must be stupid on their part don't you think because the stated officially a Mig-21 shot down a PAF aircraft. When they could have tried to make it more believable if they said it was Su-30 or Mig-29 that shot down a PAF aircaft while a Mig-21 was shot down.

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Yes, I think they're stupid for sending a MiG-21 into this fight in the first place. However else they lie is not my concern. My concern is that India's claim cannot be backed by evidence but can be disproven by counter-evidence.

jatt said:

The Indian statements never changed in regards to this 3 minute war. Had the Indians made a statement of capturing or hospitalizing a enemy pilot, and switched statements within hours you'd think India is incompetent and/or lying about loses. I mean which pilot was in the hospital? heres the dgispr the Official state mouth of Pakistan. Within an hour talking about the attack and offically claims to have 2 pilots captured with one in the hospital. You don't make these kinds of mistakes likely to the world. This is a slow moving car crash.

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I already think India's incompetent for sending a MiG-21 into Pakistan, getting it shot down, then claiming to down and F-16, which was proven incorrect. I don't need to see specific lies to determine if someone is incompetent.

Maybe Pakistan captured a guy who they thought was a pilot but he wasn't. I don't know why they would purposefully say they have 2 pilots when they had 1. Certainly not as big a mistake as India's intentional lie.

Biggest problem right now is that India has lost 1 MiG-21, 1 Mi-17, 7 airmen, and 1 pilot (who was returned), fired their Air Marshall in hours, has absolutely no evidence that Pakistan has lost anything at all, and they are still trying to paint this as an Indian victory. If this is what an Indian victory looks like, then an Indian defeat would probably have to involve the dissolution of the IAF.

maint1234 said:

The Pakistan ispr case is like the boy who cried wolf. He gives so many official statements and then discredits them by changing them.
A official statement is called " official" for a reason. Its supposed to have some gravity and reliability behind it. Or it becomes a case of Baghdad Bob junior.
I see many Pakistani and Chinese posters trying to excuse the delay and brevity of media visit to the madrassa by saying their could be many reasons.
What logically could be the reason ? Just saying security reasons is not enough. Who's security ?Ignoring the uncomfortable questions won't make them disappear.

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These questions aren't uncomfortable; they are inconsequential. The fact is that there is plentiful evidence of Indian losses and none of Pakistani losses so you are trying to concoct and imagine them by asking questions that could have any multitude of answers all of which require a mind-boggling number of illogical assumptions to go in the direction you wish to take them.

Losses aren't determined by questions; they are determined by evidence. If you don't have evidence, you don't have anything.

maint1234 said:

Nothing the Indian official spokespersons have said has been retracted or proven false. Just using media reports for creating a false equivalence between the value of Indian and Pakistani official statements is laughable.

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This stuck out to me because immediately after the Indian Balakot air strike, media was reporting from Government Sources (almost certainly BJP), that the strike was a success and that approx. 300 militants had been killed:

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Then there was push back from the Indian Congress Party to prove it, since BJP was wanting to use this as a show of strength in the elections, and suddenly this comes out from the Home Minister:

He said that beginning of March, and as far as I can tell, neither the Home Minister or anyone else in Government has lived up to that promise. Sat photos of the area have not helped here either. Now the focus is on the F-16, to apparently try to salvage something from a seemingly failed air strike that resulted in a Pakistani shoot down of a MiG-21, and a Helo with 7 Soldiers downed by friendly fire. Can you objectively say the chest thumping and mixed messages of success from India actually match the factual results of this skirmish?

maint1234 said:

Now people here try to discredit the radar evidence given by IAF without any contrary arguments . I guess these guys only believe in wvr fights and bvr engagements are beyond their mental capacity, since bvr is totally radar dependent.

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Maybe you are ignoring contrary arguments because you do not like the conclusions? Let me try:
1) A loss of radar track does not prove an aircraft has been shot down. It only conclusively proves the radar has lost the target track. Range, Altitude, ECM all have an affect on this.

2) Similarly, salvage of an AIM-120 shot at Indian aircraft does not mean an F-16 was brought down. There is no correlation. It does strongly indicate F-16's were part of the operation.

3) The radar images released by IAF prove nothing beyond point #1. What would have supported the argument for an F-16 shoot down would have been a missile vector shown on a short radar video clip moving away from launch, towards the F-16 and the fighter disappearing from radar. Since this was claimed to be a BVR engagement. That's not what is given by IAF however.

4) Pakistani F-16's are inventoried by the US and we have word that post engagement, all are accounted for.

Seems like logical contrary arguments, versus what is has come out of India thus far.

BTW, I don't have a dog in this fight, I'm not Indian, Pakistani or Chinese. But as someone mentioned earlier and I have commented on in the past, India is not exactly open and honest about its wartime history. Few Indian's are taught about the 'Forward Policy' land grabs by the Indian Army that precipitated the 1962 War. China fired the first shots, yes, but India tried to scoop up disputed land by force creep as part of an official strategy, all the while ignoring Chinese warnings to stop. I do see this as revisionist history and not a plus for the Indian transparency column.

I think we'll get a better picture of what has happened after the Indian elections are over. Patriotic fervor is at an all time high right now.

The US and allies knew India started the 1962 war but it was better to just blame China and that's the way it's been since. It's that simple. No need to concoct stories and evidence. People just wanted to believe it because of their prejudices. India's mistake was half-bragging they shot down an F-16 which is nationalistic meat that Indians bested advanced American technology. And then using the same wreckage of the AMRAAM found for two different stories. One as evidence that India shot down an F-16 because it would only be used on a F-16 but no F-16 found with the wreckage of the AMRAAM it was attached to. Second, India wanted the US to punish Pakistan for illegal use of the AMRAAM sold to Pakistan. But if the AMRAAM was attached to the F-16 used as evidence India shot it down, it wouldn't have been used if it was found with the wreckage. I'm sure it bugged the hell out of US military circles hence why the claim was rebuffed in the US. India could've said anything and would've been supported by the US if they just didn't use the US like that. India could've said they shot down 20 JF-17s and the US would've supported it but an F-16...? They couldn't pass up the opportunity.