Avneet Kaur

Jalandhar, February 27

Hailing the Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, for granting permission to the Indian armed forces to decide on time and place for action against the perpetrators of the Pulwama attack, Air Vice-Marshal (retd) Sarvjit Hothi of Jalandhar said, “The Indian armed forces be it the Army, the Navy or Air Force, are always ready for such actions. But doing anything across the border is purely a political decision.”

He said, “An airstrike is always a result of a precise planning, hard intelligence and understanding of the area targeted. The demography and the kind of infrastructure are studied properly before executing an airstrike.”

He said every action was planned based on intelligence information, including the timing of bombing the area.

Taking on terrorists through airstrikes is extremely difficult as one second delay in action could be fatal, he added.

“The pilots hold a great responsibility as during an airstrike, the risk of being shot down is involved. You can be shot down in the air and you can be shot down from the ground. And for fighting aircrafts, even a small shot can mean a lot. If there is a strategic hit, it can be fatal as well,” said Air Vice-Marshal (retd) Hothi, who was part of the 10-member pilot crew selected for flying the elite light fighter aircraft — Gnat — in 1971.

Sharing his wartime experiences of 1971, Hothi said, “We were getting training in Jamnagar and increasing our flying hours to be fully operational when the war came. I was among the select pilots who got picked up for flying Gnats. We were inducted in the 2 Squadron that was then based in Ambala. Amritsar was our forward base just 25 km from the border.”

Narrating his one of the risky encounters, Hothi said, “One day when I had just taken off, I saw a Mirage of Pakistan just passed by on the gun side. My commander gave me orders to shoot it. But since my speed was just 180 mph, which was too less and there was another Gnat following me, I could neither turn back nor was capable of overtaking it. By the time I was in the attack mode, I was already over Lahore.”

On asked about the reason for choosing the Mirage 2000 for the strike, Hothi said, “You have to collect the right weapon to destroy the target and then you decide which aircraft can carry this weapon. And for such a strike, the best capability is the Mirage 2000 and therefore it was chosen.”