NEW DELHI: An Indian Air Force review of the February 26 air strike on the Jaish-e-Mohammed terrorist camp in Balakot confirms that while its bombs struck their targets accurately, the key Israeli air-to-surface missiles called the Crystal Maze, which would have provided a live video feed of the weapons hitting their targets, was not launched.
This video feed, which the IAF hoped to play out in public after the attack, would have been proof that the Indian fighters did strike and destroy targets within the Jaish terror base located near the town of Bisian, north of Balakot in Pakistan's Khyber Pakhtunwa province.
At the same time, the IAF's Mirage 2000 fighters, which made a shallow incursion across the Line of Control on February 26, did manage to launch five SPICE 2000 penetrator glide bombs, which accurately struck their targets, though they did not bring down the buildings they struck. The Spice 2000 bombs were aimed at "four targets, of which three were hit. One [was hit] with three [bombs] and the remaining two with one bomb each," said a source familiar with the operations that day.
However, unlike the Crystal Maze, which the IAF's pilots could not launch that day, the SPICE 2000 glide bombs were not configured to provide the launch aircraft a live video feed as they approached and struck their targets. Consequently, the IAF could not play out actual video of the strikes in public and had to rely, instead, on assessing the success of the operations through high-resolution satellite images procured from a friendly strategic partner. Confidentiality clauses have prevented the IAF from showcasing these images in public. It is unclear if additional non-classified, high-resolution satellite imagery of the strikes have been acquired and whether these will be showcased in public in the future.
Sources familiar with the IAF's attack on the Jaish-e-Mohammed terror camp have told NDTV that the presence of low clouds prevented the launch of six Crystal Maze missiles meant to accompany the SPICE 2000 glide-bombs. "The Crystal Maze were not launched as the missile works on the pilot flying the missile to the target. The weather conditions of undercast clouding precluded this." Once launched, "the Crystal Maze requires acquisition of [the] target visually by the pilot in the last phase of the attack." In other words, the weapon flies to its target based on pre-fed Global Positioning System (GPS) coordinates but requires the pilot of the launching platform to manually steer it to its precise point of impact through an electronic data-link between the launch aircraft with the weapon.