THE BJP PRESIDENT Amit Shah may not have been far-off the mark when he claimed that 250 terrorists were killed during the Indian Air Force’s air strike on Balakot at around 3:30 am local time on February 26th, 2019. However, Shah would never be able to provide the evidence to back his claim. Revealing the evidence would violate the charter of ‘The MOU on Geosynchronous Earth Orbit and Low Earth Orbit Optical Link’ signed between Prime Ministers Modi and Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel on July 5th, 2017 in New Delhi. This MoU permits Indian and Israeli satellites to ‘talk to each other’.
Let me explain further. EL/M-2070 Tec SAR, also known as Tech SAR, Polaris and Ofek-8, is an Israeli Reconnaissance Satellite equipped with synthetic aperture radar developed by Elta Systems. It was successfully launched on January 21st, 2008, by PSLV C-10, Launch Vehicle, from Sriharikota in India. This satellite is perhaps the world’s only satellite that is an indispensable system for military operations in the mountainous terrains of Central Asia that includes the Hindu Kush, Karakoram and Himalayan ranges. It is capable of imaging with a resolution of up to 10 centimeters, through an X-band radar system. The satellite’s maximum resolution is believed to be around 1 metre. Tec SAR’s was the first Israeli satellite to feature Synthetic Aperture Radar, or SAR, which provides images in day or night and under all-weather conditions.
Now, RISAT-2, or Radar Imaging Satellite 2, is an Indian Radar Reconnaissance Satellite that was built by Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) and successfully launched aboard a PSLV-CA rocket at 01:15 GMT on April 20th, 2009 from the second launchpad at the Satish Dhawan Space Centre. RISAT-2’s main sensor is also an X-band synthetic aperture radar from IAI. It is designed to monitor India’s borders and is a part of anti-infiltration and anti-terrorist operations.
Here is a possible scenario of what happened over Balakot on the night of Feb 26th, 2019. The Israeli satellite Tec SAR was tasked to directly send images of heat signatures of the number of terrorists sleeping in their dormitories in the Balakot Camp to RISAT-2. This exchange took place in outer space. Mind you, the dormitories were located in two separate buildings that flanked the main structure. The main structure was of no strategic or tactical interest. Having confirmed that whatever number of terrorists were in the land of nod, RISAT-2 transmitted this information to the designated IAF Phalcon AWACS that was controlling this attack. All of this would have happened in under 15 minutes. The Phalcon then transmitted the go-ahead to the Flight Leader of the Mirage 2000s to launch their ordnance. While this was in progress, it is presumed because of the sensitivity involved in this virgin exercise, Site IV of the US National Command Authorities (NCA) Ground Based Electro-Optical Deep Space Surveillance System (GEODSS) at Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean was also patched in. Diego Garcia in turn would be directly connected to the USAF Space Command Space Defence Centre (SPADOC) at the Cheyenne Mountain Complex. This in turn would have patched in the Pentagon.
THE QUESTION IS: were the Mirage 2000s using the Israeli SPICE 2000? While undoubtedly, the SPICE 2000 ‘operates on pre-recorded GPS coordinates’, and the weapon’s ‘advanced identification and processing abilities can reportedly help overcome jamming efforts’, the public announcement of its usage may have been a decoy. My guess is that the Mirage 2000 which fired the ordnance was armed with the Israeli Delilah Cruise Missile. Delilah is a cruise missile capable of deceiving even the much-vaunted Trumpf S-400 Russian air defence system and can loiter over a contested area before hitting the target. Delilah has a range of 250 km and can penetrate any air defence system. This is why the Pakistani air defences were clueless as to what was hurtling through the skies towards Balakot. SPICE 2000 is nowhere in the league of Delilah. The use of Delilah would have also rattled the Chinese as they use the S-400 system. We seem to have the weapon capable of overriding even the Chinese Air Defence shield at present, if we really do have Delilah?