Not lucky. It was the clashing of ego's to be honest. That very Su-30 was giving radar locks to F-16s in the vicinity and hence S/L Hassan went after him in the heat of the battle. The Su was shot down after Mig 21's kill inside Pakistan.
This will be a long reply so i request your complete attention.
Respectfully, Things dont add up! one side you have commented as per your sources complete control was there fire was open cautiously and deescalate immediately. hence 2 x kills.
On other side of coin you are stating that this filmy type of thing had happened! clash of egos!
This is what i think after linking the dots..after all DG ISPR has given the liberty to us by not disclosing complete picture for all to see..he has his reasons!
PAF went in full aware that there will be resistance after all they were probing all night 26th-27th Feb. so this ROI and Cautious approach which you are implying as per your sources goes out of the window.
They were to bomb the targets (just not the legitimate targets) they knew IAF will come after them any sane force will. so you/they think that they didnt shoot in free will.
There is not a single pilot or Air boss in this world worth his salt not to open fire once the shooting started this would be treason what if one gets through and takes out one of ours! would PAF expect to Indians to approach cautiously...i dont think so if they had chance they would have fired freely. this brings me to an important point Even Iraqi AF fired missiles at there opponent, Serbian MiG-29s fired at there opponents. Syrians able to fire against there opponents. why did not IAF fired a single missile.....hell even blind firing can cause disturbance among the foe. the picture you have made is yes they were locking each other up and waiting to things happen...is a recipe of disaster! until unless PAF did its Job amazingly well! wipe the slate clean!!!
Yes, Hiding large amount of kills is may be of many reasons "Kargill" is well entrenched in our memory it started small and just got big...PAF mission was strike that was to be of importance but response just got big.
Then may be foreign pilot or pilots theory does have some weight in it...because once you claim all the kills then you have to tell them who was in a pair of mirage 2000i...
so this led me to conclusion that Number of kills scored are much higher then 2 kills and damages scored on ground in too much as well and while at it Our DG ISPR requested india to tell the truth when they were readying there Brahmos what we did! this itself requires subjective analysis.
Food for thought!
By the way IAF is still flying? high tempo because when they flew they had abnormal amounts of accidents and road accidents happened. alert is still there why these accidents are not happening on regular basis after all its 2 months and 5 days..
In the end!
No matter what 2 losses of IAF in air are not enough to bring Brahmos into play and completely sidelining a 678(pre-battle) and 670(post Battle) force until something devastating had to happened and then not to come close to 50-60km of Pakistan Border. does say a lot!
and off course! everybody has the right to call this post "BS" and move forward!
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