Day after claiming they intercepted 25 Indian drones, Pakistani defence minister says they didn’t intercept the drones to avoid giving away their defence locations
A day after the Pakistan government claimed that its forces intercepted and shot down 25 drones sent by India to multiple locations including Lahore, Karachi and Rawalpindi, Pakistani defence minister has now taken a U-turn. Talking about the recent developments in the National Assembly, Pakistan’s defence minister Khwaja Asif claimed that Pakistani forces didn’t intercept the drones as it would have given away the locations of defence establishments.
He said, the drones were sent into Pakistan to detect the locations of Pakistani defence systems, adding that he can’t explain it as it is technical matter. He then added to avoid giving away the locations, Pakistani forces didn’t intercept the drone. Khwaja Asif said that after the drones reached a ‘safe limit’, they were shot down.
Notably, the claim of shooting down the drones is misleading, as videos show that at least some drones hit their targets and then exploded. Notably, the ‘drone’ sent by India, Israeli IAI Haron, are actually loitering munition. They are combinations of drone and missile, and they are design to hover over an area for a long time and then dive onto a target and detonating the onboard bomb.
For example, the following video from Lahore shows a Harop drone diving onto a target and then exploding. It shows that the drone was intact before hitting the ground, which means it was not shot by Pakistani forces, it dived on its power to hit the target, probably a Pakistani air defence system.
These are also known as kamikaze drones, as they are on a suicide mission, instead of firing missiles like regular drones, they themselves hit the target. Therefore, allowing such drones to enter Pakistani airspace to avoid giving locations and then shooting them down after they reached their target does not make sense.
The video in this tweet also shows an undamaged drone diving onto target, so this one was also not shot.
Notably, as per Indian govt, the drones were used to target Air Defence Radars and systems at a number of locations in Pakistan. A statement by Defence ministry said that an Air Defence system at Lahore was neutralised in this attack.
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