On the first anniversary of the April 22 Pahalgam terror attack that claimed the lives of 26 civilians and led to India launching Operation Sindoor against Pakistan, TOI has learned that it was Air Commodore Rohit Kapil, Air Officer Commanding (AOC) of 45 Wing at Sirsa – a forward IAF base close to the Pakistan border – and his team that intercepted a Pakistani ballistic missile (possibly a missile) at the Sirsa airfield with its Barak-8 missile system. A Fatah missile or Shaheen-II version) was successfully intercepted and destroyed. The target of the Pakistani missile was probably Delhi. Security forces recovered some parts of the missile from Sirsa on May 10, videos of which scattered on the ground are going viral.
The prompt action of the Indian Air Force’s 45 Wing averted a major attack and demonstrated the effectiveness of India’s integrated air defense network, which the Modi government is now working to expand to a pan-India level under the Sudarshan programme. The proposed multi-layered Sudarshan will fuse existing, indigenous and advanced systems – such as the Russian S-400, Barak-8 MRSAM and the indigenous Project Kusha interceptor system – to protect Indian cities, strategic assets and infrastructure from drones, cruise missiles and hypersonic threats.
Not many people knew about the alert action of Air Commodore Kapil and his team during last year’s conflict, but it could have saved many lives. For his role in air defense as AOC of 45 Wing at Sirsa, Air Commodore Kapil was selected for the Yudh Seva Medal by President Draupadi Murmu on 14 August. Commissioned as a fighter pilot on 20 June 1998, he is a Su-30MKI pilot and Cat ‘A’ qualified flight instructor and has also commanded an operational Su-30MKI squadron.
On the eve of the anniversary of the Pahalgam attack on Tuesday, the Indian Army warned Pakistan through a stern message on Twitter: “When the limits of humanity are crossed, the response is decisive”. The message contained a digital poster containing a shadowed image of a map of India with the caption ‘Certain boundaries should never be crossed’.
