Western Command Chief Of Indian Air Force Backs PM Modi’s Claim That Clouds Blunt Radar’s Accuracy

Commanding-in-Chief of Western Air Command Raghunath Nambiar on Monday (27 May) backed Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s statement in which he claimed that clouds could help Indian Air Force (IAF) jets escape Pakistani radars during the Balakot Air Strike, ANI has reported.

Prime Minister Modi had earlier made a statement that, “the weather was not good on the day of air strikes. There was a thought that crept in the minds of the experts that the day of strikes should be changed. However, I suggested that the clouds could actually help our planes escape the radars”.

Now, Air Marshal Raghunath Nambiar has made a statement that very strong clouds and convection currents reduce detecting accuracy of radars.

“That is true up to some effect that very strong clouds and very strong convective conditions in clouds prevent the radar from detecting very accurately”, said Air Marshal Raghunath Nambiar.

Earlier it was reported that as per Encyclopedia Britannica “rain and other forms of precipitation can cause echo signals that mask the desired target echoes”.

For civilian aircraft, a secondary surveillance radar is used to overcome disturbance from clouds via a signal sent by transponders on the plane. However, as the air strike mission was a stealth mission into another nations air space, the transponders of the Indian aircraft would have been switched off.

With no secondary radar, the effectiveness of Pakistan’s primary detectors would have reduced due to the presence of clouds, and the fact that the IAF’s Mirage 2000’s penetrated the Pakistani air defence is more evidence that the overcast conditions prevented them from detecting the jets in their airspace.