The Israeli Missile That The IAF Wanted To Use For Strike On Balakot Terror Camp But Could Not  

Five of the six designated targets were successfully hit by the Indian Air Force (IAF) during its air strike on a Jaish-e-Mohammed terror camp in Balakot of Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, The Indian Express has reported.

According to the daily’s report, the IAF wanted to use Israeli air-to-surface missiles Crystal Maze to hit the targets in Balakot but could not use it due to a heavy cloud cover over the region, which did not allow a direct line of sight to the pilots. The IAF fighter jets which conducted the strike were carrying Crystal Maze AGM 142 munition along with the Spice 2000 bombs used during the mission.

Although the Crystal Maze finds its target using Global Positioning System coordinates fed into it, the pilot of the launching aircraft is required to manually steer it using an electronic data-link between the aircraft and the weapon.

“The Crystal Maze requires acquisition of target visually by the pilot in the last phase of the attack,” NDTV has quoted a source as saying.

The missile would have been advantageous not only because it would have caused more visible damage to the structures at the terror camp but also because it gives a live video feed of the weapon hitting its target.

The IAF’s claim that it hit targets in Balakot successfully has been called into question by some analysts, who suggest that the targets may have been missed due to incorrect data being fed into the Spice-2000 bombs.

Had the IAF used Crystal Maze, it would have video footage to prove its claim. The IAF has, for now, bolstered its claim of having hit the targets successfully by showing some journalists at least one high-resolution monochrome image of the site which shows some damage was inflicted on the buildings.

The Crystal Maze is a stand-off range missile, which means that the aircraft firing it need not come very close to the target. India is reported to have obtained this missile from Israel sometime around the year 2005.

According to a Zee News report, the missile can be fired from as far as 80 km.

The report says that the Crystal Maze missile “has an inertial measurement unit (IMU) for midcourse guidance while its terminal phase can use either an imaging infrared (IIR) or Television (TV) seeker to hit the target.”

“While the missile fitted with IIR works on the fire-and-forget principal, the TV version is a fire-and-update mode, which allows the pilot to choose an intended target from a select group. The warhead can be either a blast fragmentation or a penetrator,” the news channel’s report adds.