There should have been no doubt in the minds of Pakistan’s military and government leadership that the Pakistan Navy would be attacked at night by Indian missile boats, and that this ship to ship threat needed to be tackled essentially by navy itself. It should also have been very clear that in the absence of any suitable weapon system in the PAF – and air Headquarters had emphasised this repeatedly – PN ships would be sunk if they were exposed to such attacks. Against this certainty, the navy should have devised other emergency measures, tactics or deployments to reduce the vulnerability of its ship.

Despite the 155 sorties of visual sea surveillance, interdiction and direct support flown by the PAF, the absence of the PN’s own maritime reconnaissance and anti-submarine capability rendered its ships highly vulnerable to Indian naval weapons. It is lamentable that this gallant service had to pay a heavy price for budgetary neglect over many years, before being provided with those capabilities. The PAF’s total inadequacy in the anti-shipping role has also been redressed to some extent but more remains to be done in this regard.

Nearly 1,000 sorties were flown by the PAF in direct support of the army’s operations during the fourteen days of war, at a daily rate more than twice that of the 65 war. The operations extended from Kashmir to southern Rajasthan, along a border of over 2,000 miles. The workhorses of air support were F-86Fs, F-86Es and, for the first time the F-6s. Although the latter could not carry a useful load of rockets or bombs, they had 3 powerful 30 mm cannon each as standard configuration. In the Chor sector T-33s and B-57s and on occasions even F-104s were used very effectively to assist the army in halting a potentially dangerous Indian advance. Additionally, a limited number of interdiction and harassment sorties were flown on C-130s and T-6Gs. Effective direction of close support aircraft occasionally suffered when the army’s forward air controllers (FACs) were either not available or had bad radios. Early morning winter fog and haze, specially over the Shakargarh area, was also sometimes a serious hindrance in the acquisition of camouflaged targets.

It was deliberate decision by the PAF high command to configure a larger proportion of air support fighters with bombs and guns rather than the more conventional rockets and guns. About 16% of the stories were flown with bombs compared to 14% with rockets; the remaining 25% were flown with guns only. This drew some criticism during and after the war. The air chief had based his decision on a growing worldwide recognition of the heightened lethality battlefield ack ack. A number of international military studies at that time as well as subsequently, had questioned the wisdom of losing a 15 to 20 million-dollar fighter to battlefield flak in exchange for 2 or 3 tanks ($ 1 million). Ways simply had to be found to offset this unfavourable exchange in future wars Accordingly, most air forces had advocated such combinations of tactics and weapons for these operations as would minimise losses to field ack ack. The bomb configuration offered a good compromise, until never munitions such as air to surface missiles became available, which allowed attack from greater distances.

Air Headquarters were prepared to lose a larger number of aircraft over the battlefront only in support of General Tikka Khan’s offensive, or in the event of a sudden enemy break through, but not during the lesser actions of the holding formations. With a severely limited force of pilots and aircraft this was considered to be a wise policy. The bombs plus guns configuration allowed greater pullout heights, and was prescribed during the earlier phases of Pak Army’s operations. While this tactical rationale was not new and was being widely applied elsewhere, including Vietnam, it was true that the destructive effect to unguided bombs against relatively small battlefield targets was not very great. But certain targets such as troop concentrations, the Bein river bridgehead and the ammo dumps at Akhnur and Ferozepur were successfully bombed by the F-86s. Much more accurate guided bombs, anti-tank cluster bombs and air to ground missiles came into the PAF inventory more than a decade after the war.