Jaswant Singh Opposed the Use of IAF in Kargil War. Here’s why.

New Delhi: The two interviews by Chief of Defence Staff General Anil Chauhan in Singapore, where he accepted the loss of an unspecified number of fighter jets by the Indian Air Force (IAF) on the first night of Operation Sindoor, has once again raised questions about the use of IAF against Pakistani targets.

This issue had raised its head even in 1999, during the Kargil War, when the Indian armed forces evicted Pakistani intruders who had crossed the Line of Control and occupied Indian territory.

Delivering the Air Chief Marshal L.M. Katre Memorial Lecture on September 9, 2017 at Bangalore, Air Chief Marshal B.S. Dhanoa, then Chief of the Air Staff, had mentioned that in “a cabinet level meeting on May 18, the then foreign minister Jaswant Singh was instrumental in denying permission to use air power in the conflict for fear of escalation”. The approval for the use of IAF was granted by the CCS on May 24-25, 1999, when Jaswant Singh was travelling abroad.

Air Chief Marshal A.Y. Tipnis recounted to the Force magazine that:

“EAM went on to observe that bringing in the air force would internationalise the issue and it would be preferable not to let that happen. He was scheduled to leave for international visits, these he felt should not be disturbed. While he was away, Army Headquarters could get on with the job of establishing [the] enemy’s intent. His recommendation: do not involve the Air Force yet.” 

In his memoirs A Call to Honour: In Service of Emergent India, Singh provided a more detailed explanation:

“It was my view that the use of the Air Force at this point was not good policy. My reservations were born of two or three principal considerations. Should the adversary be determined to escalate the conflict, as all his early actions demonstrated, then we ought to be prepared for air casualties. The difficulty with air casualties, as against casualties on land, is principally of imagery. The sheer optical value of the Air Force is so much greater, particularly in a limited and contained conflict. That is why the loss of an aircraft becomes so instantly an issue that catches the public eye, as compared to the loss of even a platoon of infantry.”

He goes on to provide another reason for his view, which was more specific to the terrain and operational environment of Kargil, where the IAF was to be deployed:

“To ask our Air Force to undertake these missions and within such narrow, tight confines bound by the LOC was to send it on virtual suicide missions. And there was no way that the political leadership would permit cross-LOC operations. As such, there were but two routes for the Air Force to operate on, and both were extremely narrow funnels…. Thereafter the fact of the LOC not being a visibly marked line on the ground compounded difficulties. High speed aircraft even at low altitude, or even helicopters chugging along peaks, would have difficulty in determining where exactly the LOC was. A minuscule mistake of a few seconds could convert into several nautical miles of flying. Some years later, it was precisely such a mistake that cost the Indian Air Force one of its most promising officers.”

Singh’s initial reluctance to deploy the IAF during the 1999 Kargil War remains significant in contemporary strategic discussions, primarily for the sheer optics of losses suffered by the air force in the public mind. It serves as a reminder that early political caution and thoughtful employment of air power may prevent unintended escalation and internationalisation of a bilateral issue between India and Pakistan.

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