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Journalism of Courage
In the three months since Operation Sindoor, the Indian Air Force (IAF) had spoken of the losses suffered by Pakistan — but on Saturday came the first concrete detail of a strike that military officers say could be unprecedented in modern air warfare, though such engagements are rarely recorded in public.
During a lecture in Bengaluru, IAF Chief Air Chief Marshal A P Singh revealed that among the targets destroyed on May 7 was a large Pakistani airborne platform — possibly an ELINT (Electronic Intelligence) or AEW&C (Airborne Early Warning and Control) aircraft — taken down from a distance of about 300 km. He described it as the “largest-ever recorded surface-to-air kill that we can talk about”.
A senior IAF officer later explained that “at 300 km, this would be the longest or farthest ever recorded surface-to-air kill, not quantitatively the largest.” The Air Chief’s qualifier — “that we can talk about” — was a nod to the fact that such engagements are “usually difficult to confirm anywhere globally, since the debris of such an aircraft will fall inside the territory of that country”. Long-range kills, the officer added, are “rarely recorded or announced in public”, either because militaries cannot independently verify them or because the capabilities involved are kept classified.
In this instance, the Air Chief’s public statement likely followed a confirmation through electronic tracking. “We have the electronic means to check a kill. There is a blip on a radar, and that goes off (to show the kill),” the officer said, indicating that radar data had verified the engagement.
Long-range kills of this kind are rare. Hitting a target 300 km away demands a long-range interceptor missile (a surface-to-air missile or SAM designed to destroy airborne targets at very long distances, often well beyond visual range), precision tracking that holds steady over long distances and the ability to maintain a firing solution until impact. The IAF acquired this capability only recently, with the induction of the Russian-made S-400 Triumf system.
“Clearly, the S-400 systems have been capitalised fully in the operation,” the above-quoted officer said.The system’s advertised 400 km kill range kept Pakistani fighters beyond the distance needed to launch long-range glide bombs, the IAF Chief said on Saturday adding they were unable to use them because they could not penetrate the system.
In recent conflicts, the longest publicly acknowledged surface-to-air kills have occurred at relatively shorter ranges. In February 2024, a BBC report cited Ukrainian claims of downing a Russian A-50 spy plane — the second claim in just over a month — more than 200 km from the front line. In February 2022, a Ukrainian Su-27 was reportedly shot down by a Russian S-400 at roughly 150 km. The plane was hit between the Russian cities of Rostov-on-Don and Krasnodar, Ukrainian military sources said, over 200km (124 miles) from the front line.
India has so far received three of its five contracted S-400 units from Russia, deployed along the borders with Pakistan and China. The remaining two are due by 2025–26. Senior officers liken its reach to “a torch that allows you to see what remains kilometres inside, in this case beyond the Indian border”.
Other systems — including the Barak 8 Medium Range Surface-to-Air Missile (MRSAM) and the indigenous Akash missile — also played a role in Operation Sindoor. Earlier this month, the Defence Acquisition Council approved a comprehensive annual maintenance contract for the S-400.
India had signed the S-400 deal with Russia, a year after the United States passed the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA). CAATSA is a US law that allows Washington to impose sanctions on countries that make significant defence purchases from Russia, Iran, or North Korea.
