IAF quietly shooting down ‘Chinese spy balloons’ at high altitudes | India News

NEW DELHI: The IAF has quietly been practising shooting targets mimicking Chinese spy balloons at very high-altitudes, with the latest instance being of an omni-role Rafale fighter jet using an air-to-air missile to bring down such a target in the eastern sector a few months ago.
The IAF began drawing up contingency plans for such an eventuality after a 200-foot-tall intelligence-gathering Chinese balloon flew over continental US for several days in Jan-Feb 2023 before it was finally shot down by an American F-22 Raptor using an AIM-9X Sidewinder missile.The US had shared information with India and other countries about the incident.
“The IAF formulated TTPs (tactics, techniques and procedures) to handle such contingencies. It has been practising the capability to interject in such situations at different flight envelopes,” a source told TOI.
“Rafale’s demonstration was at an altitude of over 55,000 feet, way over what had been practised earlier. The target balloon, with a payload, was relatively smaller than the Chinese one that violated US airspace,” he added.
The fifth-generation F-22 flying at an altitude of 58,000 feet, had launched the missile to hit the balloon at an altitude of well over 60,000 feet on Feb 4 last year.
The IAF’s 4.5-generation Rafale, which are armed with the 120-150-km range ‘Meteor’ and 70-km MICA air-to-air missiles among other weapons, in turn, went after the target that was flying at an altitude of over 55,000 feet.
Chinese spy balloons, which are akin to huge unmanned airships and capable of sending “burst transmissions”, are difficult to detect and intercept since they have low radar cross-sections and fly at very high altitudes.
In early-2022, a high-altitude balloon-like object was spotted over the strategically located Andaman and Nicobar islands but nothing much could be done because India as yet does not deploy fighters on the archipelago on a permanent basis, though IAF fighters do operate from the islands on short-term detachments for exercises.
China, of course, also regularly deploys its ‘spy’ vessels in the Bay of Bengal and southern India Ocean to track India’s ballistic missile launches as well as map oceanographic and other data useful for navigation and submarine operations.
The IAF has based its 36 Rafales at the Hasimara and Ambala airbases. Hasimara is close to the Sikkim-Bhutan-Tibet tri-junction and the strategically-vulnerable Siliguri Corridor on the eastern front with China.