new chatter ....
As per Al Jazeera, the top AD commander of Pak has been sacked.
Two PAF air marshals ( including the vice chief of AF) have been asked to put in their papers for voluntary retirement.
A major audit and frequency (RF) change of all Pak passive and active radar emitters as well as ECM ECCM and allied EW measures is currently underway on emergent basis. Underlying fear being that EW and communication resources may have been compromised (this being a larger plot by India),
while the dummy 'flying object' was being tracked by the Pak Air Defence Operations Center.
As a result, all military and civil flying in Pak had been suspended for almost 6 hours to sanitise the air space though frontline bases were on alert with most strike aircraft remaining on runway readiness till 1300 hours today.
It is believed that this was necessitated as a 'purely defensive measure' following the 'accidental' Indian missile launch (during routine maintenance) and its final 'landing' near Mian Chhanu, Khanewal district of Pakistan’s north-eastern Punjab province, 124 kms inside Pak territory.
There is turmoil in the Pak defence establishment as army and AF want civilian leaders and bureaucrats to be responsible for defense, same as in India.
Imran is presently in a closed door meeting with top military officials, bureaucrats and politicians.
It may be noted that the responsibility for national defence rests with the Pak military unlike India where the Defence Secretary and MoD are responsible for defence of the country, with the armed forces playing a secondary but fairly important role.
PS: Unconfirmed reports originating from India suggest that the 'missile' was actually a modified version of the ISRO (GSLV MKIII - MI) rocket which had been mistakenly shipped to Sirsa.
The Indian Defence Ministry has categorically stated that it was not a 'Brahmos', but a 'high speed flying object' and the same has been corroborated by
Pakistan’s ISPR,
Director-Heneral,
Maj Gen Babar Iftikhar
at a press briefing :
' _On March 9, at 6.43 pm, a high-speed flying object was picked up inside Indian_ _territory by an air defence operation centre of the_
_Pakistan Air Force'_
Unconfirmed reports are also doing the rounds that though the 'flying object' did have a tactical nuclear warhead (less than 1 KT) mated to it, the activation codes could not be located during maintenance period, nor was the 'self destruct code' available at hand as the same had been kept under lock and key for safe keeping.