Misinfo. mixed with non sense to say the least
Our fighters followed SOP strictly, the enemy didn't cross LOC, they fired from well within their side (confirmed by Chief himself). MKI were already fired upon when Wing Co was underway in his Bison, he was only alerted that he was crossing LOC shortly and that he would be at much higher risk. He was never reprimanded for his actions. He was never told not to cross LOC or not to engage. They took off and were given 'fire at will' orders as soon as the first MKI were being shot at. Wingco is a modern day Babbar Sher, you of little knowledge on tactics or proper indoctrination of aerial warfare should just chill. Wingco is the reason the Pukis shut down their airspace for more than a month entirely. They were pissing their pants. Wingco was closely followed by his Wingman who was also shot at well with in NEZ of the Aim, no one talks about how the that guy against all odds dodged the Aim within NEZ.
The enemy fired their volleys at Dmax, heck even I can dodge a Meteor at DMax in a spitfire, let alone a aerial ballet queen the MKI. The Napapki pilots were trolling and everyone knows one shouldn't engage a troll specially when the troll turns tail and runs after shooting off his load. The R-77s could have been launched at DMAX but by then one of their F-16 was blown to bits, the ones who shot at the MKI were high tailing it back to base supersonic like their Goats got raped. Had the MKI chased them a bit more closer to the LOC, they would have AA gunners waiting to shoot at the MKI. Actually they wanted badly to kill the MKI that day.
When one takes off in the Mi-17 without the IFF on, that was breach of SOP and SAM operator cannot be blamed, as far as he is concerned, his base just scrambled two Mig-21s to take on an element of over 20 enemy fighters heading to the LOC. Spyder SAM would have been in auto track and engage mode. The Mi-17 was shot down at low altitude. Low altitude ingress for enemy is common practice especially helos bringing in SF elements for ops. So no chances could be taken. The base commander has been thrown out for this violation. The error here was human.
If anything this whole episode proved, MKI, heck even Bison is hard to kill because they have some ballsy, audacious pilots, world class pilots, who remain calm and can exploit the machine they fly to the best of their abilities.
To write off the old R-77 is also silly, fired within NEZ, they still have a 80% kill rate. Wingco could have used the R-77 too but he chose instead to sneak up on the Falcons in passive mode from a lower altitude and release the ass-heat loving R-73 in NEZ ranges. Since the Pukis love it so much up the bum-bum, he just indulged that itch.
Heck the Wingco sneaking up onto them, shooting one down was so surprising to them that the F-16s in the area probably didn't have time to slew their radar onto WingCo & Wing man and fired their Aims in Mad-dog mode and ran.