Attack on Tiger Hill : Kargil Ops 1999

This is my painting on attack of Tiger Hill by Mirage 2000 of Indian Air Force (IAF)  with Laser Guided Bomb (LGB). The painting has been composed purely on my visualisation of the attack after some detailed discussions with officers that planned and executed this daring operation that will certainly go down in records as exemplary integration of ideas and efforts by pilots and engineers of IAF to achieve brilliance in time of actual operation.  

I do not know if I can reveal all that I know on integration of the LDP with the weapon and with weapon delivery system of Mirage 2000 that was so vital for success of the mission. Few of my good friends who were test pilots in IAF and now retired had assisted me with the facts with a request to record the event on canvas. As I am not at all familiar with a Mirage 2000 it took me almost two years to get the   photographs of the trainer aircraft with the actual configuration (LDP +LGB+Remora+ Magic 2+ Wing Tanks). CO 7 Sqn was quite generous with his help. I also bought a scale model of a Mirage trainer to plan my composition.

I am sure those of you that have flown Mirage 2000 or have worked on ground may find quite a few mistakes/errors in the painting. I will be grateful if such errors can be pointed out. The paint is still wet and all minor of major defects can be attended to with minimum hassel.

Finally, on the sortie itself, what can be better than a narrative provided by the pilot himself. A write-up on the attack by AVM R Nambiar, which is available in public domain, is attached. To me it was one of the “Finest Hour of IAF History”. I also must add that I have read a blog by a PAF historian Air Cmde Kaiser Taufail (Retd) and he says that use of LGB by Mirages was the actual game changer.   

From Air Mshl Bhojwani

Initially WAC started with 57mm rockets fired by Type 96 and MiG27s, but these had virtually no effect - the cine films showed these weapons to hit the hill side/valley and their blast getting blanketed by the snow! They were terribly inaccurate too because after our Canberra was hit by a Stinger (21st May 99) we had to keep a minimum vertical separation of about 5000 ft between the aircraft and the hill tops (which themselves were about 20,000 ft amsl).  No one had fired RPs at that altitude and so the errors were large.  We then tried S24s, but these also didn't prove successful, and at least one MiG27 suffered a flame out as a result of firing this weapon, which had been cleared by the Russians only up to 5km amsl.

It was in these circumstances in late May 99 that the idea of using LGBs from Mirage 2000 came to my mind.  However, having followed the trials being done at ASTE, with help from the Israeli team, for integrating the new LDP on Mirage, I knew that the team had gone back to Israel for the summer with the trials having been left half undone.  Nevertheless, the CAS  jumped at the idea and asked for immediate completion of the trials. You can imagine the amount of work that everyone at Bangalore and Gwalior had to put in to complete the task. As you are aware, the Mirage systems are digitally interfaced and integrated very closely indeed.  Unlike earlier generation of aircraft, even if a weapon could physically fit on the Mirage hard point, the computer will not accept it  There would therefore be serious problems in flying the aircraft in such an un-programmed configuration.  For instance, the FBW system would not recognise the weapon, nor make the necessary adjustments to the control laws to keep the aircraft (artificially) stable, nor allow release of such a weapon.  I think our TPs, engineering and logistics people did a great job in mating the LDP and bomb and 'fooling' the Digicomp into believing the 1000lb bomb (with LGB kit) was a 'valid' weapon.  Even when the aircraft was cleared for the task about 20 days later, there a few minor tweaks left over to make the system work 100%, but it was decided to use it anyway. The fact that the system worked well enough to achieve the end result was a credit to all the guys who worked behind the scenes and flew the missions.  I don't think the IAF really gave recognition to all the brilliant people who made it happen.