India, Pakistan scramble jets after UAV sighting

India, Pakistan scramble jets after UAV sighting

1. The Indian Air Force deployed two Sukhoi-30 fighters from an airbase in Punjab after a Pakistani unmanned aerial vehicle(UAV) was spotted close to the border.
2. This resulted in Pakistan also deploying two of its F-16 fighter aircrafts close to the border. However, no side violated the air space, with the fighter jets of both countries staying within their own boundaries.
3. Tensions between India and Pakistan has escalated after Indian Air Force fighter jets bombed terror group JeM’s training camp near Balakot in Pakistan on February 26. Pakistan retaliated by attempting to target Indian military installations. However, the IAF thwarted their plan.
4. The Indian strike on the JeM camp came after the terror outfit claimed responsibility for a suicide attack on a CRPF convoy in Jammu and Kashmir’s Pulwama in which 40 soldiers were killed.
5. Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) or unmanned aircraft systems (UASes) are also known as drones. The drones may be remotely controlled or fly autonomously through software-controlled flight plans in their embedded systems working in conjunction with onboard sensors and GPS.
6. The Sukhoi Su-30 is a twin-engine, two-seat superman euverable fighter aircraft developed by Russia’s Sukhoi Aviation Corporation. It is a multirole fighter for all-weather, air-to-air and air-to-surface deep interdiction missions.
7. The General Dynamics F-16 Fighting Falcon is a single-engine supersonic multi-role fighter aircraft originally developed by General Dynamics (now Lockheed Martin) for the United States Air Force (USAF).