The Fog of Balakot: Unraveling the Truth Behind the 2019 Air Skirmish

The 2019 aerial engagement between India and Pakistan, triggered by the Balakot airstrike, remains one of the most contested and politically charged air battles of the modern era. While both nations have presented starkly different narratives, a closer look at circumstantial evidence, eyewitness reports, and the strategic behavior of key actors reveals inconsistencies that cannot be easily dismissed. Among the most debated elements is the question of whether a Pakistani F-16 was indeed shot down by a MiG-21 Bison piloted by Indian Wing Commander Abhinandan Varthaman.

Officially, Pakistan maintains that only one aircraft was downed - Abhinandan’s MiG-21 - and that no Pakistani jet was lost. It credits Squadron Leader Hassan Siddiqui with the kill, portraying him as a national hero for bringing down an Indian fighter. Yet Siddiqui’s silence has been deafening. Despite the hero status conferred upon him, he has never given an interview, appeared in a press conference, or shared his version of events. In a rare television appearance, he was briefly acknowledged but said nothing of substance. In a later documentary showcasing his squadron, other pilots were interviewed freely, while Siddiqui remained in the background. His conspicuous absence from the narrative raises more questions than answers.

Adding to the mystery are eyewitness reports from locals in the Bhimber and Tanda sectors of Pakistan-administered Kashmir, who described seeing not one, but two parachutes descending from the sky. Some reports suggested the second pilot was mistaken for an Indian Sikh due to his beard and was beaten by a mob before being rescued. The confusion is amplified by the initial statement made by Pakistan’s military spokesperson, the DG ISPR, who publicly claimed that two Indian pilots had been captured. This statement was later revised without explanation. Such discrepancies are difficult to reconcile unless one assumes either miscommunication at the highest level or a deliberate retraction of sensitive information.

Perhaps the most compelling piece of physical evidence is the widely circulated photograph of an engine among the wreckage, initially claimed by Pakistan to be from the downed MiG-21. However, open-source intelligence (OSINT) analysts identified the engine as resembling a General Electric F110 or F404 series turbine - engines not used in MiG-21s but standard in F-16s. The fan blade structure, casing, and turbine hub were inconsistent with the Soviet-designed Tumansky R-25 engine used in the Indian MiG. The suggestion that this may have been the engine of a Pakistani F-16 challenges the official Pakistani account and raises the possibility that an F-16 was indeed shot down but never acknowledged.

Another key detail concerns the air-to-air missiles allegedly recovered from the MiG-21’s wreckage. Pakistan presented four missiles and claimed they were all intact, arguing that Abhinandan never fired a shot. Yet close examination of the video footage revealed that one of the missiles was visibly fragmented and appeared to have been carefully reconstructed to appear whole. The damage pattern - scorch marks, deformation, and a separated nose cone - was consistent with an airborne explosion caused by a proximity-fused missile detonation, not a crash or static detonation. This visual evidence suggests that at least one missile was fired, possibly the R-73 heat-seeking missile the MiG-21 carries, directly challenging the Pakistani assertion that no weapon was launched.

India, for its part, has consistently claimed that Abhinandan fired an R-73 missile and shot down a Pakistani F-16 before being himself shot down. The Indian Air Force presented radar plots that purportedly showed one Pakistani aircraft disappearing from radar near the LoC. India also produced fragments of an AIM-120 AMRAAM, a missile exclusively used by F-16s in the PAF inventory, reinforcing the claim that F-16s were involved. Pakistan, while not denying the use of F-16s outright, avoided confirming them and instead emphasized that the retaliatory strike was defensive and within Pakistani airspace, likely a move to avoid breaching U.S. end-user agreements that prohibit offensive use of the aircraft against India.

The geopolitical stakes were high. A confirmed F-16 loss under these circumstances would not only damage Pakistan’s credibility but also risk jeopardizing its future access to U.S. defense hardware. The United States, for its part, reportedly conducted an informal audit of Pakistan’s F-16 inventory and claimed no jets were missing. However, the details of this audit were never made public, and the source - an anonymous official cited in Foreign Policy magazine - remains unverified. Neither photographic proof of a full inventory nor a serial-numbered log has ever surfaced. In the high-stakes world of defense diplomacy, silence is sometimes more revealing than speech.

All of these threads - the contradictory statements, the eyewitness accounts, the forensic anomalies in missile debris, the engine photograph, and the invisibility of the pilot credited with the kill - form a pattern that suggests something significant was withheld from public view. The absence of satellite imagery or confirmed wreckage of a downed F-16 remains the weakest link in India’s narrative, yet the circumstantial case is difficult to ignore. In the information age, what is left unsaid, or shown only partially, can often carry more weight than official statements.

The fog of war is not always literal. In the case of the 2019 Balakot skirmish, it is made of careful omissions, selectively released data, and narratives tailored to suit diplomatic sensitivities. Until declassified documents or undeniable physical evidence emerges, the downing - or non-downing - of a Pakistani F-16 will remain in a twilight zone of contested history. But the weight of the circumstantial evidence leans toward a more complex truth than either side has publicly admitted.