PAF DGPR Air Vice Marshal Aurangzeb Ahmed has said that India deployed “up to 70” fighter jets while the Pakistani side deployed 40 in their recent aerial escalation.

“Crossing 100, this is the first ever in the history of aviation. It is going to be taught as a textbook case and reference material in aerial combat history.”

He said the Indian Air Force jets had started an initial buildup that was picked up from the north and centre across the international boundary at 12:10am on May 7.

He said the PAF had initiated a response within two minutes.

“By 12:12am, our response was activated. IAF fighters got airborne in large numbers. By 12:30am, we were sure this was going to be the day and time to knock some sense into these guys once again.

“We commenced our multidomain ops, the pride and joy and the new concept of war that we have.”

He further said that up to 60 aircraft, including 14 Rafales, were identified electronically. “By the time they were airborne, we had contracted all our fighters. We augmented the 60 count to 72 through their scrambles … to saturate [our] air defence.”

He said Pakistan had 42 “hi-tech aircraft on our side” and the strategy was to have force concentration in the country’s area of range and fight at its own strength.

“PAF fighters ensured Pakistan’s air sovereignty. Because of that, we rerouted all civilian traffic from Lahore and Islamabad because we thought this would be the hot plate so we wanted safety for civilian airliners.”

DGPR Ahmed said the whole incident lasted for over an hour.