In a major disclosure coming a year after a period of intense military confrontation between India and Pakistan, former Indian Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) General Anil Chauhan has revealed that an Indian unmanned aerial vehicle struck the Kirana Hills during “Operation Sindoor”. However, General Chauhan firmly clarified that the sensitive site—known internationally for housing Pakistani nuclear infrastructure—was never targeted by the Indian military, characterizing the impact as an inadvertent crash resulting from fuel exhaustion.
According to the former defense chief, the aircraft involved was an Israeli-designed Harop loitering munition, a specialized “kamikaze” drone deployed during the height of hostilities to locate and suppress Pakistani radar systems around Sargodha and adjacent military sectors. Operated by Indian forces, the autonomous drone was tasked with hunting operational enemy air defence installations across the border.
When the drone failed to lock onto a valid radar signature within its pre-programmed operational window, it exhausted its onboard propellant while patrolling the airspace above the region, crashing into the nearby terrain.
“These loitering munitions have a strictly limited flying duration,” General Chauhan explained while reflecting on the tactical execution of the mission. “Typically, they can remain airborne for around two hours. If the system fails to acquire an authorized target within that time frame, it will inevitably descend and strike somewhere before its fuel supply is entirely depleted. That is precisely what occurred—it simply crashed into one of the hills in that sector.”
General Chauhan also disclosed critical operational details regarding Indian Air Force (IAF) strike planning during the conflict. At the height of the engagement, the IAF had secured top-level military authorization to carry out deep airstrikes against Skardu, located in Pakistan-administered Kashmir, as part of an expanded retaliatory package.
The planned assault on Skardu was abandoned at the eleventh hour due to sudden, severe weather deterioration over the high-altitude mountainous terrain.
“The Chief of Air Staff had approached me to ask whether we should proceed with strikes on Sargodha,” General Chauhan recalled. “I instructed him to proceed and identify two additional strategic targets. One of the locations selected by the Air Staff was Skardu. We granted full operational clearance, but as weather conditions rapidly worsened over Skardu shortly afterward, the strike team was forced to adjust plans and divert their attack to Vohari instead.”
The delayed disclosure offers a rare glimpse into the high-stakes military calculations and real-time operational shifts made by Indian commanders during the cross-border escalation. While rumors had circulated regarding explosions near Pakistan’s sensitive Kirana Hills nuclear storage facilities, India’s military leadership maintains that strategic infrastructure was never within the crosshairs of the loitering munition, framing the event as a mechanical certainty of unmanned aerial warfare rather than an intentional escalation.
