Kolkata, Jun 14 (PTI) Former Chief of Air Staff, Air Chief Marshal (Retd) Arup Raha, on Saturday said the Operation Sindoor against terror bases in Pakistan after the Pahalgam attack showed the true operational capability of India's armed forces.

Operation Sindoor demonstrated the tremendous potential the country has gained over the years, he said at a conference organised by the Indian Chamber of Commerce on the role of MSME in the defence sector.

Stating the success of Brahmos supersonic missiles makes him "very proud," Raha, now Chancellor of Assam University, recalled that the project had begun years back.

"India achieved a tremendous landmark. ISRO has become the leading organisation in the world in space research. From lunar to solar projects, ISRO is setting one goal after another. Under ISRO's guidance, we have developed a powerful rocket system. Our satellites are... used by other countries which are not strong economically. ISRO is meeting various requirements in different fields," he said.

Raha said satellites were also put in orbit by ISRO to strengthen defence operations.

"Command and control data, gleaned by satellites, are being processed using Artificial Intelligence and helping in surveillance, to keep track of borders, for dynamic targeting across borders during Operation Sindoor," he said.

In Operation Sindoor, Indian armed forces in the early hours of May 7 carried out missile strikes on nine terror targets in Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK), including the Jaish-e-Mohammad stronghold of Bahawalpur and Lashkar-e-Taiba’s base Muridke. The operation was retaliation to the April 22 terror attack, in which 26 people, mostly tourists, were killed in Jammu and Kashmir's Pahalgam.

In his speech, Raha said the missiles developed by DRDO are packed with 5 to 10 times the speed of sound through space.

He said projects like the Light Combat Aircraft (LCA) and integrated command control project have taken India to the front-running nations, in the sectors of IT, ITes, space, efficient propulsion systems, ships, submarines, nanotechnologies, AI and robotics.

Raha, however, added that there is one problem area, as India is not good at making jet jet propulsion engines.

"We are buying engines from Americans.....this dependency is not good. We are losing our strategic autonomy by importing state-of-the-art technologies which incur lots of expenses," he said.

The country needs to think about this in the next 10 years in terms of employment generation and export revenues, Raha said.

"Larger players both in public and private sectors need to build up a supply chain, a self-supporting ecosystem of building our capabilities and developing capability in the defence sector, in developing our capability in civil aviation," he said.

If hundreds of aircraft are bought from global aviation majors, billions of dollars would fly out of the country, the former Air Force officer said.

"Why pay money to outsiders? We need to have a combined plan and a strategic plan in the air sector," he said.

Raha advocated setting up a defence corridor and taking MSMEs of the eastern region to the defence hub elsewhere in the country. PTI SUS NN