Operation Sindoor: The French Connection

When India carried out Operation Sindoor, hitting terror camps both in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir and deep inside Pakistan, it didn’t just show New Delhi’s willingness to carry out such extensive attacks, but also its military capacity to carry out such precise strikes that were meant to avoid collateral damage. And it had done so without crossing the Line of Control.

India has so far not revealed which weapons were used in the operation. Wing Commander Vyomika Singh, a helicopter pilot with the IAF, described them as niche-technology weapons with carefully selected warheads to avoid collateral damage during the official briefing on Wednesday. But it is widely believed that these included Scalp cruise missiles and Hammer precision-guided munitions, which were probably equipped on the Rafale fighter jets. Others probably included loitering munitions (also known as suicide or Kamikaze drones) and Excalibur precision-guided extended range artillery shells.

Many of these weapons have a distinctly French connection. Hammer, which stands for Highly Agile Modular Munition Extended Range, is manufactured by a French firm (Safran). A weapon system that consists of a guidance kit and a range extension kit that can be fitted on to bombs, it is integrated on Rafale fighters – another product of a French firm (the aerospace company Dassault Aviation) – and is known to be an all-weather smart weapon that allows pilots to engage ground targets from a range of up to 60 km. According to Safran, the system is autonomous and insensitive to jamming, and can be launched from a low altitude over rough terrain. It is being speculated that Hammer was probably used to hit some of the closer targets during the strikes against Pakistan. The other type of missiles deployed – the Scalp cruise missiles, also known as Storm Shadow in Britain – have a range of 450 km, and it is being speculated that these might have been used for the targets furthest from the LOC. Scalp (or SCALP-EG which stands for Système de Croisière Autonome à Longue Portée – Emploi Général) is manufactured by a European consortium called MBDA. Headquartered in Le Plessis-Robinson, France, MBDA was founded after three prominent European missile systems companies – the French Aérospatiale Matra Missiles, the Anglo-French Matra BAe Dynamics and the missile division of the Anglo-Italian Alenia Marconi Systems – merged into one a few decades ago. Scalp missiles are known to have an advanced and highly accurate navigation system. It is difficult to detect, it is said, due to its low-flying capability when fired from an aircraft, and can effectively penetrate bunkers and ammunition stores.

The use of these weapons also shows the shift that is underway in India’s military dependence. India has traditionally depended on Russia for its arms supply. A recent graph in a New York Times article, which uses figures from research by Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (an institute that closely studies global weapons flows), showed that about 75 percent of India’s major weapons came from Russia between 2006 and 2010. That figure has nosedived to about 36 percent between 2020 and 2024. The country whose arms supply to India is growing most rapidly, the graph shows, is France. It went from supplying just one percent of India’s arms needs in 2006-2010 to 33 percent in 2020-2024. Other suppliers like the US and Israel are also growing rapidly.

It is well known that these weapons were being integrated into India’s military. The strikes showed just how capable and deadly they can be.

 

FranceIndia-PakistanOperation SindoorPahalgamRafale fightersterror attack