Confirmations and More Blunders

(October, 29,Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) The exact damages caused to aircrafts at the Anuradhapura SLAF base have been finally publicized by several media organizations this weekend. The same details were revealed by DefenceWire six days ago on October 23rd, prior to any official figures being released or newspaper reports indicating the accurate number lost. The current publicized and accurate figure is 23 fully damaged aircrafts and one partially damaged aircraft (MI24). These figures are as follows;

3- UAVs
1- Beech Super King B200T (C-12 Huron)
7- PT6 Trainers
1- Mi-17
1- Mi-24
6- K-8 Trainers
4- Siai Marchetti Bombers

Meanwhile renowned defence journalist Iqbal Athas has corrected himself regarding the interview given to the Hindustan Times of India that the Beech Super King was used for deep-sea Aerial Reconnaissance. This mistake was first highlighted by DefenceWire on October 25th. In his now irregular weekly defence column 'The Situation Report' (October 28th) he says that;

Contrary to a foreign media outlet, which misquoted me, the loss of this aircraft does not hamper deep-sea naval operations. However, it very badly hampers aerial surveillance activity over deep seas. Inputs from such surveillance helped in naval operations in a very large measure.

We believes Athas has made another blunder when he said the Beechcraft has helped naval operations 'in a very large measure' since the last time the aircraft assisted the Navy was last September off Kalmunai when it captured the images of a fast-moving cargo boat, which was later destroyed.

By: Defencewire