2019 India–Pakistan border skirmishes

The 2019 India–Pakistan border skirmishes were a series of armed clashes consisting of cross-border airstrikes and exchanges of gunfire between India and Pakistan across the de facto border in the disputed Kashmir region, which is subject to extensive territorial claims by both countries.

The heightened tensions stemmed from the 14 February 2019 Pulwama attack in Jammu and Kashmir, which killed 40 Indian Central Reserve Police Force personnel. Responsibility for the attack was claimed by a Pakistan-based militant group, Jaish-e-Mohammed. India blamed Pakistan for the attack and promised a robust response, while the latter condemned the attack and denied having any connection to it.

Twelve days later, in the early morning of 26 February 2019, India carried out a cross-border airstrike near Balakot, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan.

Pakistan's military, the first to announce the airstrike that same morning, claimed that Indian warplanes had crossed the international border and dropped their payload in an uninhabited wooded hilltop area near Balakot in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. India, confirming the airstrike later that day, characterized it to be a preemptive strike directed against a terrorist training camp, and claimed that it had caused the deaths of a "large number" of terrorists.

The second airstrike, a retaliatory one by Pakistan, was conducted in the daytime on 27 February, inside Indian-administered Kashmir. A dogfight between Indian and Pakistani fighter jets during this airstrike resulted in the downing of an Indian MiG-21 Bison by the Pakistan Air Force, following which its pilot, Wing Commander Abhinandan Varthaman, was taken prisoner by the Pakistani military before being returned to India on 1 March.

On the same hours of PAF retaliatory strikes on 27 February 2019, an Indian Mi-17 helicopter was brought down by friendly fire in which all IAF airmen on board were killed, including Squadron Leaders Siddharth Vashisht and Ninad Mandavgan. IAF Chief RKS Bahaduria acknowledged IAF's failure only a year latter on 4 October 2019, terming friendly fire as "a big mistake". Resultantly Group Captain Suman Roy Choudhry Chief Operations Officers (COO) of Srinagar Air Force Station was dismissed from his service in 2023.

Aftermath analysis of open-source satellite imagery by the American Atlantic Council's Digital Forensics Laboratory, San Francisco-based Planet Labs, European Space Imaging and the Australian Strategic Policy Institute concluded that India did not hit any targets of significance on the Jaba hilltop site near Balakot in Pakistan.

On 10 April 2019, one and a half months later, a group of international journalists, who were taken to the Jaba hilltop in a tightly controlled trip arranged by the Pakistani government, although unable to make a knowledgeable evaluation, found the largest building there to show no evidence of damage or recent rebuilding efforts.

The US count of PAF's F-16 fleet confirmed PAF lost no aircraft during its dogfight with IAF. The claim of IAF of shooting down a F-16 was also rejected by various international observers.