For Netflix, India is not just an important market for gaining subscribers, it’s now an “indispendible” investment. A new six-part series called “Operation Safed Sagar” is now streaming—and it’s said to be “a spectacle on the scale of ‘Top Gun.'”
Also Read: One of the world’s largest-ever tank battles was between India and Pakistan
To produce the new series, Netflix got unprecedented access to the Indian Air Force, filming air combat sequences at an altitude of 16,000 feet. To make it all happen, the streamer hired 1,200 local visual effects technicians. At an estimated $24 million, it’s the largest operation Netflix has ever undertaken in India.
The show “Operation Safed Sagar,” is the creative depiction of India’s Air Force during the 1999 Kargil War.
American media like to make a huge fuss about Iranian nuclear weapons, North Korean nuclear weapons, and even Russian nuclear weapons. But the most likely place for the world’s first nuclear exchange is anywhere India and Pakistan are in a shooting war. The two sides both have an 80-year (and counting) boundary and territorial dispute, a history of violence, and a lot of nuclear weapons.
In 1999, Pakistan decided to give it another go, covertly training soldiers to send them into Indian-controlled parts of the disputed area, sometimes disguised as mujahideen, to occupy high-altitude outposts, sever India’s access to the Siachen Glacier and isolate Indian troops there, and basically give Pakistan control of Kashmir.
Apparently forgetting the history of his country’s relationship to India, Pakistan’s Gen. Pervez Musharraf believed India wouldn’t escalate a series of border incursions to a full-scale conflict with the world watching. Operation Safed Sagar became the largest use of airpower in the disputed area.
Not to spoil the end for anyone watching the Netflix show, but after nearly three months of aerial and high-altitude combined arms combat, India reoccupied all the the infiltrated positions and retained control of the region—but it was not without drama. Hundreds were killed on both sides, with thousands wounded. Pakistan shot down a number of Indian aircraft.
India has no shortage of wars and conflicts from which to make movies and television shows—and it does. The 2004 film “Lakshya” (also about the Kargil War) became a cult classic and inspired countless Indians to join the army. While many don’t get quite as much critical acclaim, Indian war movies tend to have great storytelling and intense battle sequences.
Operation Safed Sagar: The Untold Story of the Kargil War | Official Trailer | Netflix India
The 2023 film “Sam Bahadur” is about India’s first-ever Field Marshal, Sam Manekshaw, and how he rose to prominence during India’s 1971 War with Pakistan. But India isn’t only ever fighting Pakistan in their films. 2025’s “120 Bahadur” follows the 120 Indian soldiers who fought off 3,000 Chinese troops on a glacier at the Battle of Rezang La in the 1962 Sino-Indian War. The 2015 movie “Kanche” depicts Indians fighting the Nazis in Europe.
We’re just saying don’t sleep on India, especially when it’s trying to give you another “Top Gun.”
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