Key Questions about the India-Pakistan Aerial Clashes

The aerial clashes during the recent fighting between India and Pakistan have drawn significant interest from air forces and air power analysts around the world, as well as a barrage of claims and counterclaims from both combatant nations’ governments, militaries and media.

The highly polarised and nationalistic nature of the information space on such topics in both countries means that few official statements can be relied on at face value, and disinformation has been used to flood social media on both sides. It is only in recent days that Indian officials have publicly acknowledged the loss of fighter aircraft, and no explanations have yet been offered for what went wrong.

However, based on analysis of geolocated wreckage, and discussions with officials and military personnel in numerous countries since the clashes occurred, there a few things that can be stated at this stage, albeit with caveats that they represent analysis based on fragmentary initial data-points.

Initial Outcomes

The first is that during the engagements, Pakistani forces fired a significant number of PL-15 air-to-air missiles from either J-10CE and/or potentially JF-17 fighters, as well as a number of HQ-9 long range surface-to-air missiles.

The second is that the Indian Air Force suffered several fighter losses, including one Dassault Rafale, one Mig-29 and likely a Su-30MKI among one or two additional losses for which no definitive wreckage has been seen in open source.

Third, the Indian Air Force was consistently able to penetrate Pakistani air defences with air-launched standoff munitions to strike a range of terrorist-linked and military sites, despite heavy and well-coordinated defences.

Fourth, the assistance provided by China to Pakistani forces in terms of both technical equipment provision and also intelligence and C2 support enabled the Pakistani forces to perform significantly better against the Indian Air Force than the latter had anticipated.

The specific downing of a relatively newly delivered Rafale has, naturally, led many Pakistani and Chinese sources to proclaim a great victory for Chinese fighter aircraft and missile technology over French (and potentially wider Western) equivalents. Dassault’s share price has fallen significantly since the engagements, while that of Chengdu – the manufacturer of the J-10CE – has risen.

In reality, however, detailed judgements about technical system performance are premature. The simple fact is that reliable information about the engagements themselves is scarce, and so even in the classified space there are still more questions than answers in most countries.

Important Unknowns

One simple set of questions is how many PL-15 air-to-air and HQ-9 surface-to-air missiles were actually fired by Pakistani forces, by what platforms, at what ranges, against what Indian aircraft, and how many actually hit their targets? The conclusions at a technical level will be very different depending on the answers. The recovery of several PL-15 and HQ-9 remnants from unexploded weapons in different locations within Indian-held territory supports the theory that many missiles were fired, at long ranges, with a relatively low probability of kill (Pk). This is also what would be expected given the long ranges resulting from both air forces remaining well on their own side of the line of contact throughout the engagements in question.

Another key question is whether the Indian fighters that were engaged received timely warnings that they had been launched upon from their own sensors or offboard ISR sources, or not? If so, what sort of evasive manoeuvres were they flying, and how many such manoeuvres were successful in defeating incoming missiles? Linked to the question of what evasive manoeuvres were flown is the question of what level of risk Indian pilots were ordered to accept in conducting their primary strike missions against ground targets in Pakistan? Even very old missiles can achieve kills at long ranges against modern aircraft if the latter are unaware that they have been fired on and/or do not take evasive action. By contrast, if Indian fighters were hit while performing appropriate evasive manoeuvres despite the long ranges at which the engagements took place, then that would be a much more impressive demonstration of terminal lethality for the Chinese missiles and kill-chains in question.

Linked to the question of Indian aircrew situational awareness cues and evasive manoeuvres, is another key unknown at this stage. Did the electronic countermeasures (ECM) systems in the Indian fighters, including the Rafale’s vaunted SPECTRA system, have up-to-date threat library data and countermeasure programmes for the specific radars and missile types that they were being engaged by? The technical conclusions from engagements between different systems that have never been used in combat against one another before will depend significantly on what the mission data loads on different Indian fighter aircraft were at the time, but such information is highly classified, so the answers are unlikely to be available in public sources for many years.

Another key question is whether the PL-15 and HQ-9 missiles fired at Indian aircraft during the clashes were cued by the fire control radar of the fighter or HQ-9 battery launching them, or by Pakistani Saab-2000 ‘Erieye’ Airborne Early Warning and Control (AEW&C) aircraft far from the line of contact? If the latter was being used to provide either launch cueing or mid-course guidance updates to missiles in flight, it would both potentially greatly reduce the warning times that Indian pilots would receive to indicate that they were being engaged, and also indicate a far greater level of sophistication on the part of the Pakistani Air Force than seen in previous clashes.

This aspect is linked to perhaps the most interesting question of all; how significant a role was played by assistance provided to the Pakistani Air Force by Chinese orbital ISR and C2 constellations to provide early warning information, and potentially relay connectivity to missiles in flight? The latter could have greatly enhanced the Pakistani Air Force’s ability to provide mid-course guidance updates to weapons in flight from AEW&C aircraft, fighters and ground radars. It would also recast the engagements from the first (and successful) test of Chinese combat aircraft and missiles against Western and Russian equivalents, into a successful combat test of exactly the sort of long range, cross domain kill chains that the PLA would rely on in any clash with American forces in the Indo-Pacific.

The answers to these, and many more details about the tactical and operational picture once that is known, will have a huge impact in shaping the conclusions and lessons that will ultimately be taken by both the Indian and Pakistani Air Forces, as well as China, Russia, France, the United States and other interested observers.

© RUSI, 2025.

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