Kashmir Conflict 2025 - News ONLY

Galaxy said:
Since you brought up Ukraine and western weapons, if anything the war in Ukraine proved a lot of western weapons were over rated and more marketing then reality. For one western weapons are not difficult to jam and this is not me making things up, Ukrainians complained about it. As for Patriot shooting down Kinzals….there are dozens of videos of slower Iskandars (downgraded ground launched versions of Kinzals) taking out Patriot and IRIS-T launchers, HIMARS, airbases, and command centers, just because Ukraine claims something doesn’t make it true, if fact they lie profusely. Perhaps Ukraine shot down a few Iskandars or perhaps a Kinzals but out of how many? What was the success rate? Because Russia published hundreds of successful strikes even in attacks where Ukraine claimed 100% interceptions.

The problem with western weapons is that they are generally advertised to be almost unstoppable. I remember stories of Challengers taking 100 RPG hits in Iraq and surviving yet a single RPG/drone in Ukraine has torn Challengers turrets straight off, and the British claimed that only Russian tanks lose their turrets, but the issue is western equipment tends to break down and require high maintenance. Of course there are really good systems too but you make blanket statements.

You are also forgetting Ukraine is receiving NATO global intelligence, logistics, training, ect making their weapons that much more effective.

I don’t know what happened with the Rafale and I think it’s still one of the best none LO platforms but we were told for years how amazing the Spectra was and that it can survive in any environment and can easily dominate even J-20s however this time it didn’t save it. To be perfectly fair, F-16s have been shot down, F-15s, SU-35s, F-117s, ect none of those were bad aircraft and at times it was just poor mission planning with bad pilot decisions that led to those losses.
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Does not matter how many explosions labeled "Patriot and IRIS-T launchers, HIMARS, airbases, and command centers" being destroyed have been posted on Telegram or any other channels: Both the Russians and Ukrainians post propaganda videos where unidentifiable things go "boom" and make overclaims when it comes to the other side's losses.

However, what is an undeniable fact and which you need to ask yourself, is if Eastern weapons are so good and can take out all these systems with such ease, then why did Russia fail to attain air superiority over Ukraine in 2022? A country with only a token Air Force and nowhere near as capable as even the weakest Western nation?

And even before Ukraine got any Western anti-air systems or aircraft at all, the Russian were still struggling, unable to gain that vital air superiority which everyone agrees is the linchpin for modern warfare. And this was even against such a weak (at the time) foe as the Ukraine. Ukraine did not have much of anything back in 2022 and even so the VVS failed to make any headway at all. And it's now obvious to everyone that they were never anywhere near the capabilities that they were ascribed back then. The VVS is simply a paper tiger and everyone can see it now. Three years of conflict in the Ukraine tells the full story.

So anyone who had invested in Russian military hardware and doctrine up till 2022 is unlikely to repeat that mistake again going forward. I think both Pakistan and India can see the writing on the wall as well and I don't think Russia can look forward to any fat military contracts anytime soon from either of them or from any other region for that matter.

And when it come to Chinese systems, maybe the Rafale downing was just a fluke or maybe it's a harbinger of things to come. Time will tell. But given that much of it seems to be based on Russian know-how I think they still have a long way to go before they reach the level where they would be able to compete on an equal level with state-of-the-art Western systems.
 
Galaxy said:
Since you brought up Ukraine and western weapons, if anything the war in Ukraine proved a lot of western weapons were over rated and more marketing then reality. For one western weapons are not difficult to jam and this is not me making things up, Ukrainians complained about it. As for Patriot shooting down Kinzals….there are dozens of videos of slower Iskandars (downgraded ground launched versions of Kinzals) taking out Patriot and IRIS-T launchers, HIMARS, airbases, and command centers, just because Ukraine claims something doesn’t make it true, if fact they lie profusely. Perhaps Ukraine shot down a few Iskandars or perhaps a Kinzals but out of how many? What was the success rate? Because Russia published hundreds of successful strikes even in attacks where Ukraine claimed 100% interceptions.

The problem with western weapons is that they are generally advertised to be almost unstoppable. I remember stories of Challengers taking 100 RPG hits in Iraq and surviving yet a single RPG/drone in Ukraine has torn Challengers turrets straight off, and the British claimed that only Russian tanks lose their turrets, but the issue is western equipment tends to break down and require high maintenance. Of course there are really good systems too but you make blanket statements.

You are also forgetting Ukraine is receiving NATO global intelligence, logistics, training, ect making their weapons that much more effective.

I don’t know what happened with the Rafale and I think it’s still one of the best none LO platforms but we were told for years how amazing the Spectra was and that it can survive in any environment and can easily dominate even J-20s however this time it didn’t save it. To be perfectly fair, F-16s have been shot down, F-15s, SU-35s, F-117s, ect none of those were bad aircraft and at times it was just poor mission planning with bad pilot decisions that led to those losses.
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“For one western weapons are not difficult to jam and this is not me making things up, Ukrainians complained about it.”

This is a valid point, but also to a large degree known before the war as there was a strong push to make weapons more jam resistant through efforts such as incorporating gps m-code which the weapons Ukraine has received usually does not have. The rare few that do seem resistant to jamming.


“…there are dozens of videos of slower Iskandars (downgraded ground launched versions of Kinzals) taking out Patriot and IRIS-T launchers, HIMARS, airbases, and command centers, just because Ukraine claims something doesn’t make it true, if fact they lie profusely.”

I mean this alone is a highly misleading statement. We have one confirmed video of a Patriot launchers being destroyed while they were extended in traveling configuration thus incapable of defending themselves. You could use this as a mark against Ukrainian planning but not really the hardware itself outside of possibly system mobility. The rest have no claimed inherent anti ballistic missile capabilities whatsoever. To rephrase, just because Russia claims something doesn’t make it true, in fact they lie profusely.

Keep in mind that both sides also use decoys which further reduces the number of actual vs claimed kills.

The Patriot system in a fixed location in Kiev remained operational or was able to be quickly repaired (operational by the next day) after two complex attacks involving multiple Kinzhals shows that it managed to withstand them as 24 hours is not enough time for major replacements or repairs. Satellite imagery as well showed no evidence of critical damage at any time.

The Patriot system seems to have overall outperformed pre-war expectations and came away looking much better than the S400, for which we have a fully operational version on video failing to defend itself vs ATACAMS along with many, many systems being at least partially destroyed and photographed. Much of this was expectations, pre-war the S400 was hyped to hell and back while much of the western public was dubious about the Patriot.

The rest I mostly agree with. No weapon system is invincible especially if employed poorly.
 
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At the risk of digressing...

AndersJ said:
However, what is an undeniable fact and which you need to ask yourself, is if Eastern weapons are so good and can take out all these systems with such ease, then why did Russia fail to attain air superiority over Ukraine in 2022?
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Poor training, poor ISR, poor planning, cautious ROE and poor execution. Only the ISR part (and partly the ROE, in that they have baulked at committing the LO Su-57) has anything to do with hardware deficiencies, and then mostly with a lack of quantity rather than quality.

Go read the assessments of professional analysts who have gone to Ukraine and spoken to people on the ground. The consensus is (even from authors that tend to be anything but complimentary on Russian hardware) that the Russian systems generally did what it says on the box.

AndersJ said:
A country with only a token Air Force and nowhere near as capable as even the weakest Western nation?
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Yet that token air force was still far and away more potent than anything a Western force had taken on in actual combat since 1973, however. The best fighter any NATO or Israeli pilot has faced (outside sorta-combat-sorta-not Greco-Turkish intra-NATO skirmishes) is the MiG-29, and always in what can only be described as homeopathic doses. Ukraine's Fulcrum fleet was the size of Iraq's in 1991, and abetted by a similar number of Flankers that none of the other foes ever fielded (and which itself had notably proved very effective against the MiG-29 in East Africa). And with the exception of one lone Su-27 that was later returned, it didn't run away, either.

AndersJ said:
Ukraine did not have much of anything back in 2022 and even so the VVS failed to make any headway at all.
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Not much of anything? How many IADS comprising comparable quantities of S-300s, Buks, Tors and Tunguskas has a NATO country ever successfully defeated? Rhetorical question - the answer is zero.

It is hard to overstate, for all the hype of "combat proven", how little exposure to anything resembling peer-on-peer warfare Western systems have in fact had, at least prior to their supply to Ukraine. And even then, the M2000s and F-16s seem to be used mainly for drone and cruise missile defence, as opposed to tackling the VKS head-on.

I guess this goes some way toward explaining why so many are now completely taken aback that a Rafale might be lost in combat against a fighter of similar vintage, with long-range ARH AAMs of its own. The pervasive hype about the exchange ratios hitherto achieved by Western hardware has blinded them to the fact that 95% of that opposition was obsolete junk, and the other 5% were operating under extremely unfavourable circumstances. There is only so much you can deduce from such a lopsided environment.

If this Pakistani-Indian conflict flares up into a full-scale war (which it probably and hopefully won't, due to the nuclear dimension) you are going to see Rafales, JF-17s, Su-30MKIs and yes, also J-10Cs, dropping like flies. Exactly like the Russian experience in Ukraine, you are not going to see 100:0, 10:1 or even 5:1 loss ratios. That is the norm in a peer-on-peer war - it's just that Western air forces have not fought anything like one for such a long time that people seem to have forgotten what it even means.
 
NTKV said:
“For one western weapons are not difficult to jam and this is not me making things up, Ukrainians complained about it.”

This is a valid point, but also to a large degree known before the war as their was a strong push to make weapons more jam resistant through efforts such as incorporating gps m-code which the weapons Ukraine has received usually does not have. The rare few that do seem resistant to jamming.


“…there are dozens of videos of slower Iskandars (downgraded ground launched versions of Kinzals) taking out Patriot and IRIS-T launchers, HIMARS, airbases, and command centers, just because Ukraine claims something doesn’t make it true, if fact they lie profusely.”

I mean this alone is a highly misleading statement. We have one confirmed video of a Patriot launchers being destroyed while they were extended in traveling configuration thus incapable of defending themselves. You could use this as a mark against Ukrainian planning but not really the hardware itself outside of possibly system mobility. The rest have no claimed inherent anti ballistic missile capabilities whatsoever. To rephrase, just because Russia claims something doesn’t make it true, in fact they lie profusely.

Keep in mind that both sides also use decoys which further reduces the number of actual vs claimed kills.

The Patriot system in a fixed location in Kiev remained operational or was able to be quickly repaired (operational by the next day) after two complex attacks involving multiple Kinzhals shows that it managed to withstand them as 24 hours is not enough time for major replacements or repairs. Satellite imagery as well showed no evidence of critical damage at any time.

The Patriot system seems to have overall outperformed pre-war expectations and came away looking much better than the S400, for which we have a fully operational version on video failing to defend itself vs ATACAMS along with many, many systems being at least partially destroyed and photographed. Much of this was expectations, pre-war the S400 was hyped to hell and back while much of the western public was dubious about the Patriot.

The rest I mostly agree with. No weapon system is invincible especially if employed poorly.
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You don’t follow the conflict closely. There has been multiple desoyed active patriot launchers, NASAMS, and IRIS-T launchers. No one is doubting those are effective systems but it is ironic how people are claiming these systems never been destroyed while operational or how they somehow are shooting down Kinzals with zero evidence. On the contrary there are hundreds of drone videos of Kinzals and Iskanders taking out high value targets.

View: https://youtu.be/TkPvws-OQWI


So yes a lot of western weapons are great, some overrated, some very unreliable and most overly expensive or a combination of these things. Is it really a surprise a Rafale got shot down? Not really considering we didn’t know much about it and it’s seen zero real combat besides bombing cavemen. By all accounts it is good considering what India said about it and the basic capabilities that are available to the public but at the same time its shouldn’t be a surprise that it got shot down with a modern Chinese made missile aided by modern AWACS, I’m sure Indian tactics and decision making also contributed to losing the Rafale.

This isn’t 1991 Iraq where a lone country is using 1940s-1970s technology taking on all of NATO while being weakened by embargo’s and a war with Iran. People’s perception is warped by past events and a lot of misleading marketing.
 
AndersJ said:
Does not matter how many explosions labeled "Patriot and IRIS-T launchers, HIMARS, airbases, and command centers" being destroyed have been posted on Telegram or any other channels: Both the Russians and Ukrainians post propaganda videos where unidentifiable things go "boom" and make overclaims when it comes to the other side's losses.

However, what is an undeniable fact and which you need to ask yourself, is if Eastern weapons are so good and can take out all these systems with such ease, then why did Russia fail to attain air superiority over Ukraine in 2022? A country with only a token Air Force and nowhere near as capable as even the weakest Western nation?
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I am sure there is a very good reason why the admin or even moderators do not want to manage a ukraine war thread because my god I dont even know how it's even possible for me to have so many disagreements.
1. create an account on sinodefenseforum.
2. click "the war in the ukraine" thread.
3. Look at the user Tam entire posting history.
I assure you than no pro-ukraine user can ever beat Tam on who has the most destroyed equipment, even Deino and Siegecrossbow are eyewitnesses to confirm that since they moderate that thread over there to.

There is a reason why Ukraine keeps asking for more and more equipment because they keep getting destroyed. I dont know where you are getting Ukraine is the weakest Western nation when the UK only has 20 tanks and Ukraine managed to get 1000s of theirs destroyed. Most NATO equipment won't work in Ukraine's muddy conditions which is why they are targets to drones.(these are lancet strikes, not counting the other drones like their fiber optic vandal drones)
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AndersJ said:
And even before Ukraine got any Western anti-air systems or aircraft at all, the Russian were still struggling, unable to gain that vital air superiority which everyone agrees is the linchpin for modern warfare. And this was even against such a weak (at the time) foe as the Ukraine. Ukraine did not have much of anything back in 2022 and even so the VVS failed to make any headway at all. And it's now obvious to everyone that they were never anywhere near the capabilities that they were ascribed back then. The VVS is simply a paper tiger and everyone can see it now. Three years of conflict in the Ukraine tells the full story.
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You might find this hard to believe but Russia outproduces NATO in artillery. 2 million shells a year, 100 different variations of kamikaze drones, MLRS systems keep getting produced, missile production increases. This can also get the job done in destroying fortifications. Bakhmut was a huge complaint to Wagner because of fortifications, and they argued in that conflict that they needed more shells.
AndersJ said:
So anyone who had invested in Russian military hardware and doctrine up till 2022 is unlikely to repeat that mistake again going forward. I think both Pakistan and India can see the writing on the wall as well and I don't think Russia can look forward to any fat military contracts anytime soon from either of them or from any other region for that matter.
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Since its mostly land war and the Ukrainians are still getting pushed back while mostly using western equipment now. I think it might be the opposite.
 
sf7pakistan said:
Pakistan shares locations of where they claim they shot the Indian jets
View attachment 769317
https://twitter.com/x/status/1920866581522858474
View: https://x.com/clashreport/status/1920866581522858474/photo/1
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So where is the evidence of these shoot downs? Rafale confirmed, Mirage 2000 confirmed, that’s about it. There is some wreckage people claim is showing SU-30 wreckage saying it shows that vertical stabilizers are visible but those are definitely not SU-30 vertical stabilizers. Looks more likely to be a drone, there is also a picture of an ejection seat that could be from either a MiG-29 or a Sukhoi but there is zero wreckage or even proof it’s a recent photos. Could be from an old crash or a AI generated image, not enough evidence so far. Too many dubious claims just like in 2019 when Pakistan claimed downing an SU-30s and India claimed downing an F-16.

So far I seen evidence of two maned aircraft. No one should just believe Pakistan just like no one should believe India claiming they shot down 2 JF-17s and 1 or 2 or 3 F-16s or a few AWACs, both side lie a lot. Photo evidence is all that matters.
 
AndersJ said:
For example, the Kinzhal used to be touted as a “hypersonic and impossible to intercept” missile until Patriots started shooting it down.
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Lots of drone footage out there of Patriots being hit by Iskander-M and Tornado-S.

I have yet to see footage of anything intercepting a Kinzhal or Iskander-M. Or do we count Twitter posts with graphics as evidence these days?

The Rafale isn't indicative of the entire European MIC, and a single loss of the Rafale isn't indicative of the entire aircraft being an underwhelming design. But what is clear is that at least one Rafale went down and the cause is yet to be determined. The implications of this is that either SPECTRA needs further improvement or that operational error occurred in the IAF, like assuming that Pakistan won't engage hostile aircraft launching ordnance into their territory.

On the note of effectiveness, the point isn't east vs west, that's pathetically immature flag waving.

No, in reality it's about Cold War vs Post-Cold War systems and the challenges of the modern battlefield. Vehicles like the M1, T-90, Rafale, Challenger 2, F-16, MiG-29 etc. were conceptualized and developed in a world that doesn't exist anymore. Now they have to operate in environments and face threats that are as foreign to them as modern naval warfare would be to someone from the late 19th century. The threat potential has dramatically increased across all domains in almost all corners of the world. And we're seeing the symptoms of that development in real time in the Levant, Eastern Europe and now South Asia too.
 
siegecrossbow said:
PAF reconstruction. Apparently they have intercepted communication recording of a Rafale pilot with call sign Godzilla too…
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For days, I've been wanting to say: No one is discussing how the largest deployment of modern fighters( gen4, gen4.5, call it whatever you want) in a single operation unfolds in BVR combat today, while others are stuck debating why a certain missile wasn't used or why a specific RWR failed to activate.



Now, PAF has demonstrated their battlefield information acquisition capabilities to the world.
If IAF commanders still hadn't figured out what was happening even by the time they were shot down by the BS001, that would be a far more critical issue than the missile itself.

and happy india time again :p
 
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siegecrossbow said:
PAF reconstruction. Apparently they have intercepted communication recording of a Rafale pilot with call sign Godzilla too…

View attachment 769318
View attachment 769319
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If the numbers are accurate this actually goes a long way toward explaining the outcome. The IAF was targeting 9 sites, assuming a 4-ship of strikers for each, a 40 vs. 60 or 70 setup sees at best numerical parity for the air-to-air tasked Indian aircraft against their Pakistani opponents. And unlike the latter they are doing double duty, having to look not only after themselves but also their strikers.

2 or 3 losses while apparently hitting all 9 targets is a high price to pay, but not actually a terrible result under the circumstances.
 
Galaxy said:
So where is the evidence of these shoot downs? Rafale confirmed, Mirage 2000 confirmed, that’s about it. There is some wreckage people claim is showing SU-30 wreckage saying it shows that vertical stabilizers are visible but those are definitely not SU-30 vertical stabilizers. Looks more likely to be a drone, there is also a picture of an ejection seat that could be from either a MiG-29 or a Sukhoi but there is zero wreckage or even proof it’s a recent photos. Could be from an old crash or a AI generated image, not enough evidence so far. Too many dubious claims just like in 2019 when Pakistan claimed downing an SU-30s and India claimed downing an F-16.

So far I seen evidence of two maned aircraft. No one should just believe Pakistan just like no one should believe India claiming they shot down 2 JF-17s and 1 or 2 or 3 F-16s or a few AWACs, both side lie a lot. Photo evidence is all that matters.
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Naa you're right that's why I said that they were claims. Also the place where PAF is claiming to have shot down a MiG seems to be the spot where the Mirage was shot down

Screenshot 2025-05-09 213359.png

Which is here on the map
Screenshot 2025-05-09 213556.png

Now compare that to the PAF kill map
Screenshot 2025-05-09 211859.png

The place turns out to be Wuyan town in Pompore tehsil and here's the wreckage that was found there
Pompore 1.jpeg


That being said I honestly believe that PAF' claims are more credible.

Indian officials in Kashmir have said that 2/3 jets crashed there. Add the one in Bhatinda and you get 3/4. Two of these, a M2K and a Rafale are confirmed without a shadow of a doubt. The seat looks like from a MiG-29 and so far i have yet to see any evidence that it's an older image. The Su-30 is here and there because eyewitness testimony from the spot says that two pilots were taken away for medical care.

So out of the five claimed this is the standing so far:

Confirmed: Rafale and M2K
Speculative and need more info: MiG-29
Eyewitness testimony: Su-30
And no info on the last claimed kill

Anyhoo, I'll try to make some sense of what PAF is claiming. I do have the corresponding pictures of the sites and now since PAF has given bearing and ranges maybe things will become more clearer.
 
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Galaxy said:
You don’t follow the conflict closely. There has been multiple desoyed active patriot launchers, NASAMS, and IRIS-T launchers. No one is doubting those are effective systems but it is ironic how people are claiming these systems never been destroyed while operational or how they somehow are shooting down Kinzals with zero evidence. On the contrary there are hundreds of drone videos of Kinzals and Iskanders taking out high value targets.

View: https://youtu.be/TkPvws-OQWI


So yes a lot of western weapons are great, some overrated, some very unreliable and most overly expensive or a combination of these things. Is it really a surprise a Rafale got shot down? Not really considering we didn’t know much about it and it’s seen zero real combat besides bombing cavemen. By all accounts it is good considering what India said about it and the basic capabilities that are available to the public but at the same time its shouldn’t be a surprise that it got shot down with a modern Chinese made missile aided by modern AWACS, I’m sure Indian tactics and decision making also contributed to losing the Rafale.

This isn’t 1991 Iraq where a lone country is using 1940s-1970s technology taking on all of NATO while being weakened by embargo’s and a war with Iran. People’s perception is warped by past events and a lot of misleading marketing.
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I have. I have seen destroyed active IRIS-T and NASAMs (neither of which have any claimed anti TBM capabilities), multiple destroyed provable decoys claimed to be active units, destroyed genuine patriot launchers in travel mode but no reasonably unambiguous destroyed active patriot launchers yet. I’ve also seen destroyed transport trucks claimed to be patriots or more commonly HIMARS (very common as they use FMLTV chassis which are also used for general transport, resupply and towing M777’s).

There is no doubt that Iskander (or ATACAMs/GMLRS) can and has destroyed high value targets.

There is evidence in the form of Kinzhal debris showing signs of interception and the survival of fixed patriot sites that were targeted.

I agree that PL-15E’s AESA seeker + J10C combination seems credibly able to shoot down a Rafale. AESA’s are a lot harder to jam and SPECTRA is trying to hide only a semi-LO plane. This should be able to be mitigated through better mission planning though it is always possible to be unlucky.

Countries are going to have to realize you can’t use a Rafale (or any other 4.5th gen) like a 5th gen and even then, while they are much more forgiving and open up new possibilities, hardly invincible.

I actually really like the F-35 as it starts with good base stealth, sensors, ecm, and good production numbers.

Everyone here probably knows the RCS formula, if you have a plane with 1/256th the RCS of another, you can detect it via radar at a quarter the distance but you only need 1/256th the jamming power for equivalent effectiveness. Given that good AESA radars negate a lot of older highly effective jamming techniques, this really helps.

While it does have some infrared stealth measures, there is only so much you can do with current tech on that front, which is just one of the many reasons why it so important to have enough of a system you can tolerate and remain mission capable despite your losses.

India does have enough Rafale’s to tolerate this incident. It’s just a matter of using the planes wisely.

Finally, 1991 Iraq actually had a pretty formidable air defense setup for the time including fairly modern Soviet and French hardware such as Roland II system, SA-6, etc. Their long range systems were a bit lacking, but they had a huge amount of pretty good short and medium range systems.
 
I'm bit confused about the RBE-2AA, specifically the variant India has, does it use GaA or GaN modules? Most of the info i can gather indicate the J-10C has a GaN radar, and this is common for all the modern chinese fighters, both 4 and 5th gens, from the middle or late in the previous decade. Recall the much fanfare about various western fighters that only now about to receive GaN radars and claims of them being the first in the world to be so equipped, when clearly China is way ahead in that particular domain. Like i said with other occasions, it matters being a rare earths superpower.

So this might be a relatively simple technical explanation of the losses IAF looks to have suffered at the hands of the J-10C, it simply might have a better radar than Rafale (or at least the version India has), not to mention other IAF fighters, plus a very modern AESA seeker missile as well in the PL-15.
 
The question no one is asking is, why was India deploying strike aircraft from airfields in range of known Pakistani air defenses, when the cruise missiles could be launched far beyond those ranges?

This is an IAF failure in that no aircraft should have even been in range to get shot at.
 
lancer21 said:
I'm bit confused about the RBE-2AA, specifically the variant India has, does it use GaA or GaN modules? Most of the info i can gather indicate the J-10C has a GaN radar, and this is common for all the modern chinese fighters, both 4 and 5th gens, from the middle or late in the previous decade. Recall the much fanfare about various western fighters that only now about to receive GaN radars and claims of them being the first in the world to be so equipped, when clearly China is way ahead in that particular domain. Like i said with other occasions, it matters being a rare earths superpower.

So this might be a relatively simple technical explanation of the losses IAF looks to have suffered at the hands of the J-10C, it simply might have a better radar than Rafale (or at least the version India has), not to mention other IAF fighters, plus a very modern AESA seeker missile as well in the PL-15.
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GaAS radar. But the performance of individual platform may not matter as how well they were integrated. There is no official confirmation on the designation for J-10C’s radar, let alone if it is GaN. But they have started producing GaN radars for fifth gen assets.
 
Desertfox said:
The question no one is asking is, why was India deploying strike aircraft from airfields in range of known Pakistani air defenses, when the cruise missiles could be launched far beyond those ranges?
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Perhaps man-in-the-loop targeting was considered essential? They did reportedly use AASM (laser guidanced?).
 
Trident said:
Perhaps man-in-the-loop targeting was considered essential? They did reportedly use AASM (laser guidanced?).
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Might be that they used them on purpose just to say that they used them. The Rafale deal was very heavily criticized as the billionaire owner of the Reliance Group which brokered the deal for India is said to have taken kickbacks from the French and inflated the final unit cost of the aircraft.
 
@sf7pakistan : I noticed how the Air Marshal in that press conference was pretty professional and, amazingly, compassionate. Sadly many journalists, excluding the Chinese one and the one from the FT, weren´t up to the task to ask pertinent questions to a military college ; while it was indeed a point in time that will remain in press history.

Regarding the tech PAF used, as unveiled in that interview, one can only blame Dassault to have only very reluctantly set a secure satellite datalink and full AESA architecture (something that will come only with the F4.2, if my mem stands right). It´s pretty obvious now that the Pakistani took the opportunity to inflict a damaging loss (politically for India) targeting those known Rafale weaknesses*.

Whatever will be the final tally for that operation, it´s already a pretty somber day for Dassault, IMOHO akin only to that M2kN tragic loss from a Sa-7 in ex-Yugoslavia.

Regarding the M2k loss in India, we haven´t seen anything conclusive. A smashed drop tank is not a proof of a crash. We can only hope that real investigative reporters are there, on the ground, trying to sort this out.

*How many times did I myself raise those points in the past years?!
 
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lancer21 said:
I'm bit confused about the RBE-2AA, specifically the variant India has, does it use GaA or GaN modules? Most of the info i can gather indicate the J-10C has a GaN radar, and this is common for all the modern chinese fighters, both 4 and 5th gens, from the middle or late in the previous decade. Recall the much fanfare about various western fighters that only now about to receive GaN radars and claims of them being the first in the world to be so equipped, when clearly China is way ahead in that particular domain. Like i said with other occasions, it matters being a rare earths superpower.

So this might be a relatively simple technical explanation of the losses IAF looks to have suffered at the hands of the J-10C, it simply might have a better radar than Rafale (or at least the version India has), not to mention other IAF fighters, plus a very modern AESA seeker missile as well in the PL-15.
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GAaS infact we know the peak power is 9.6kw.
rafalenews.blogspot.com

Air and Cosmos insight on the future Rafale

This week issue of Air and Cosmos magazine brings some additional information regarding the future development path of the Rafale. First...
rafalenews.blogspot.com rafalenews.blogspot.com

Not sure if the J-10 radar is GAaS or GaN but it is physically larger with more modules.
 
Back of the envelope math tells me that the air to air engagement that led to the possible Rafale shoot down could have been averted if the Rafale had 57 more T/R modules and had they been all GaN.

Seriously folks, we don't even know if this was even shot down by an air to air weapon. Could have been a SAM..Could have been something completely unrelated.
 
The J-10C v Rafale shoot down is the only one we actually know happened. We know there were at least two air-to-air kills by J-10Cs but we don't know who the second one was.
 
TomcatViP said:
@sf7pakistan : I noticed how the Air Marshal in that press conference was pretty professional and, amazingly, compassionate. Sadly many journalists, excluding the Chinese one and the one from the FT, weren´t up to the task to ask pertinent questions to a military college ; while it was indeed a point in time that will remain in press history.

Regarding the tech PAF used, as unveiled in that interview, one can only blame Dassault to have only very reluctantly set a secure satellite datalink and full AESA architecture (something that will come only with the F4.2, if my mem stands right). It´s pretty obvious now that the Pakistani took the opportunity to inflict a damaging loss (politically for India) targeting those known Rafale weaknesses*.

Whatever will be the final tally for that operation, it´s already a pretty somber day for Dassault, IMOHO akin only to that M2kN tragic loss from a Sa-7 in ex-Yugoslavia.

Regarding the M2k loss in India, we haven´t seen anything conclusive. A smashed drop tank is not a proof of a crash. We can only hope that real investigative reporters are there, on the ground, trying to sort this out.

*How many times did I myself raise those points in the past years?!
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Right now other than the one Rafale I'm only counting kills in numbers for the PAF and not the specific aircraft that they're claiming. Case in point the spot where they say they shot down a MiG-29 seems to be the place where actually a Mirage went down.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1919886708092354840
View: https://x.com/TandemR3dux/status/1919886708092354840


IDK now if they're obfuscating on purpose or the NCTR profiles that they're using aren't that great
 
TomcatViP said:
@sf7pakistan : I noticed how the Air Marshal in that press conference was pretty professional and, amazingly, compassionate. Sadly many journalists, excluding the Chinese one and the one from the FT, weren´t up to the task to ask pertinent questions to a military college ; while it was indeed a point in time that will remain in press history.
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What would be an example of pertinent question to ask? One of the reporters asked in the QA session after the presentation for details on JF-17, J-10, and PL-15 employment, and he was rebuffed with total nonanswers that amounted to "its too academic/the technicalities would bore you/the details are pointless to talk about/our airplanes participated, refer to the powerpoint."
 
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Desertfox said:
The J-10C v Rafale shoot down is the only one we actually know happened. We know there were at least two air-to-air kills by J-10Cs but we don't know who the second one was.
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How exactly do we know it happened? The only thing that can be established with some degree of confidence is that a Rafale went down the night of the strike. How it went down cannot be verified with a high degree of confidence.
 
bring_it_on said:
How exactly do we know it happened? The only thing that can be established with some degree of confidence is that a Rafale went down the night of the strike. How it went down cannot be verified with a high degree of confidence.
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True. But advanced fighter jets with only 3-5 years on the ODO meter don't just coincidentally crash the very first time they are put into combat...
 
Colt_Six_Nine said:
True. But advanced fighter jets with only 3-5 years on the ODO meter don't just coincidentally crash the very first time they are put into combat...
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I mean, there’s nothing that says they can’t.

F-35s have crashed on factory acceptance flights, the U.S. Air Force’s Combat Lancer detachment lost 2 of the first 6 F-111s in the space of 3 days on that type’s maiden combat, with a third the next month identifying a major control surfaces issue.

That the aircraft are relatively new and on their first combat mission doesn’t preclude any of the other myriad reasons that aircraft crash - CFIT, technical issues, etc.

Now, it seems to me that it’s fully likely that the PAF shot down several aircraft, but it’s also not impossible for the IAF to have lost aircraft during their strikes to reasons other than enemy fire - it’s just a thing that happens.
 
It’s interesting to note the amount of angst my comments on Russian military equipment seems to have caused amongst certain sycophantic individuals in this thread: I have now been quoted generously by said persons, all of whom trip all over themselves in order to explain just how wrong I am. However, as the saying goes, the closer you get to the target, the heavier the Flak will be. And judging by the amount of Flak I’m currently receiving in this thread, the observation that Russian military technology and tactics are flawed and outdated seems to be very much on point indeed.

Because any way you look at it, it’s still a fact that the vaunted VVS got severely whipped in Ukraine by a (at that time of the invasion in 2022) very third rate AF. Note: I’m no way criticizing the heroism and professionalism of the personnel in the Ukrainian Air Force (UAF) at the time. They did an admirable job keeping the invaders at bay with what they had. But that does not detract from the fact that given the equipment they had at the time, any competent invader with anything near decent equipment and doctrine should have beaten then in a matter of days. So with the UAF in the state it was at that time, any half-way decent Western AF would have secured air superiority over Ukraine in a matter of days, something the VVS has yet to do even given more than three years.

But this concerns the Ukraine you may say, and this thread is about the current conflict between India and Pakistan so surely this is irrelevant? Well the answer to that it is no, given that the Ukraine conflict is in fact very much relevant seeing that it yet again pits Western and Eastern military technology against each other. And with this in mind, the PAF should be very worried indeed given what we have gleaned from the Ukraine conflict, which shows that the Eastern equipment the VVS has to work with is simply not up to the job. And this seems to be the only viable conclusion, i.e. that it’s the equipment that's at fault since while what happened in 1967, 1973 and 1982 in the Middle East certainly could be blamed on the operators, the Russians are now in Ukraine in charge of their own equipment, using their own tactics, in their own backyard, and yet still fail miserably.

And this is why a downing of an IAF Rafale is a Pyrrhic victory at best: Sure, it may add to the PAF’s scoreboard short term, but how will their Russian/Chinese equipment hold up in the long run given what we have recently learned from the conflict in the Ukraine? Ponder that now…..
 
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There seems to be a lot of consternation over a relatively modern fighter aircraft that might have been shot down by another relatively modern fighter aircraft in a combat environment with large forces on both sides pushed fairly close together without the benefit of weeks of specific operational prep (a la many western air operations over the past 30 years), and it's perplexing.

Rafale's good, but it's not likely to be a permanent winner against all comers. Maybe Chinese missiles are the best in the world by a country mile. More likely they're not, though. But any way you cut it, they're definitely dangerous. I don't see what all the drama is about.
 
Two French aviation journalists offer their first, tentative takes on the loss of an Indian AF Rafale. A somewhat meandering and noncommittal discussion as one would expect at this stage. There was a lot there but I will just highlight a couple of aspects.

They seem to think that the overall Indian attack/retaliatory mission was - at least - intended to happen in a very constrained timeframe from start to finish, I guess to retain an element of surprise. By some accounts the engagement didn't turn out that way but became drawn out. In this case I'm curious about the basing implications of the Indian attempt, etc. The Pakistani response time proved to be very short but arguably (and this is my conjecture) they had the resources to essentially stay on guard for an operation that was by all indications bound to happen sooner rather than later.

The journalists also briefly speculate on the readiness of the electronic suite of the Rafale to even recognize modern Chinese AA missiles' signatures and the effectiveness of its countermeasures against those. Hard to tell just how much is known about the export versions of the missiles or how much meaningful variance can even be introduced in their seekers to confound a defensive system to such a degree that it wouldn't recognize it as at least some kind of a threat.

View: https://youtu.be/lpTt3-NCXrk?si=isnWju1udzqERYoT
 
UpForce said:
The journalists also briefly speculate on the readiness of the electronic suite of the Rafale to even recognize modern Chinese AA missiles' signatures and the effectiveness of its countermeasures against those. Hard to tell just how much is known about the export versions of the missiles or how much meaningful variance can even be introduced in their seekers to confound a defensive system to such a degree that it wouldn't recognize it as at least some kind of a threat.
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Well even if the IAF Rafale's threat library did not include the missile that downed it, I would still be very surprised if it did not anyway contain code that would identify an emitter with "hostile intent" like an active radar missile as an imminent threat. So even if it (the Rafale's EW suite) did not make an exact match, I would be very surprised if the Rafale's pilot did not get an indication that he was being illuminated by something reminiscent of an active radar missile, albeit maybe classified as an unknown one.

But maybe it was already to late, since jamming has its limitations and is not always a "get out of jail free card" and if you are within the so-called no escape zone where the missile still has a lot of energy to work with, you could still be in big trouble. However, there are ways to get out of such situations as well with the right EW equipment and tactics, but since I do not want to go to jail, I will refrain from writing any details about how to do that here in this thread. ;)

But to end on a more serious note: Whatever EW suite version that came with the Rafale the IAF got and whatever limitations this may or may not have had, neither the IAF nor Dassault are likely to talk much about this as sensors and EW are the things you (just as my sig says!) keep closest to your chest.
 
bring_it_on said:
How exactly do we know it happened? The only thing that can be established with some degree of confidence is that a Rafale went down the night of the strike. How it went down cannot be verified with a high degree of confidence.
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We have multiple independent accounts from multiple countries including the US claiming (with high confidence) that the Rafale was shot down by a J-10C. Knowing the US capabilities, I am very confident on this particular claim.
 

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