Pakistan Downs India's French Rafale Fighter Jets in History's Largest Aerial Battle

[Riaz Haq]

Pakistan Air Force (PAF) pilots flying Chinese-made J10C fighter jets shot down at least two Indian Air Force's French-made Rafale jets in history's largest ever aerial battle involving over 100 combat aircraft on both sides, according to multiple media reports. India had 72 warplanes on the attack and Pakistan responded with 42 of its own, according to Pakistani military. The Indian government has not yet acknowledged its losses but senior French and US intelligence officials have confirmed that at least one Indian Rafale jet was shot down by Pakistan on May 7, 2025. Reports of  more Rafale downings are being investigated by western intelligence officials. This marks the first time that the sophisticated French-made warplane has been lost in combat.

Rafale is the most advanced French 4.5 generation fighter plane. Indian Prime Minister Narendra spoke about India's need for Rafale back in 2019 after the last IAF-PAF dogfight and said: "We (Indians) acutely felt the absence of Rafale today.....if we had Rafale today the results would have been very different....desh ka bahut nuksaan hua hai"  Then Mr. Modi proceeded to spend $7.4 billion to purchase 26 Rafale fighter jets from France in the hope of achieving air superiority over Pakistan.  Each Rafale cost Indian taxpayers $288 million. 

Military aviation analysts conclude from the results of the air battle that the Chinese technology is as good, if not better than, the western technology. However, men count as much, if not more than, the machines.  The legendary US Air Force pilot Chuck Yeager called Pakistan Air Force pilots "the best in the world".  In another tweet in 2015, Yeager said "they (PAF pilots) kicked the Indians butt". 

In the 1980s, the Pakistan Air Force pilots went head-to-head with Russian combat pilots in Afghanistan. The Pakistan Air Force (PAF) has the distinction of being the only air force that has engaged and shot down multiple Russian fighter pilots in combat since WWII.  The most prominent among those shot down by PAF was Colonel Alexander Rutskoy who ejected over Pakistani soil and was captured by Pakistan. After his release, Rutskoy was decorated as a hero of the Soviet Union and went onto become vice president of Russia under Boris Yeltsin, before leading an attempted coup in 1993, according to The National Interest publication. 

The aerial battle between Pakistani and Indian fighter jets, which Pakistani officials claim downed five Indian planes, was one of the “largest and longest in recent aviation history,” a senior Pakistani security source told CNN.  Over 100 combat planes battled for over an hour, with neither side leaving its own airspace, according to the CNN source who detailed that the missile exchanges were happening at distances sometimes greater than 160 kilometers (100 miles).  The entire air battle was conducted using BVR (beyond visual range) radars/sensors with stand-off weapons. 

Global militaries and defense analysts are now studying the India-Pakistan aerial battle on May 7, 2025, according to Reuters. Here's an excerpt of the Reuters' report: 

"Experts said the live use of advanced weapons would be analyzed across the world, including in China and the United States which are both preparing for a potential conflict over Taiwan or in the wider Indo-Pacific region. One U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Reuters there was high confidence that Pakistan had used the Chinese-made J-10 aircraft to launch air-to-air missiles against Indian fighter jets". 

Here's Prime Minister Modi Speaking of India's Acute Need For Rafale in 2016:

https://youtu.be/QIt0EAAr3PU?si=KpcJW60jvD9r0xeQ

http://www.youtube.com/embed/QIt0EAAr3PU?si=KpcJW60jvD9r0xeQ"; title="YouTube video player" width="560"></iframe>" height="315" src="https://img1.blogblog.com/img/video_object.png" width="560" style="cursor: move; background-color: #b2b2b2;" /> 

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[Riaz Haq]

Raza Ahmad Rumi
@Razarumi
As easy as ABC? How Pakistan unified radars, jets and warning aircraft against India | South China Morning Post

Chinese defence industry report says intelligent systems and not firepower superiority are now the deciding factors

https://x.com/Razarumi/status/1922483236237672634

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https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3310134/easy-abc-ho...

Analysts noted that Pakistan’s cost-effective, precision-focused system neutralised India’s numerical air-power advantage.

“If India doesn’t speed up equipment standardisation, data link unification, strengthen training and logistics, it may face more strategic failures in future networked warfare,” the report warned.

It said that analysis of this conflict and others around the world indicated that military confrontations today had evolved from merely exchanging firepower to systemic, intelligent, and asymmetric warfare.



The article also highlighted the potential for integrating drones into such networked combat systems.
“[Drones] can use low-altitude blind spots in air defence networks to gather real-time intelligence or target ground assets like airbases. They can also serve as missile launch platforms, boosting firepower and strike efficiency.”

[Riaz Haq]

Pakistan’s use of J-10C jets and missiles exposes potency of Chinese weaponry | Pakistan | The Guardian

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/may/14/pakistans-use-of-j-10...

Andrew Small, a Berlin-based senior fellow at the German Marshall Fund, said China gets particular benefit from seeing its weapons used against western equivalents. “It gives them a chance to assess their performance under far more complex and challenging conditions than usual, and with Pakistan this is not just about the fighter jets themselves, it’s about the missiles, the radar systems, and the whole technology spine of the Pakistani military, from electronic warfare capabilities to satellite systems.”

It’s not just western arms that China’s planes are being tested against. India has the support of both China’s biggest rival, the US, and its closest ally, Russia, which supplies 36% of India’s arms imports.

But analysts says it has provided a wake-up call about China’s military capabilities as it threatens to annex Taiwan.

“We may need to reassess the PLA’s air combat capabilities, which may be approaching or even surpassing the level of US air power deployments in east Asia,” Shu Hsiao-Huang, an associate research fellow at the Taiwan defence ministry-linked Institute of National Defense and Security Research, told Bloomberg.

Under the rule of Xi Jinping, China’s military has been modernising and expanding, with a goal to be capable of an air and land invasion of Taiwan by 2027.

Hu Xijin, the former editor of the nationalistic Chinese state-linked tabloid Global Times, said the incident showed Taiwan should feel “even more scared”.

Part of China’s contingency planning is an expectation that the US military and potentially others would be involved in defending Taiwan.

Yun Sun, director of the China programme at the Stimson Center, said the two combat theatres were not directly comparable, as a Taiwan invasion would probably involve more input from the navy, marines and army than this month’s limited conflict between India and Pakistan.



“And technically, India did not use American weapon systems during this round,” Sun said. “But the surprising victory of Chinese J-10 and PL-15 [missiles] will force people to reconsider the military balance of power in the event of a Taiwan contingency.”

The apparent success of the J-10C against the Rafales also boosts China’s reputation as a manufacturer and seller of weapons. While China is the world’s fourth largest arms exporter, more than half goes to Pakistan and the rest is mostly to smaller developed nations. It must work around US sanctions.

The share price of Chengdu Aircraft Corporation, which makes the J-10Cs, soared on the news.

Small said Pakistan was often seen as a showcase for Chinese weapons.

“A good performance demonstrates to others the benefits of maintaining a close partnership with Beijing as PLA capabilities advance, especially given the rumours that China provided Pakistan, one of its closest strategic partners, with versions of the PL-15 missiles that have a longer range than the usual export variant,” he said.

Wezeman said the shooting was too limited to draw a lot of firm conclusions about the state of China’s military, which has also been mired in corruption scandals in recent years.

“That said, the clash seems to support a general assessment that Chinese weapons are proving to have become a match for western weapons.”

China’s military and government have neither denied nor celebrated the J-10C claims. The foreign ministry said when asked that it was “not familiar” with the J-10C situation.

But on Tuesday China’s vice-foreign minister Sun Weidong met with Pakistan’s ambassador to China, Khalil Hashmi. “China welcomes and supports Pakistan and India achieving a comprehensive and lasting ceasefire,” a foreign ministry statement said.

“China is ready to continue to play a constructive role in this regard.”

[Riaz Haq]

Ex Indian diplomat Bhadrakumar on recent India-Pakistan clashes:

https://www.newindianexpress.com/opinions/2025/May/13/operation-sin...

The bottom line is, Pakistan has demonstrated its nuclear deterrent capability. It is as simple as that. If Operation Sindoor were to be repeated every now and then, it would only have the same results and be halted unceremoniously within 100 hours. Eventually, it will not only lose all novelty to our ecstatic TV audience, but a troubled nation may eventually start blaming an inept leadership.

Pakistan is a major military power. Creating potholes in an odd runway or rendering a radar dysfunctional temporarily will not intimidate that country. Succinctly put, it must be far better for India to take help from Trump, who harbours no animus against us, to solve the problem and move on with life.

Trump’s talks with Hamas and Iran are going well, and he has pacified the Houthis. Even the irascible protagonists in the Ukraine war are currying favour with him. Vladimir Putin and Volodymyr Zelenskyy are all set to meet on Thursday in Istanbul—a “neutral site”. Beijing is ecstatic that the trade talks in Geneva “will become a new example for China and the US to work hand in hand to inject more stability and positive energy into the world”.

This is the way of the world. We must stop fantasising over newer military doctrines every now and then. Pakistan is a keen observer and adept practitioner. As true as night follows day, Pakistan will soon have a workaround.

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Four days of clashes with Pakistan exposed the faultlines in India’s foreign policy and diplomacy. None of India’s neighbours voiced support for Operation Sindoor; it had a public spat with the European Union; Russia remained largely indifferent, and alongside the Global South, refused to take sides. And after allowing for US mediation, we are now in a sullen mood and denial.

President Donald Trump, in his characteristic way, reacted to our split personality by promising to work with us “to see if, after a ‘thousand years’ (of Hindu-Muslim animosity), a solution can be arrived at concerning Kashmir”. Trump’s India-Pakistan hyphenation apart, our diplomacy vis-a-vis the US is crumbling. Our ‘middle class’ cannot be happy about it. The paradox is, we are squirming when Trump pays flattering tribute to PM’s “wisdom, and fortitude to fully know and understand that it was time to stop the current aggression”. Indeed, “aggression”—Trump’s choice of word—implied a vehement rejection of the raison d’être of Operation Sindoor.

On Monday, Trump tightened the screws further by disclosing he told India and Pakistan that if they didn’t stop fighting, “there won’t be any trade”. In his words: “We stopped a nuclear conflict. I think it would have been a bad nuclear war. Millions of people would have been killed. I also want to thank VP JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio for their work.”

This unsavoury happening is playing out against the backdrop of the government’s frenetic attempts during the previous 100 days to put India on a path of deeper alignment with the US. The attempts to pamper Trump’s ego, even while stomaching insults, give away unilaterally tangible economic benefits to US companies, get India more integrated with America’s military and tech ecosystems—none of this helped India. Consider the following.

[Riaz Haq]

FRANCE 24 English

@France24_en
Chinese weapons pass combat test in India-Pakistan clash – with flying colours https://f24.my/BAZ5.x

https://x.com/France24_en/status/1922695187312279897

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By Leela Jacinto

https://www.france24.com/en/asia-pacific/20250514-chinese-weapons-p...


In the aftermath of Saturday’s ceasefire, attention has focused on Islamabad’s new range of Chinese weapons and defence systems that finally saw combat during the May 7-10 India-Pakistan armed clash. It came as India’s newly acquired arsenal of mostly Western arms took on China’s increasingly sophisticated military hardware.

‘Big victory for China in terms of perception’
The odds were in New Delhi’s favour ahead of its retaliation for the April 22 terror attack. With its first strikes, India signalled a break from its traditional doctrine of strategic restraint, hitting targets not just in Pakistani-administered Kashmir and remote border regions, but in the country’s political heartland Punjab province.

India’s escalation raised international alarm bells on the second day of clashes, when it hit the Nur Khan air base in Rawalpindi, a garrison city near Islamabad. Situated just a short distance from the headquarters of Pakistan’s Strategic Plans Division, which oversees and protects the country’s nuclear arsenal, the Nur Khan base is a key hub for the country’s military.



Another surprise was Pakistan’s robust response to the Indian escalation.

Pakistan’s claim that its J-10 fighter jets brought down India’s French-made Rafales sparked exultation on Chinese social media platform, Weibo, with many users speculating that buyers will probably soon be flocking to Chinese arms manufacturers.

India’s decision to neither confirm nor deny the loss of its top-end fighter jets has added credence to the downing claims. While Rafale manufacturer Dassault Aviation did not respond to FRANCE 24’s request for a comment, Reuters reported that at least one of India’s downed fighters was a Rafale. A Washington Post analysis conducted by three ordnance experts concluded that verified images from the downing site showed the debris was “consistent with at least two French-made fighter jets flown by the Indian air force – a Rafale and a Mirage 2000".

The takeaways of the May 7-10 military engagement for Yun Sun, director of the China Program at the Washington DC-based Stimson Center, are two-fold. “The first one is that the Indian weapons system is not as effective as a lot of people thought they would be,” she noted. “The second takeaway is that the Indian strategic intent could be more ambitious than a lot of people had expected.”

While cautioning that it’s still too early to “jump to conclusions”, Carlotta Rinaudo, a China expert at the International Team for the Study of Security Verona, notes that perception is key in initial assessments. “And this was a big victory for China in terms of perception,” she said, referring to the performance of China’s J-10 jets. “For a country that hasn't fought, theoretically, any war since the war with Vietnam in 1979, for a country that hasn't really engaged in war and its own weapons don't really have that sort of global recognition as, let's say, French weapons or American weapons, this is a big, big victory in terms of perception,” she added.

Not just cheap, but good
India’s image on the global geopolitical stage has been enhanced in recent years with the country emerging as a counterweight to China in the Indo-Pacific region. Its recent arms acquisitions made headlines as Prime Minister Narendra Modi, in a bid to upgrade the country’s ageing mostly Russian-supplied arsenal, signed billion-dollar arms deals with France and the US.

[Riaz Haq]

How Pakistan’s Drone Army Won the War Against India - The National Interest

https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/how-pakistans-drone-army-won...


By: Brandon J. Weichert

One side in the India-Pakistan War invested heavily in drone capabilities over the last decade. The other did not.
The night of May 9, 2025, should henceforth be required course material for all Western defense experts. That was the night when the Pakistani military retaliated against their Indian neighbors in what Islamabad has come to call “Operation Bunyaan al-Marsoos,” (derived from the Quran, meaning “a structure firmly joined together”) with a massive drone swarm.

Pakistan’s operation was truly massive, involving the coordination of hundreds of drones. And it demonstrated the importance of the weapons—Turkish drones, to be precise—as much as Islamabad’s effective shooting down of multiple European and Russian-made warplanes demonstrated the effectiveness of Chinese-made, Pakistani-operated warplanesand missiles.

During the drone operation, Pakistan launched an astonishing 400-500 drones that penetrated deep inside Indian territory. The idea was for the drones to trigger India’s air defense systems. Pakistan’s military would then map out those systems, gathering essential data for a future full-scale attack.





And there is evidence to suggest that Pakistan used the information their drones collected on May 9 for a massive jamming operation on May 10. Indeed, while unconfirmed, there are multiple reports indicating that the Pakistanis even targeted the powerful Russian-built S-400 air defenses that India had ringing their airbases.

All the claims made by Pakistan have been denied by India. But that’s just par for the course; Pakistan routinely does the same to India when New Delhi has battlefield successes.



Plus, it remains likely that, should the current ceasefire break down and the war continue, and if the Indians continue escalating on their end, India will enjoy the upper hand over its Pakistani rivals. For now, however, the Pakistanis have deftly used whatever capabilities at their disposal—and a lot of gumption—to stymie India’s offensives.

Drones Are the Future of Warfare
Just as in the Ukraine War and the various iterations of fighting between Iran-backed militants and Israel in the Middle East, one side in the India-Pakistan War—Pakistan, in this case—invested heavily in drone capabilities over the last decade. Specifically, Pakistan purchased drones from Turkey and China, each of which produces high-quality drones at relatively low cost.

Because of their indigenous production capabilities and strong partnerships with China and Turkey, Pakistan has managed to avoid a fate that most everyone assumed would befall them. They did not lose to India. And, as noted above, in key instances, they pushed back hard against the Indians.

India made the mistake, perhaps understandably, of trying to model its military on those of the West. But the Western militaries no longer possess the war-winning formulae they once did. Sure, Western militaries have expensive gadgets. But with countries like China, Russia, and Turkey now rising, having the most expensive systems are no longer viable substitutes for victories.



Even with the Russian example, it should be noted that India relies heavily on Russian military technology. Their Su-30MKIwas among the five planes shot down by Pakistan in the opening phases of the war. Further, the Pakistanis managed to blast the S-400s after jamming them on May 10. Here, too, are lessons U.S. and NATO planners could learn in how best to stymie powerful Russian air defense systems.