India Confirms It Lost Fighter Jets in Recent Pakistan Conflict

5 comments

1. After long weeks of ambiguity, India confirms it lost several jets in the short conflict with Pakistan. What does this mean for France’s Rafale jets? Will this move other nations away from them and into for example F-35s?

2. From the wreckage it seems one each of Rafale, Mirage 2000, Su 30, and Mig 29 was shot down. Possibly another Rafale given yesterday BJP leader said they lost 5 jets.

3. That is what happens when you don’t employ SEAD and proceed head on against an enemy that is anticipating a backlash and has kept it’s air defences at active standby. Rafale is not to blame here, the doctrine is.

4. I think all the talk of hardware losses – real or imagined, is missing the point.
   That is the crux of my argument in my blogpost on Op Sindhoor.

   [https://rpdeans.blogspot.com/2025/05/operation-sindhoor-what-we-dont-realise.html](https://rpdeans.blogspot.com/2025/05/operation-sindhoor-what-we-dont-realise.html)

   Although suspending the IWT and the work of unknown gunmen will hurt Pak more than in a war (Pak loss relative to India’s loss), the govt could not have survived if there was no military action. That action had to be more than Uri & Balakot.

   It is not difficult for Pak to guess possible targets that we might strike. Their air defences – which are formidable, would have focussed on defending them. Pak would have concluded that we would not be able to accept the probable losses when attacking these.

   We succeeded in the mission of hitting all 9 targets, with heavy loss of life on their side and
   no pilot lost on ours. Pak also lost disproportionately more when they tried to retaliate.
   That is all there is to it.

   Weapon systems enable you to meet your objective in a war. You expect to lose them in combat. When our defence expenditure for capital goods is 10 times that of Pak, we can afford to replace losses in a way Pak can’t.

   No plan ever survives contact with the enemy. How you react to a surprise the enemy throws at you, is a measure of how good you are and that is what CDS meant. On 10th May, we
   had even 25+ year old Jaguars flying on missions against a fully alert Pak air space, as part of an attack on 11 air bases, with no losses (not even claims by Pak).
   As CDS said, there is disproportionate time spent dealing with fake narratives

5. It’s interesting that so many people blame the India’s doctrine than the aircraft. But when Russian jets are down, everyone is just laughing at their jets being so trash. The thing is no country perhaps other than the US can achieve air superiority over a near-peer adversary given how advanced the modern AA system is. The doctrine is only partially to blame here. Planes will be shot down whether it is Rafale, Su30 or F16.

Comments are closed.