‘In the quiet hours just past midnight on May 6, a battle unfolded above the clouds that rewrote the rules of modern air warfare. It wasn’t marked by dogfights or dramatic barrel rolls seen in past conflicts between the two arch-rival South Asian neighbours. Instead, the skies over Pakistan and India became a silent battlefield of invisible forces — electromagnetic pulses, jamming beams, satellite interference, and beyond-visual-range missiles slicing through the night.’
This excerpt from a Dawn report describes the recent aerial clash between Pakistan and India, which has been described as a significant development in the regional air power constellation.
This military confrontation took place after New Delhi, without evidence, blamed Islamabad for backing terrorists who killed 26 tourists in occupied Kashmir’s Pahalgam and launched a series of airstrikes on different Pakistani cities.
In its response, the Pakistan Air Force took down six Indian jets, including three advanced French Rafale planes, one Su-30MKI, one Mirage 2000 and one MiG-29 within 40 minutes. Not one Pakistani jet crossed the border or engaged in close combat
India’s Chief of Defence Staff General Anil Chauhan’s recent admission that his country’s fighter jets were shot down by Pakistan during the escalation has been termed a “veiled criticism of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s policies” by an expert.
New Delhi’s fighter jets were shot down by the Pakistan Air Force on the night of May 6-7 in response to the Indian Air Force’s late-night missile strikes at six Pakistani sites, which included mosques in Bahawalpur, Muzaffarabad, Kotli, Muridke, as well as villages in Sialkot district and Shakargarh.
In an interview with Bloomberg at the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore, General Chauhan had said, “I think what is important is not the jets being downed but why the jets were shot down.”
In response to a query by a TV show’s host, he confirmed that Indian fighter jets were shot down during the recent escalation between the two countries, claiming that the four-day conflict never came close to the point of nuclear war.
Speaking to Dawn.com about the Indian general’s comments, Ejaz Haider, Senior Resident Fellow at the Centre for Security, Strategy and Policy Research, said: “The Bloomberg interview by India’s chief of defence staff appears to be an attempt by India’s military to push back against a policy by the Hindutva political leadership to use the Pakistan card for domestic political reasons.”
He added that as a professional military leader, Gen Chauhan was aware of capabilities and shortcomings and realised that India had no overwhelming advantage against Pakistan.
“He also understands that Narendra Modi’s policy is escalatory and dangerous,” the analyst continued.
Haider said it was important to note how the Indian general conveyed his message. “He was asked if a plane was shot down. He could have circumvented the question by saying that combat entails losses, and India achieved its objectives by striking targets inside Pakistan.”
Haider recalled how the question was tackled by India’s Director-General of Air Operations, Air Marshal AK Bharti.
Previously, the armed forces had deflected questions about Indian jets being shot down by Pakistan. Addressing a press conference, Air Marshal Bharti said, “Losses are a part of any combat scenario”. However, he said all Indian pilots “were back”.
“Instead, Chauhan spoke of fighter losses in the plural and kept up the plural in the follow-up question, too,” Haider remarked.
The Indian chief of defence staff had also said the armed forces were quick to analyse the “tactical mistakes”, remedy them, and again target Pakistan on May 8 and May 10.
“The good part is that we are able to understand the tactical mistake which we made, remedy it, rectify it, and then implement it again after two days and fly all our jets again, targeting at long range,” India Today quoted Gen Chauhan as saying.
Speaking on the Indian general’s admission that the IAF flew their jets again on May 10, after two days, Haider said, “This is a remarkable confession and could not be inadvertent.
“He went on to say that IAF did not fly for two days, until May 10, when they scrambled outside the PAF’s engagement envelope,” he added.
“This admission is significant because for two days, the Indian defences were without air cover, and that allowed the PAF to send in their fighter jets on the 10th to take out the Indian S-400’s [air defence system] cheeseboard radar,” he explained.
India had bought the Russian air defence system in a $5 billion deal in 2018, despite a looming threat of US sanctions on countries that trade with Russia’s defence and intelligence sectors.
He further explained that even on May 10, when India targeted Pakistani bases, the Indian jets flew outside the range of PAF’s fighter aircraft after the “silent kills” they had faced at the hands of the PAF on the night of May 6-7.
“He (Chauhan) is already been accused of going beyond his remit by Hindutva-affiliated journalists, who have called for disciplinary action against him,” he continued.
Haider added that it would be interesting to see how the Indian military’s professionalism plays out against BJP’s Hindutva politics.
Western military experts had also kept a close eye on the outcome of this aerial confrontation with a particular focus on how Chinese weaponry was battle-tested by the Pakistani armed forces, coming out on top against the French-made Rafale, which is at the cutting edge of Nato’s weapon arsenal.
Siemon Wezeman, a senior researcher at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute told the British newspaper The Guardian that “Any state producing or buying weapons is keen to see how the product does in real conflict. Tests and exercises can tell most about capabilities of weapons, but the ultimate test is often combat.”
Similarly, Andrew Small, a Berlin-based senior fellow at the German Marshall Fund, was quoted as saying that the Pakistan-India aerial combat provided the weapon’s suppliers a chance to assess the performance of their weaponry. In Pakistan’s case, the supplier was China and in India’s case, mostly Europe and Russia.
“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,” Small said.
Former foreign minister and PPP chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, speaking about the clash, told reporters on Tuesday that Pakistan could have potentially shot down more Indian jets but exercised restraint during the response to the attack by New Delhi.
Bilawal, who is currently leading a Pakistani diplomatic delegation to the United States, said, “Even the shooting down of those six planes was Pakistan showing restraint, 20 Indian jets were locked by our planes,” adding that only those planes were targeted which had released their payload on civilian targets in Pakistan.
Following the air battle on the night of May 6-7, Islamabad then intercepted drones sent by India on May 8 and following tit-for-tat strikes on each other’s airbases on May 9-10, it took American intervention on May 10 for both sides to finally reach a ceasefire.
The US-brokered ceasefire had brought a halt to a week of record escalation between Pakistan and India as the latter took a series of unprovoked military actions despite Islamabad’s call for a neutral probe into India’s allegations over the Pahalgam attack.
Phelothra of evidence
Even before the Indian top general’s confirmation, there was a plethora of evidence to establish the veracity of Pakistan’s claims, which were confirmed by different sources.
American and French officials had also earlier confirmed that Pakistan shot down an Indian jet using fighter aircraft it acquired from China, CNN and Reuters reported earlier in the month.
CNN cited a senior US official saying, as per their assessment, Pakistani forces shot down the jet during India’s air strikes inside Pakistan.
A high-ranking French intelligence official also told CNN that one Rafale fighter jet operated by the Indian Air Force was downed by Pakistan.
Earlier in the month, the American newspaper The Washington Post also verified visual evidence that at least two French-made Indian fighter aircraft were shot down by the Pakistan Air Force.
The paper based its findings on analyses by former US Army explosive ordnance disposal technician Trevor Ball, Etienne Marcuz, an associate fellow at the Foundation for Strategic Research and an anonymous French air power expert.
“In a review of more than a dozen images and videos posted online in the aftermath of the strikes, The Post verified debris consistent with at least two French-made fighter jets flown by the Indian Air Force — a Rafale and a Mirage 2000,” The Post reported.
Separately, Al Jazeera reported on the morning of May 7, after the clash, that three fighter jets had crashed in Indian Occupied Kashmir.
Header image: Residents gather around the debris of a fuel tank of an Indian Mirage 2000 aircraft which crashed in Wuyan area of Pampore, about 15kms from Srinagar on May 7 — Reuters
