Operation Sindhoor: Were our Indian Rafales with their MDBA Meteor missiles inferior to Pakistan's Shenyang J-10s and their PL-15 missiles? - a military aviation afficionado's take on the issue

          To give the background of the event that led to India's retaliation against Pak terrorist camps on the night of 6th-7th May 2025 - on the 22nd of April, a group of terrorists from Pakistan belonging to an offshoot of Lashkar-e-Tayyiba launched a paramilitary-style terrorist attack on innocent Indian tourists who were visiting the place called Pahalgam in Kashmir while singling them out based on their religious affiliation and nearly 28 people were killed including a Navy officer a couple of days after his marriage. This is the backdrop of India's carefully weighed and orchestrated retaliation on 9 Pak terrorist camps on the wee hours of 6th-7th of May in which only terrorist camps were hit and there were 0 civilian/military casualties on the Pak side. In response to the Indian aircraft used in the attack on the terrorist camps which include Dassault Rafales, Su-30 MKI and Mig-29s as well as drones, the PAF launched their aircraft including a SAAB AWACS and fighters like JF-17s and J-10s. While the Pakistani side claims that it shot down 3 Rafales, 1 Su-30 MKI and 1 Mig-29 using long-range PL-15 missiles. We see so much publicity and propaganda around the Pak shootdown of at least 1 Rafale on the Internet, a claim that centers around the vertical tail fin of a Rafale in a Punjabi field with the number 001. In response to Pak claims, our Air Chief Marshall said "losses are a part and parcel of any mission" while not explicitly making any solid admissions on losses which could be weaponised by the Pak side. In the light of this, so many Pakistanis are posting comments on videos made by Youtube military analysts as well as news videos on the attack on the terrorist camps being a failure because of the shoot-down of the Rafale which is currently the most advanced aircraft in the IAF's inventory. Here is my response to those who think that the Rafale is an inferior plane or try to cast a slur on the IAF as a potent and well-trained organisation.

i) Among the factors that need to be taken into account is 1 essential piece of information which is that the PAF knew the capabilities of the Rafale as a plane especially because Pak air force analysts took part in a joint air exercise with the Qatari Air Force which operates the Rafales. It is taken for granted that wherever the PAF military analysts went, they would have also taken some Chinese military pilots/analysts with them to assess the capabilities of the plane to make up for any lacunae in the knowledge or understanding of the plane by the Pak military analysts. In warfare, getting to know one's enemy and weapons is crucial and our enemies in the PAF weaponised this information.

ii) Even if one were to grant that a Rafale had been shot down (for which there is no certain information aside from the tail fin pic), those commoners who support PAF from their territory are not all knowledgeable about the load-out of our aircraft that struck terror camps in Pakistani territory and what the PAF aircraft carried, since they were involved in defensive counter-air. The fact that we wanted to strike terror camps in Pakistani territory dictated that our Rafales were to carry only air-to-ground weapons like the SCALP EG long-range air-to-ground guided missile and the Hammer missiles which left little to no space on board to carry the MICA, MICA NG, MDBA Meteor or ASRAAM missiles which Rafales usually carry for air-to-air missions - these are missiles that are more capable than their Russian counterparts used on board the Su-30 MKI or Mig-29 in terms of their seeker-head technology and the avionics on-board the missiles themselves, although these European missiles still did not have the range of the PL-15s. The IAF was solely relying on Su-30 MKIs and Mig-29's to play the CAP role, so the Rafale never had the chance to prove itself in the air combat role  since the mission profile was air-to-ground, our Rafales neither carried BVRAAM missiles for self-defence nor did they get the chance to prove themselves in air-to-air, since Pak use of the Chinese made BVRAAM PL-15 with longer range negated that possibility.

iii)  The Rafale squadrons were the main strike package and the other aircraft like Su-30 MKI and Mig-29s were designated CAP roles to protect the Rafale strike passage. What this means is that the Rafale pilots' sole objective was to take out Pak terrorist camps and return to base and any insurgence by the enemy JF-17s or J-10s would be ideally handled by the Su-30 MKIs and Mig-29s. The PL-15's from the J-10s were therefore launched when our Rafales had their backs to the PAF planes - a clear shot bordering on overkill - any fighter pilot would want to be in his opponent's 6 'o' clock position and to shoot down a plane from that position is almost overkill because even if the Rafale carried air-to-air missiles, none of those missiles had the range of the PL-15 nor were they capable of shooting down an aggressor aircraft in pursuit from the rear at such long ranges.

iv) The unavailability of a missile in the current inventory of the IAF that can match or exceed the range of the PL-15 or anything in the Chinese AF's inventory, has to be eliminated both through indegenous development of missile technology to counter this threat as well as joint development or purchase of longer range weapons if possible like the US JATM. While work is being conducted to improve the indigenously made ASTRA BVRAAM missile and to produce it en masse, the sad part is that mass production of this missile has not started yet which is why our Su-30 MKIs and Mig-29s could not be fitted with them to count the PL-15 threat in Operation Sindhoor.

v) Furthermore, I would like to stress the importance of India working hand-in-hand with Rafael systems Israel on producing the seeker head of the ASTRA BVRAAM instead of solely relying on DRDO's internal talent or engineers to successfully produce a very potent ASTRA missile or star missiles with more advanced seeker heads since the Israelis excel in electronics and technology - proof for this is the Python-5 Fox-2 missiles in our IAF's inventory procured from Rafael systems Israel which have off-boresight capability for close-in-dogfight or the DERBY missile also available in our inventory procured from Rafael systems Israel.

vi) The MDBA Meteor is the Rafale's primary long-range weapon and it has a larger no-escape zone compared to the PL-15 used against our aircraft in the recent operation Sindhoor. So while the MDBA Meteor is no slouch when it comes to its terminal phase when it accelerates to Mach-3 or 4 to hit its target pretty much like the PL-15, the West and in extension the French also have to work on developing missiles with greater ranges to counter the latest generation of Chinese BVRAAM threats, something that the US has taken stock of and is developing the AIM-120 D AMRAAM or the even longer range AIM-260 JATM or a newer version of the AIM-54 Phoenix missile currently under development with a longer range.

vii) Here is my take on what could have been done to reduce our chances of losing our Rafales - the ace up our Rafale's sleeve is the SCALP EG that gives our IAF the stand-off range to take out targets in the enemy territory without having to get too close into Pak territory in order to use the Hammer missiles which have shorter ranges compared to the SCALP-EG => something we could have used to our advantage, SCALP EG along with the Brahmos alone are enough to take out the terror targets without endangering our Rafales to surface-to-air and air-to-air threats, the rest of the terror targets could have been taken out solely via the use of drones because if a drone is lost, our pilots are still safe and in the current scenario though all our pilots returned home after the mission, we endangered our Rafales by getting too close to enemy territory - something unwanted. And while the positive thing is that even the Rafale that was supposedly shot down fell inside Indian territory meaning that its on-board equipment and electronics thankfully never fell into Pak hands and eventually into the hands of the Chinese, the use of PL-15 also meant that our military recovered parts of the missile especially the part behind the proximity fuse section, while this is something which would turn to our advantage when developing our indegenous ASTRA or star missiles, if we had recovered an intact PL-15 (along with the proximity fuse and guidance section), we would have hit the jackpot for our own DRDO's missile development program because the "seeker head" or "guidance section" of the missile is its most important part key to understanding where India stands with respect to China in missile development.

viii) For the illiterate Pak morons who make fun of the Rafale online in Youtube and elsewhere using play of words by spelling it as "Rawfail" pointing to the shootdown -> if you do not know French, I would advise you to keep your traps shut because "Rafale" is NOT pronounced "Rafail" as most anglophones would pronounce it, "Rafale" is a French word which is pronounced "Rafahl", since the French "A" is always pronounced "ah" irrespective of its position in any word unlike in English - take it from a francophile and a polyglot.

In short, Operation Sindhoor was a necessary step taken by India to drive home the point to Pakistan that India will not tolerate violence against our fellow citizens and while the mission objectives were achieved in the destruction of the 9 terror camps and our pilots are safely back home, it also highlighted certain areas where our defence industry has to take more concrete steps jointly with our international partners to ensure that we as a country are not left behind in our defence capabilities so that our enemies would think twice before venturing to harm our nation militarily or through terrorism. Jai Hind!