I would like to highlight especially the operational incompetence/negligence of the IAF.
We have two options: either it was an obvious negligence regarding the operational requirements of the mission or an evident operational incompetence of the IAF.
Negligence -
Perhaps when planning the mission it was anticipated that the Meteor would not be needed, or they were in a different weapons configuration perhaps focused on ground attack, or they simply underestimated Pakistan's capability and response.
All this is negligence. One cannot expect India not to have BVR missiles, because they do. After the 2019 air conflict, where India had MICA and R-77 (80 km) and Pakistan had AIM-120C5 (105 km), India took 3 measures:
1) demanded accelerated delivery of the 250 Meteors that it had purchased in the Rafale package, in July 2020, the Rafale + Meteor duo became operational in India; 2) purchased 400 R-77-1 (RVV-SD), a newer version of the Russian R-77 with a range of 110 km;
3) Accelerated the national BVRs, Astra Mk1, Mk2 and Mk3. Put the Astra Mk1 (110 km) into operation in the same year in 2019.
A video appeared on Twitter of an Indian Rafale taking off with 2x SCALP, 2x GBU, and 2x MICA… In other words, no BVR missiles… if the Rafale took off with this payload, they could not do anything about the J-10C and the PL-15. The first point of negligence.
In addition, if there was a restriction on the operational use of the Rafale, the Rafale mission was thankless. Attacking enemy territory without being able to attack air defenses is a very risky mission. This means that Pakistani air defense assets (SAMs + fighters) were free to operate at all times, while the Indians could only react.
To carry out a mission based on these premises in a relatively safe manner, one would need at least powerful EW aircraft and ideally to execute the deep strikes only with stealth aircraft. If the use of AEW&C as support was not authorized, this was a total operational negligence on the part of the IAF. Otherwise, the outcome could have been different than it was. Even with a lot of planning and excellent execution.
They thought that they would not get any reaction from Pakistan, due to a supposed surprise attack, and flew without AWACS cover and their own sensors were turned off so as not to be detected. This is yet another point of negligence.
Incompetence -
Now what I see is an endless debate about "PL-15 and J-10 vs Rafale"... but what it seems to me and what Pakistan made clear was that the big star of that night was the Saab 2000 AEW&C aircraft associated with the Chinese AWACS, which were the fundamental systems for the entire Command, Control and Communication (C3) structure in a Network Centric Warfare (NCW) architecture. It was this structural capability that outperformed the Indian fighters, or at least took its toll on the strike force.
It is no longer just about fighters + BVR missiles plus AWACS/AEW&C, by no means, it is about the entire NCW (radars, C3I, satellites, data link, IFF, ISR, SIGINT/ELINT/MALE, etc.), without which there is no more modern air warfare.
This is where the question comes in. If India did have AWACS support, what we saw was total incompetence from the IAF.
If you are an operator inside an AWACS, you have under your command a Mission Crew Commander (MCC), who is responsible for interpreting the tactical picture in real time. Now imagine that you see Pakistani fighters on your radar flying at high altitude, tens of km from the border, at high speed. You detect sustained acceleration, ballistic climb, then deceleration and evasive maneuvers... the classic pattern of preparation for a maximum-range BVR launch.
But you also see other enemy fighters, closer to the border, flying low, almost begging you to take the bait and chase them. If you do, you will enter the high probability zone of impact of the missiles fired by those coming from behind.
I wonder:
Did no one on that Indian AWACS — neither the MCC nor his team — recognize this pattern?
So many hours in the simulator, so many joint exercises with NATO forces and they weren't warned?
No one thought: "Why are they flying so high and so far? Why are they accelerating and climbing? Are they trying to give more kinetic energy to their missiles? What if these missiles are not the exported PL-15E, but the original Chinese PL-15s, which have a much longer range?
And those on the ground...
Where was the Chief of the Air Operations Command?
What did the Operational Planning Officers do?
Did they fall asleep?
In a split second, I withdraw my planes from that area, take advantage of the massiveness of my force, launch a multi-azimuth strike with Rafale and Su-30MKI, saturating their defenses, and activate my relieving CAPs to maintain the pressure. And while this is happening in the air, I am preparing ballistic missiles and crossing their forward bases and runways. There were options. But doctrinal rigidity ended up subjugating the IAF itself.
Outdated tactics, governed by the old USSR standards, where the pilot has practically no decision about Nothing.
If there really was an AWACS, it shows a lack of support from the command of the operation or the Indian AWACS are much inferior to those that Pakistan has, because if it is confirmed that there were Indian AWACS in the operation, the conversations of the Indian pilots show that they did not know where the PAF fighters were.
Or it was a combination of both, both negligence and incompetence. It would be even worse for India if they had assembled obsolete formations to attack Pakistan, perhaps a WWII-style “combat box” bomber package. Combat box is the configuration that the Americans used in WWII when they flew without escorts with a strike package composed 100% of bombers. They used something similar (not exactly the same) until Operation Rolling Thunder, where they lost 1,000 aircraft in Vietnam and implemented the “Strike Package” doctrine with Wild Weasel, AWACS, many escorts and only 40% of the strike package formation carried out ground attacks.
Furthermore, if 70 aircraft actually took off in this formation for ground attack, that was definitely impressive. In the 1991 Gulf War, the USAF assembled strike packages with ground attack fighters (F-16), air-to-air combat (F15) and electronic warfare (F-4 Wild Weasel). The largest package was Package Q which had 78 aircraft – and it was chaos because they had difficulty coordinating so many aircraft and ended up with two F-16s shot down. After that, the USAF significantly reduced the size of the strike packages to make them more coordinated.
Another factor to analyze and which seems to be more relevant is the performance of the Chinese PL15 BVR missiles. In fact, it has been shown that the defenses of the Rafale – especially the Spectra – were insufficient in relation to this missile.
