Hello Hello Good Evening or Good Morning or Good Between,
After forced to spend lots of time on this subject over all sorts of media, I feel I am one of the better arm-chair generals in modern warfare in the context of this recent Bharat Pak conflict.
In this 3rd decade of the 21st century, air combat between two military peers is essentially video games of real-time long-distance loosely-coupled seamlessly-integrated kill-chains, which are comprised of all sorts of sensors and relays and actuators.
For those who have hands-on experience in complex industrial system integration, which have similar aspects of system engineering, it is rather simple and straightforward in replay and postmortem of this air war.
The real-time aspect includes but is not limited to sensors and communications that enable situation awareness. Pak has demonstrated one kill-chain of HQ-9 radar detection => ZDK-03 AWACS => J-10C => PL-15E that can be guided by its jet or AWACS. Maybe throw in some electronics warfare. Everything works the way as advertised, no more no less. If Bharat had similar kill-chain, then we should have seen at least some results from the Bharat side. The fact that it was 5:0 or 6:0 or whatever indicates that the Bharat air battle system is inferior. That is it, simple and easy. It really doesn't matter what Rafale should be or might be. Or it doest not even matter much which pilots are better trained. Rather it is sensor detection, data ingestion, real-time analysis and communication and decision, pilot pushing some button(s), missile guided by the system fly toward target in range. Game over.
The whole battle was a very simple replay of the system integration capabilities. The real complex knowledge or innovation resides in each component or link or station that are seamlessly integrated for shooting the target.
I can simplistically conclude that, after this air battle example, any isolated piece of weapons is probably only good for photos or videos or shows or propagandas, for which why we are here. It really does not matter much if a system is comprised of Country-A weapons or Country-B weapons, as long as weapons can be seamlessly integrated as a capable kill-chain.
The real question who (countries or institutions) produces and delivers such air combat systems in this world right here right now. In this case study, it was one-sited slaughter simple because A used such kill-chains agaisnt B who didn't have.
