The crazy thing about this story is how it proves how awful the planning was. When the first shootdowns were verified, I asked “Can the planning really be so incompetent?”, I was met with answers along the lines of “don’t be surprised”
So basically they just took the Zhuhai PL-15E placard at face value and made absolute zero contingency planning around it. This is astounding because even on this forum of amateur enthusiasts the 150km advertised range was met with great skepticism and was assumed to be a big understatement to hide the true range, or some kind of export gimping. From credible Chinese rumours and US statements that PL-15 outranged AIM-120D, there was a strong possibility of exceeding that range one way or another.
From 2019:
I actually found the above link in a quick Google search that pointed to a post on the war thunder forum, so the Indian planning couldn’t even bother to exceed war thunder players.
Do all kids learn that the rice paper is edible by trying to peel it off for a few minutes, giving up and just eating it anyway assuming, what’s the worst that can happen?”