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I don't know much about modern air forces, but 6 jets in a single mission seems catastrophically bad.
6 jets lost, in their opening move. They had the luxury of attacking at whatever time they wanted without Pakistan knowing, but they still lost 6 jets.
Tbf Pakistan knew the attack was imminent for several days.
Also not necessarily a good sign.
Maybe the whole squadron was 5 Rafale jets & someone crashed in a parked one in a hangar back at the base.
If the number is correct or even close to that number, it's a disaster for IAF, a major embarrassment.
It is really bad for the mission they were carrying out, launching air launched cruise and ballistic missiles from well within Indian airspace, hundreds of km away from the targets. One Rafale got shot down 140km inside Indian territory. High losses are expected, but they didn't even get a single Pakistani jet.
I wrote more here yesterday
I appreciate all your excellent posts on this! If you don't mind a further question, what is the situation like for a Rafale pilot when they are targeted by these missiles? As in, how much time do they have to react, what sort of countermeasure if any did they have available?
PL-15 is a very long range radar guided missile, so time till impact varies on launch distance, and when or if it's detected. The PL-15 has a maximum burnout velocity of over 6500kph, around Mach 5.5. However average velocity will be substantially lower than that due to aerodynamic drag after the daul pulse rocket motor has finished burning out, and at very long range air to air missiles like the AIM-120D, air launched SM-6, R-37M and the PL-15 use a quasi ballistic trajectory to maximise range. If you assume an average velocity of 3000kph and a firing distance of 150km (max range of the export variant of the PL-15, called the PL-15E is 145km, domestic variant up to 300km in extreme scenarios), and an instant launch detection, at most a pilot would have 180 seconds, or three minutes, to carry out evasive maneuvers and deploy countermeasures. However, that's a best case scenario. Realistically a pilot will have less time, the average speed of the missile could be faster, or detection much later.
To detect a radar guided missile, modern jets have something called a radar warning receiver (RWR) to detect enemy radars, changes of frequency when being locked onto and fired upon, etc. The Rafale has a big one on the vertical stabiliser.
However, modern radar guided missiles are not only guided by the radar on the launch aircraft (semi active homing), they have their own mini radars on the missile themselves, that can lock onto a target once close enough, and can operate fully autonomously at that point (fire and forget capability). These are called active radar homing missiles, or fox threes by NATO pilots. The PL-15 is one such missile, it has a mini active electronically scanned array (AESA) radar in the nosecone.
This complicates jamming and detection efforts, as the enemy fighter can turn off their radar after a certain point, or with modern datalink capabilities, the missile can be guided by a completely different source such as an AWACS aircraft, until it gets to the point it can use its own radar. Then the RWR struggles to detect the initial launch, as the fighter launching it can have it's radar completely off, or turn it off soon after launch. Then the RWR would only detect the missile much later, when it turns on it's own radar. The RWR could even be jammed by the enemy, making it inoperable, leaving only the missile approach warning system to detect an incoming missile, these are usually passive systems that make use of infrared search and track technology, so if relatively short range, they were initially invented to detect incoming infrared guided missiles. As for jamming the radar of the missile itself, modern active homing missiles with mini AESA radars can even do frequency hopping, to hop onto a clean frequency, or even home in on a jamming source itself. Complex "kill chains". This all complicates things greatly, which is why many say modern air combat is a case of see first, shoot first, win. And Pakistan has the advantage in the amount of "eyes" they have (more AWACS aircraft and more fighters with AESA radars). Of course a friendly AWACS could inform a fighter pilot of an incoming projectile once they detect it using their much more powerful radars, but they have to detect it.
For countermeasures, options available are electromagnetic jamming (already discussed that), and chaff dispensing, or even towed decoys attached to the aircraft itself, while taking evasive maneuvers to try force an energy defeat scenario (the missile runs out energy). No flares as it's a radar guided missile. However, with modern active homing missiles with mini AESA radars, chaff and decoys no longer work as well, as the radar, despite being much smaller, is much closer to the target itself, making it easier for it to differentiate between the target and chaff or decoys. As for energy defeat, it's quite possible, especially if the missile is not very agile to begin with, like an R-37M for instance. But that requires the pilot to be informed of the launch as it happens, to have enough time to maneuver and bleed the incoming missile of its energy. And a PL-15 is more agile than an R-37M. A direct hit is not needed, modern blast fragmentation missiles have a proximity fuse that will set off the warhead once close enough, coating the target in shrapnel.
Thank you for your expertise and thorough explaination. Ignoring the realities of the horrors of war, I have always been fascinated by the technology involved in air combat. When I was a kid I thought it would be cool to be a fighter pilot, with this sort of weaponry though I don't envy any pilots.
Iirc, India is claiming only three "crashed", but still