Pakistan announced that 42 of its fighter jets fought with 72 Indian fighters, shooting down 5 enemy aircraft, including 3 Rafales, 1 Su-30MKI Flanker and 1 MiG-29 Fulcrum.
Fierce dogfight: 42 vs 72
The War Zone reported that at a press conference on May 9, Pakistani officials said that their air force fighter jets, including Chinese-made J-10C and JF-17, as well as US-made F-16 Viper, participated in the air battle with Indian fighter jets in the early morning of May 7.
The Pakistani government claimed that 42 of its fighter jets engaged 72 Indian jets, shooting down five enemy aircraft, including three French-made Rafales, one Su-30MKI Flanker and one Russian-made MiG-29 Fulcrum, and one drone in this air battle.
Notably, Pakistani Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar revealed that on May 7, the Pakistan Air Force (PAF) successfully shot down five Indian Air Force (IAF) fighter jets, of which the Chinese-made J-10C fighter jet made a great achievement, destroying three modern Rafale jets with PL-15E beyond-visual-range air-to-air missiles.
“We could have shot down 10 or 12 planes. But there was a strict order to attack only those planes that had opened fire,” he said, stressing that the remaining targets were not pursued, in order to prevent a full-scale war from erupting.
The claims from Pakistan remain largely unsubstantiated. Pakistani officials have also released radar data and audio recordings, but these cannot be easily verified independently.
There is, however, visual evidence that at least one of the Rafales crashed. There are also multiple reports of Indian losses, citing unnamed US, French and Indian officials, but they do not give exact numbers or circumstances.
Pakistan rejected India’s claims, insisting there were no casualties.
India in a dilemma
According to some Pakistani sources, all the Indian fighter planes were shot down while they had just taken off from the airport, were still in Pakistani airspace and had not yet reached the enemy target.
Pakistani fighters – also in their airspace – struck first, shooting down five enemy fighters with Chinese-made PL-15E missiles.
The Indian side also found the remaining fragments of at least two PL-15E missiles with consecutive serial numbers in their territory, which shows that in that air battle, Pakistani aircraft quickly locked on the target and fired all the missiles they carried, leading to some missiles not finding the target and self-destructing.
The PL-15E’s 200km range coupled with Pakistan’s very strong air defense radar network is a big problem for India.
If the information that the Indian fighter jets were shot down right after takeoff is true, then Pakistan has indeed launched a dangerous attack that completely surprised the enemy and left them unable to react.
Because, in the history of modern air combat, there are many battle records showing that attacks on planes that have just taken off the runway always have a very high success rate because at that time they are at low speed, their ability to maneuver and avoid is very limited, so being shot down is completely logical.
Therefore, to prevent their aircraft from being attacked by the enemy right at the top of the airport (that is, the airspace right above the airport), countries often deploy dense air defense forces to both intercept attacks on the airbase itself and prevent enemy fighters from lurking and shooting down fighters that have just taken off.
However, the battle in the early morning of May 7 was not a dogfight between the two sides right on the top of the field because Indian and Pakistani aircraft were both operating in their own airspace and had not crossed the border of the neighboring country.
Pakistani fighter jets fired from a distance, some even fired missiles at maximum range, sometimes up to 160km. This showed that their tactics were very reasonable, the planes immediately disengaged after firing a volley of missiles, leaving India no time to react and fire back because the target was no longer on the radar screen.
Being attacked at the moment of take-off, even modern fighter jets like Rafale, Su-30MKI or MiG-29 would have difficulty dodging, so losses were inevitable.
However, the information announced by Pakistan is not easy to verify because all the downed aircraft (if any) fell in Indian airspace and New Dehli officially denied any losses.
