War of IAF, PAF doctrines: As Pakistan obsesses over numbers, India embraces risk, wins

The Print

12 hours ago

All of the active India-Pakistan wars and conflicts have been short, 22 days in 1965 being the longest. Op Sindoor was just over three days. Whenever a conclusive outcome like a capitulation and mass surrender is missing, there's scope for both sides to claim victory.
Now that both the Indian Air Force and Pakistan Air Force have made formal claims of the other's aircraft they shot down in the 87-hour predominantly aerial conflagration in May, we can explore some deeper issues. These are not so much to do with the withheld veracity of the rivals' claims, as with the larger issue. Do these numbers really matter? What do these count for?
There is clarity in some situations, however. We Indians believe we won every war or skirmish, but accept that we lost 1962 to China. Similarly, the Pakistanis concede defeat in 1971. Their capitulation in the eastern sector was total, topped with the surrender of 93,000 taken POW.
So, which air force lost how many aircraft to combat in 1971, just in the eastern sector?
The numbers, established even by rival historians, with tail numbers and pilot names, are: India 13, Pakistan 5. These are losses in combat, not to accidents or the 11 Sabres the PAF pilots abandoned on Day 5 of the war before making a daring escape to Burma in commandeered civilian transport.
Which brings us back to that trick question. At 13 to 5, the IAF lost about three times as many aircraft to combat than the PAF in the east. So, who won that war?
Is that even a question?
And how did the IAF lose the 13 aircraft? Two were lost in air combat (as 5 of the PAF's were) and the rest to small arms fire from the ground. 'Why' is a good question because we just told you all PAF pilots had escaped abandoning their aircraft.
For the IAF, the war didn't end once the PAF was defeated. It redoubled close ground support to the Army to hasten the victory and minimise the Army's casualties, whatever the risk of its own attrition. Eleven of the 13 aircraft were lost to ground fire, flying very low. This is the essential difference between the two air forces. One is obsessed with defensive air combat and self-preservation; the other has an all-out aggressive approach as part of the larger national effort. Losses, as Air Marshal A.K. Bharti said in one of his briefings, will take place when you go out in combat. The PAF is numbers-obsessed, the IAF is overall outcome-oriented.
For the PAF and Pakistani public opinion, however, all that matters is how many aircraft they shot down. Not surprisingly, a Gallup Pakistan poll post-Op Sindoor showed 96 percent Pakistanis believe they won the 'war'. The mood is so heady that while it is their air force that the Pakistanis think 'won' them the war, the army chief is the one who got that ridiculous fifth star. The air chief, already on an extended tenure, got a consolation prize in the form of an indefinite extension in the same rank. You'd feel for the navy guy.
This demonstrates the essential doctrinal difference between the two air forces. The PAF is like a super-defensive boxer who hangs back, face covered with gloves, waiting for the rival to attack, and land a punch when an opening arises. The IAF, on the contrary, has a doctrine of all-out strikes, willing to take some punches. If the PAF believes in risk-avoidance, the IAF is a risk-taker. Often at the cost of frustrating its fans with early losses. But India wins in the end. Air Marshal Bharti underlined this mindset.
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This is an important point to note post-Op Sindoor. Historically, the PAF has assessed its performance simply in terms of the 'score' in the air, however the war ended. Its mindset is a limited, defensive war against the IAF to impose attrition. It has historically aimed at that self-limiting objective, while the larger cause is invariably lost.
In any war, extended or limited, no air force, army or navy fights only its counterpart. The key factor is, what were your nation's objectives and did you enable it to achieve them?
India's Op Sindoor had three objectives. One, destroy the established and well-known headquarters of the Lashkar-e-Taiba at Muridke near Lahore and Jaish-e-Mohammed at Bahawalpur. Second, deter and defend any counterstrike by the Pakistani forces. And third, if they persist, demonstrably deliver counter-force punishment. All of the three boxes, the IAF checked. As several top military leaders have stated, there were some losses in the first. For the first and the third, it also has high-definition pictures and local videos as evidence.
That's how the PAF psyche has evolved over time. If you've been watching its briefings, 'situational awareness' has been its favourite buzzword. It will, therefore, go on about its air-to-air claims. In the big picture, it failed to protect any of the predetermined IAF targets, despite 15 days of warning. Forget preventing, it couldn't even interrupt the strike package. It failed to protect several critical air defence and SAM batteries on 8 May from Harop/Harpy drone attacks. And with its air defences either suppressed or switched off in risk-avoidance, it went to sleep in its bunker on 10 May, metaphorically.
It never rose in combat to challenge scores of IAF aircraft that launched missiles to hit every PAF base, air defence location and critical weapons storage across the entire length and breadth of their country east of the Indus and some across it. You can be sure that if this had gone on for another day, all bases west of the Indus would've also been hit. The PAF was no longer up for a fight.
In fact, the only time the PAF was seen in an attacking mode was when the two JF-17s launched Chinese CM-400AKG anti-radiation missiles to target the S-400 radar at Adampur. It was a bold raid, but foiled by IAF defences. A bolder, more aggressive and risk-taking air force would have dared the IAF with multiple salvos using waves of aircraft, hoping to overwhelm the defences. But risk-taking isn't the PAF's style.
Indian military aviation historians and analysts Pushpindar Singh Chopra, Ravi Rikhye, along with aviation photographer Peter Steinmann described this unique mindset in great detail in their 1991 book Fiza'ya: Psyche of the Pakistan Air Force. The PAF, they wrote, has the psyche of a lonely David taking on the IAF Goliath. Totally divorced from the big picture and that larger situational awareness, their buzzword, I would add.
The book, very kind to the PAF, is now out of print. Pushpindar or 'Pushy', who the defence writers and nerds of my generation owe an incredible debt of gratitude for our learnings, passed away in 2021. I thank his son Vikramjit for lending me his last surviving copy. Pushpindar was working on a Fiza'ya sequel and Vikramjit tells me he will bring it out very soon, within weeks, with a chapter on Op Sindoor added.
They say the PAF psyche is seeing their role sharply limited to air-to-air warfare, accepting limitations of their size and counting the score of rival aircraft shot down as the only determinant of success. And then, conserving itself for that imagined final phase of the war. This means the PAF fights the IAF in one dimension and stays on the sidelines of the larger national effort. The country can lose the war, but the PAF would still claim victory because they 'shot down more aircraft.' We've seen the pattern play out in 1965 and 1971, and even afterwards, post-Balakot.
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Op Sindoor underlines two things, and one follows from the other. First, conflicts between India and Pakistan will likely be short, probably even shorter than these 87 hours. Air power will remain central to it.
Who lost how many aircraft and which type is so much the 1950s military comic-book thinking. The second, what contribution you made to your larger national effort.
For the second, the PAF has produced not a scrap of evidence or picture after more than three months to back its claims. Inexcusable when even commercial satellites are looking at everything. There isn't one picture, even doctored well-enough, to pass the test of a pair of partisan Pakistani eyes.
Yet, Pakistan is celebrating victory. Its media, mainstream and social, politicians across all parties and, of course, serving military leaders and veterans are all proclaiming a glorious victory. Some are even breathlessly claiming that 1971 is avenged while awarding themselves promotions, medals and honours. It's a widely held belief in Pakistan, in spite of the fact that all of the vaunted airbases east of the Indus and some to the west as well were struck in the IAF riposte once Bunyan al Marsoos folded up in failure.
As the PAF spokesman confirmed, all of India's missiles were air-launched. The IAF strike packages aimed and fired at the vaunted PAF bases somewhat at leisure. Because the PAF never rose to defend their bases. They simply wouldn't risk losses, especially with their air defences either suppressed or silenced. It was a very different picture from the night of 6/7 May when the IAF followed severely limited rules of engagement and wasn't permitted to degrade Pakistani air defences.
There are multiple precedents, history, and a psyche to this doctrinal difference. The PAF has historically been seen as the tip of the spear by the Pakistani public opinion, though its role in the Subcontinent's wars has been marginal. I'd go so far as to say, no more than an item number. There is a reason for it, and it lies in the numbers.
As we go ahead, I will make some purely fact-based statements and list numbers that, at the outset, will trigger the Indian partisan and cheer fans of the PAF. I will follow it up with equally factual, rational analysis to show why while Pakistani partisans draw so much joy from these data points, it's actually a story of enduring pain. I borrow that expression, of course, from the DG-ISPR who grandly threatened India after the initial strikes: 'Your temporary joy will turn into enduring pain.' I am flipping it to address the Pakistanis.
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Let's look at the data on our air engagements historically. In each case, India has lost many more aircraft in combat than Pakistan. Briefly, if we compile the list now authenticated by historians on both sides with unit, type, tail numbers, crew names, location and crews taken POW, the numbers of purely combat losses would be India, 52 and Pakistan, 20 in 1965; India, 62 and Pakistan, 37 in 1971. These are purely combat losses, shot in the air or destroyed on the ground by rival air force. Even if you add to the PAF losses the 11 Sabres plus two T-33s they abandoned or destroyed themselves in Dhaka, the IAF losses were significantly greater. In Kargil, the IAF lost three to Pakistani shoulder-fired missiles. The PAF didn't join the fight. Pakistan only celebrated that they had a pilot taken prisoner. Who won these wars?
Pakistan has lost each war it fought against India. I know that Pakistanis have an abiding belief that they won in 1965. My own view goes with the widely accepted wisdom that it was a stalemate (War of Mutual Incompetence, National Interest, dated 10 July, 2015). Substantively, however, Pakistan lost the war because they are the ones who started it after long months of planning. And only they had an objective. With much better NATO weapons and training and Indian forces in the massive post-1962 transition, they were right to think it was their best chance to take Kashmir. It was their last. And they blew it.
The sixth day of September is when they celebrate their supposed victory of 1965 as the Defence of Pakistan Day. There is a unidimensional PAF element to this because they think that day they thwarted multiple, determined IAF raids on Sargodha and shot down many aircraft. So fanciful is their folklore and so strong is the emotion that many rational Pakistanis also ask that if the PAF was so dominant, why did Pakistan not win the war? Good question.
The tough fact is, 6 September is when Pakistan lost that war. What they had launched with impressive panache as a supposed one-two punch with Operations Gibraltar and then Grand Slam to take Kashmir in a blitzkrieg had failed. Roles reversed, cause lost, it was now a war for the defence of Pakistan across the entire frontier. Even in the air. That's why it is called Defence of Pakistan Day. But you know what, Pakistani public opinion would say, whatever the overall result, the PAF did so brilliantly. It's an enduring belief.
Was there one big battle where the PAF tilted the balance? I have read almost everything written on that war on both sides. The only example, if we stretch things, would be the PAF slowing the advance of Indian 15 Division in Lahore sector and buying their army the time to reach its defences. That 15 Division story is recorded differently in India. It's one of the factors in 1965 being a war of mutual incompetence on both sides.
If the PAF was so dominant, it wouldn't have failed so spectacularly to extricate the pride of their armour from being mauled in Asal Uttar/Khem Karan. The fact is, post-6 September, the day when the PAF lost three Sabres in attacks on Adampur and Halwara, they never raided an IAF base in daylight. The boxer was hanging back on the ropes, hoping the IAF comes deep into their airspace so they could fight with home advantage, and get 'kills' in tail chases.
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The 1971 war is better recorded and there's no question on who won. Can the PAF by itself claim victory because it lost less aircraft in action? On honest reflections, the Pakistanis would ask if it had continued going out to fight instead of hanging back in self-preservation, would it have contributed more to the national effort? There isn't one instance of the PAF tilting the balance in a battle. If anything, it abandoned both its army and navy, reaffirming the reputation of the PAF only fighting for itself, by itself, and almost exclusively in its own air space. It fights very well in aerial defence though. It is optimised for that limited role.
Its failures in that war were crippling. The IAF Hunters visited Karachi multiple times in daytime unchallenged over four days, lighting up the oil storages. As did the Canberras at night. The IAF almost single-handedly won the Battle of Longewala and devastated an armoured brigade by itself. If only a couple of PAF fighters had appeared overhead, the history of that battle might have been different. All the IAF had were four Hunters running two-ship relays from an advance airfield (Jaisalmer) with minimal support infrastructure.
To complete the three-example rule, while the Pakistan Army was close to a breakthrough in Fazilka, where India was in such trouble that it had already replaced its 67 Brigade commander for failure, the PAF was mostly missing. In each of the three cases, it had the ability to shift the weight of the battle, rewrite history. But what it did wasn't doctrinally primed.
In the same war, the IAF took heavy losses from ground fire (mostly small arms) in Punjab's Fazilka and Sulemanki sectors to buy time for beleaguered Indian Army units. It accepted the losses because the larger cause mattered. In the 62 IAF losses to combat, 17, the largest number, were large-and-wide low-flying Su-7s, all to small arms fire. There were also five slow Mystères in the same role. The IAF didn't flinch because they had a mission. They weren't bean-counting.
On the contrary, loss/casualty-aversion has been central to the PAF thinking. This is passive defence. It minimises your risks and brings you bragging rights. And your fans will never look at the big picture.
The IAF is the exact opposite. It's aggressive, risk-taking and takes the battle to the enemy's territory. Again, data, which both sides broadly accept, now tells us that of the aircraft lost in air, either to air combat or ground fire, in 1965, the IAF lost four times as many over Pakistani airspace than in their own. In 1971, it was 5:1 because after Day 1, the PAF never attacked Indian defended sectors deeper than 50 km in daylight. It merely sat back to defend, mostly its own bases. Or Karachi wouldn't be abandoned. Any losses the IAF had then were over Pakistan-controlled territory. In fact, the only loss IAF suffered in its own airspace was Flying Officer Nirmal Jit Singh Sekhon for his lone battle with six PAF Sabres. He was awarded a posthumous Param Vir Chakra. PAF historian Air Commodore (retired) Kaiser Tufail acknowledges the lonely battle on his blog under the headline 'A hard nut to crack'. Similarly, because the PAF sat back in defence, most of its losses were in home skies.
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Our official history of the 1971 war was never formally released. But it was leaked to the Times of India and you can find it in full on the Bharat Rakshak website. It concludes the section on the PAF at the end of that war very fairly with the line: in the ring and on its feet. It was so fair that Kaiser Tufail used this as the title for his book on the PAF's version of the 1971 war. The upshot is that while the IAF was dominant, when the war stopped after 13 days, the PAF still had enough strength conserved in case the war had prolonged.
While air-to-air combat always draws much of the attention, the larger dimensions of air power are missed in that excitement. Who shot down how many doesn't count as much as what was air power's role in the larger national war effort. In any case, if you only indulge in bean-counting, you can exaggerate at will. In 1971, by the third day, Pakistan had already claimed 120 IAF aircraft downed. I have for you this banner headline from Dawn of the morning of 5 December .
In the biggest battles of both our big wars, the PAF, though sometimes present, did not make any worthwhile impact even for its own historians and hagiographers to take note of. Its claims of air superiority remained confined to its own airspace. And that, any military historian will tell you, is no superiority at all.
Armed forces are conservative and rarely shift from their set doctrines, even across generations. We saw it from the PAF in Op Sindoor. Once the IAF put it under the pump, it went into the familiar old mode of living to fight another day.
The outcome is that the PAF satisfies itself with the relatively juvenile idea of shooting down some aircraft, exaggerating the numbers and celebrating that in isolation of how the war ended. The IAF has ended up always on the winning side. I read through this history to distill the facts and put the rival post-Sindoor arguments in a fair, substantive perspective.
PostScript: If you are interested in a deeper dive, I am listing some of my readings. I have taken a close look at serious historians' claims from both sides to arrive at rival numbers. Since exaggeration of aerial performance is set deep in PAF psyche, it is likely they'd claim numbers even 'better' than what I have listed. Even if so, it will only strengthen my point. Theirs is the side that lost the war.
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