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Time of India
5 days ago
- Politics
- Time of India
Ukraine's drone attack on Russian air bases is lesson for West on its vulnerabilities
Live Events (You can now subscribe to our (You can now subscribe to our Economic Times WhatsApp channel The targets were Russian warplanes, including strategic bombers and command-and-control aircraft, worth hundreds of millions of dollars. The weapons were Ukrainian drones, each costing under $1,000 and launched from wooden containers carried on trucks."Operation Spiderweb," which Ukraine said destroyed or damaged over 40 aircraft parked at air bases across Russia on Sunday, wasn't just a blow to the Kremlin's prestige. It was also a wake-up call for the West to bolster its air defence systems against such hybrid drone warfare, military experts took advantage of inexpensive drone technology that has advanced rapidly in the last decade and combined it with outside-the-box thinking to score a morale-boosting win in the 3-year-old war that lately has turned in Moscow's deeply the attack will impact Russian military operations is unclear. Although officials in Kyiv estimated it caused $7 billion in damage, the Russian Foreign Ministry disputed that, and there have been no independent assessments. Moscow still has more aircraft to launch its bombs and cruise missiles against the operation showed what "modern war really looks like and why it's so important to stay ahead with technology," said Ukrainian President Volodymyr the West is vulnerableFor Western governments, it's a warning that "the spectrum of threats they're going to have to take into consideration only gets broader," said Douglas Barrie, senior fellow for military aerospace at the International Institute of Strategic Studies in the past decade, European countries have accused Russia of carrying out a sabotage campaign against the West, with targets ranging from defense executives and logistics companies to businesses linked to drones have been seen in the past year flying near military bases in the US, the UK and Germany, as well as above weapons factories in weapons and other technology at those sites are "big, juicy targets for both state and non-state actors," said Caitlin Lee, a drone warfare expert at RAND in Washington."The time is now" to invest in anti-drone defences, she options to protect aircraft include using hardened shelters, dispersing the targets to different bases and camouflaging them or even building President Donald Trump last month announced a $175 billion "Golden Dome" programme using space-based weapons to protect the country from long-range mentioned were defences against drones, which Lee said can be challenging because they fly low and slow, and on radar can look like birds. They also can be launched inside national borders, unlike a supersonic missile fired from "dramatically increase" the capacity by a hostile state or group for significant sabotage, said Fabian Hinz, a missile expert and research fellow at IISS."How many targets are there in a country? How well can you defend every single one of them against a threat like that?" he resourceful, outside-the-box thinkingIn "Operation Spiderweb," Ukraine said it smuggled the first-person view, or FPV, drones into Russia, where they were placed in the wooden containers and eventually driven by truck close to the airfields in the Irkutsk region in Siberia, the Murmansk region in the Arctic, and the Amur region in the Far East, as well as to two bases in western Security Service, or SBU , said the drones had highly automated capabilities and were partly piloted by an operator and partly by using artificial intelligence, which flew them along a pre-planned route in the event the drones lost signal. Such AI technology almost certainly would have been unavailable to Ukraine five years video showed drones swooping over and under Russian aircraft, some of which were covered by tires. Experts suggested the tires could have been used to confuse an automatic targeting system by breaking up the plane's silhouette or to offer primitive protection."The way in which the Ukrainians brought this together is creative and obviously caught the Russians completely off guard," Barrie photos analysed by The Associated Press showed seven destroyed bombers on the tarmac at Irkutsk's Belaya Air Base, a major installation for Russia's long-range bomber force. At least three Tu-95 four-engine turboprop bombers and four Tu-22M twin-engine supersonic bombers appear to be the beginning of Russia's full-scale invasion in 2022, the outgunned and outnumbered Ukrainian military has adopted a creative approach to warfare. Its forces deployed wooden decoys of expensive US HIMARS air defence systems to draw Russia's missile fire, created anti-drone units that operate on pickup trucks, and repurposed captured compared Sunday's attack to Israel's operation last year in which pagers used by members of the militant group Hezbollah exploded almost simultaneously in Lebanon and Syria. Israel also has used small, exploding drones to attack targets in Lebanon and US used Predator drones more than a decade ago to kill insurgents in Afghanistan from thousands of miles away. Developments in technology have made those capabilities available in smaller compared the state of drone warfare to that of the development of the tank, which made its debut in 1916 in World War I. Engineers sought to work out how to best integrate tanks into a working battlefield scenario - contemplating everything from a tiny vehicle to a giant one "with 18 turrets" before settling on the version used in World War drones, "we are in the phase of figuring that out, and things are changing so rapidly that what works today might not work tomorrow," he the attack affects Russian operations in UkraineThe Tu-95 bombers hit by Ukraine are "effectively irreplaceable" because they're no longer in production, said Hinz, the IISS expert. Ukraine said it also hit an A-50 early warning and control aircraft, similar to the West's AWACS planes, that coordinate aerial attacks. Russia has even fewer of these."Whichever way you cut the cake for Russia, this requires expense," said Thomas Withington of the Royal United Services Institute in London. "You can see the billions of dollars mounting up,"Russia must repair the damaged planes, better protect its remaining aircraft and improve its ability to disrupt such operations, he said. Experts also suggested the strikes could force Moscow to speed up its programme to replace the underscoring Russian vulnerabilities, it's not clear if it will mean reduced airstrikes on has focused on trying to overwhelm Ukraine's air defences with drones throughout the war, including the use of decoys without payloads. On some nights last month, Moscow launched over 300 drones."Even if Ukraine was able to damage a significant portion of the Russian bomber force, it's not entirely clear that the bomber force was playing a linchpin role in the war at this point," Lee air force data analysed by AP shows that from July 2024 through December 2024, Russia used Tu-22M3s and Tu-95s 14 times against Ukraine but used drones almost every operation might temporarily reduce Russia's ability to launch strategic missile attacks but it will probably find ways to compensate, Lee said.
San Francisco Chronicle
5 days ago
- Politics
- San Francisco Chronicle
Ukraine's drone attack on Russian air bases is a lesson for the West on its vulnerabilities
The targets were Russian warplanes, including strategic bombers and command-and-control aircraft, worth hundreds of millions of dollars. The weapons were Ukrainian drones, each costing under $1,000 and launched from wooden containers carried on trucks. 'Operation Spiderweb,' which Ukraine said destroyed or damaged over 40 aircraft parked at air bases across Russia on Sunday, wasn't just a blow to the Kremlin's prestige. It was also a wake-up call for the West to bolster its air defense systems against such hybrid drone warfare, military experts said. Ukraine took advantage of inexpensive drone technology that has advanced rapidly in the last decade and combined it with outside-the-box thinking to score a morale-boosting win in the 3-year-old war that lately has turned in Moscow's favor. How deeply the attack will impact Russian military operations is unclear. Although officials in Kyiv estimated it caused $7 billion in damage, the Russian Foreign Ministry disputed that, and there have been no independent assessments. Moscow still has more aircraft to launch its bombs and cruise missiles against Ukraine. Still, the operation showed what 'modern war really looks like and why it's so important to stay ahead with technology,' said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Where the West is vulnerable For Western governments, it's a warning that 'the spectrum of threats they're going to have to take into consideration only gets broader,' said Douglas Barrie, senior fellow for military aerospace at the International Institute of Strategic Studies in London. In the past decade, European countries have accused Russia of carrying out a sabotage campaign against the West, with targets ranging from defense executives and logistics companies to businesses linked to Ukraine. Unidentified drones have been seen in the past year flying near military bases in the U.S., the U.K and Germany, as well as above weapons factories in Norway. High-value weapons and other technology at those sites are 'big, juicy targets for both state and non-state actors,' said Caitlin Lee, a drone warfare expert at RAND in Washington. 'The time is now' to invest in anti-drone defenses, she said. Low-cost options to protect aircraft include using hardened shelters, dispersing the targets to different bases and camouflaging them or even building decoys. U.S. President Donald Trump last month announced a $175 billion 'Golden Dome' program using space-based weapons to protect the country from long-range missiles. Not mentioned were defenses against drones, which Lee said can be challenging because they fly low and slow, and on radar can look like birds. They also can be launched inside national borders, unlike a supersonic missile fired from abroad. Drones 'dramatically increase' the capacity by a hostile state or group for significant sabotage, said Fabian Hinz, a missile expert and research fellow at IISS. 'How many targets are there in a country? How well can you defend every single one of them against a threat like that?' he said. Ukraine's resourceful, outside-the-box thinking In 'Operation Spiderweb,' Ukraine said it smuggled the first-person view, or FPV, drones into Russia, where they were placed in the wooden containers and eventually driven by truck close to the airfields in the Irkutsk region in Siberia, the Murmansk region in the Arctic, and the Amur region in the Far East, as well as to two bases in western Russia. Ukraine's Security Service, or SBU, said the drones had highly automated capabilities and were partly piloted by an operator and partly by using artificial intelligence, which flew them along a pre-planned route in the event the drones lost signal. Such AI technology almost certainly would have been unavailable to Ukraine five years ago. SBU video showed drones swooping over and under Russian aircraft, some of which were covered by tires. Experts suggested the tires could have been used to confuse an automatic targeting system by breaking up the plane's silhouette or to offer primitive protection. 'The way in which the Ukrainians brought this together is creative and obviously caught the Russians completely off guard,' Barrie said. Satellite photos analyzed by The Associated Press showed seven destroyed bombers on the tarmac at Irkutsk's Belaya Air Base, a major installation for Russia's long-range bomber force. At least three Tu-95 four-engine turboprop bombers and four Tu-22M twin-engine supersonic bombers appear to be destroyed. Since the beginning of Russia's full-scale invasion in 2022, the outgunned and outnumbered Ukrainian military has adopted a creative approach to warfare. Its forces deployed wooden decoys of expensive U.S. HIMARS air defense systems to draw Russia's missile fire, created anti-drone units that operate on pickup trucks, and repurposed captured weapons. Experts compared Sunday's attack to Israel's operation last year in which pagers used by members of the militant group Hezbollah exploded almost simultaneously in Lebanon and Syria. Israel also has used small, exploding drones to attack targets in Lebanon and Iran. The U.S. used Predator drones more than a decade ago to kill insurgents in Afghanistan from thousands of miles away. Developments in technology have made those capabilities available in smaller drones. Hinz compared the state of drone warfare to that of the development of the tank, which made its debut in 1916 in World War I. Engineers sought to work out how to best integrate tanks into a working battlefield scenario — contemplating everything from a tiny vehicle to a giant one 'with 18 turrets' before settling on the version used in World War II. With drones, 'we are in the phase of figuring that out, and things are changing so rapidly that what works today might not work tomorrow,' he said. How the attack affects Russian operations in Ukraine The Tu-95 bombers hit by Ukraine are 'effectively irreplaceable' because they're no longer in production, said Hinz, the IISS expert. Ukraine said it also hit an A-50 early warning and control aircraft, similar to the West's AWACS planes, that coordinate aerial attacks. Russia has even fewer of these. 'Whichever way you cut the cake for Russia, this requires expense," said Thomas Withington of the Royal United Services Institute in London. "You can see the billions of dollars mounting up,' Russia must repair the damaged planes, better protect its remaining aircraft and improve its ability to disrupt such operations, he said. Experts also suggested the strikes could force Moscow to speed up its program to replace the Tu-95. While underscoring Russian vulnerabilities, it's not clear if it will mean reduced airstrikes on Ukraine. Russia has focused on trying to overwhelm Ukraine's air defenses with drones throughout the war, including the use of decoys without payloads. On some nights last month, Moscow launched over 300 drones. 'Even if Ukraine was able to damage a significant portion of the Russian bomber force, it's not entirely clear that the bomber force was playing a linchpin role in the war at this point,' Lee said. Ukrainian air force data analyzed by AP shows that from July 2024 through December 2024, Russia used Tu-22M3s and Tu-95s 14 times against Ukraine but used drones almost every night.
Winnipeg Free Press
5 days ago
- Politics
- Winnipeg Free Press
Ukraine's drone attack on Russian air bases is a lesson for the West on its vulnerabilities
The targets were Russian warplanes, including strategic bombers and command-and-control aircraft, worth hundreds of millions of dollars. The weapons were Ukrainian drones, each costing under $1,000 and launched from wooden containers carried on trucks. 'Operation Spiderweb,' which Ukraine said destroyed or damaged over 40 aircraft parked at air bases across Russia on Sunday, wasn't just a blow to the Kremlin's prestige. It was also a wake-up call for the West to bolster its air defense systems against such hybrid drone warfare, military experts said. Ukraine took advantage of inexpensive drone technology that has advanced rapidly in the last decade and combined it with outside-the-box thinking to score a morale-boosting win in the 3-year-old war that lately has turned in Moscow's favor. FILE - This satellite image provided by Maxar Technologies shows damage from a Ukrainian drone attack at the Belaya Air Base in the Irkutsk region of eastern Siberia, Russia, on Wednesday, June 4, 2025. (Maxar Technologies via AP, File) How deeply the attack will impact Russian military operations is unclear. Although officials in Kyiv estimated it caused $7 billion in damage, the Russian Foreign Ministry disputed that, and there have been no independent assessments. Moscow still has more aircraft to launch its bombs and cruise missiles against Ukraine. Still, the operation showed what 'modern war really looks like and why it's so important to stay ahead with technology,' said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Where the West is vulnerable For Western governments, it's a warning that 'the spectrum of threats they're going to have to take into consideration only gets broader,' said Douglas Barrie, senior fellow for military aerospace at the International Institute of Strategic Studies in London. In the past decade, European countries have accused Russia of carrying out a sabotage campaign against the West, with targets ranging from defense executives and logistics companies to businesses linked to Ukraine. Unidentified drones have been seen in the past year flying near military bases in the U.S., the U.K and Germany, as well as above weapons factories in Norway. High-value weapons and other technology at those sites are 'big, juicy targets for both state and non-state actors,' said Caitlin Lee, a drone warfare expert at RAND in Washington. 'The time is now' to invest in anti-drone defenses, she said. Low-cost options to protect aircraft include using hardened shelters, dispersing the targets to different bases and camouflaging them or even building decoys. U.S. President Donald Trump last month announced a $175 billion 'Golden Dome' program using space-based weapons to protect the country from long-range missiles. Not mentioned were defenses against drones, which Lee said can be challenging because they fly low and slow, and on radar can look like birds. They also can be launched inside national borders, unlike a supersonic missile fired from abroad. Drones 'dramatically increase' the capacity by a hostile state or group for significant sabotage, said Fabian Hinz, a missile expert and research fellow at IISS. 'How many targets are there in a country? How well can you defend every single one of them against a threat like that?' he said. Ukraine's resourceful, outside-the-box thinking In 'Operation Spiderweb,' Ukraine said it smuggled the first-person view, or FPV, drones into Russia, where they were placed in the wooden containers and eventually driven by truck close to the airfields in the Irkutsk region in Siberia, the Murmansk region in the Arctic, and the Amur region in the Far East, as well as to two bases in western Russia. Ukraine's Security Service, or SBU, said the drones had highly automated capabilities and were partly piloted by an operator and partly by using artificial intelligence, which flew them along a pre-planned route in the event the drones lost signal. Such AI technology almost certainly would have been unavailable to Ukraine five years ago. SBU video showed drones swooping over and under Russian aircraft, some of which were covered by tires. Experts suggested the tires could have been used to confuse an automatic targeting system by breaking up the plane's silhouette or to offer primitive protection. 'The way in which the Ukrainians brought this together is creative and obviously caught the Russians completely off guard,' Barrie said. Satellite photos analyzed by The Associated Press showed seven destroyed bombers on the tarmac at Irkutsk's Belaya Air Base, a major installation for Russia's long-range bomber force. At least three Tu-95 four-engine turboprop bombers and four Tu-22M twin-engine supersonic bombers appear to be destroyed. Since the beginning of Russia's full-scale invasion in 2022, the outgunned and outnumbered Ukrainian military has adopted a creative approach to warfare. Its forces deployed wooden decoys of expensive U.S. HIMARS air defense systems to draw Russia's missile fire, created anti-drone units that operate on pickup trucks, and repurposed captured weapons. Experts compared Sunday's attack to Israel's operation last year in which pagers used by members of the militant group Hezbollah exploded almost simultaneously in Lebanon and Syria. Israel also has used small, exploding drones to attack targets in Lebanon and Iran. The U.S. used Predator drones more than a decade ago to kill insurgents in Afghanistan from thousands of miles away. Developments in technology have made those capabilities available in smaller drones. Hinz compared the state of drone warfare to that of the development of the tank, which made its debut in 1916 in World War I. Engineers sought to work out how to best integrate tanks into a working battlefield scenario — contemplating everything from a tiny vehicle to a giant one 'with 18 turrets' before settling on the version used in World War II. With drones, 'we are in the phase of figuring that out, and things are changing so rapidly that what works today might not work tomorrow,' he said. How the attack affects Russian operations in Ukraine The Tu-95 bombers hit by Ukraine are 'effectively irreplaceable' because they're no longer in production, said Hinz, the IISS expert. Ukraine said it also hit an A-50 early warning and control aircraft, similar to the West's AWACS planes, that coordinate aerial attacks. Russia has even fewer of these. 'Whichever way you cut the cake for Russia, this requires expense,' said Thomas Withington of the Royal United Services Institute in London. 'You can see the billions of dollars mounting up,' Russia must repair the damaged planes, better protect its remaining aircraft and improve its ability to disrupt such operations, he said. Experts also suggested the strikes could force Moscow to speed up its program to replace the Tu-95. While underscoring Russian vulnerabilities, it's not clear if it will mean reduced airstrikes on Ukraine. Russia has focused on trying to overwhelm Ukraine's air defenses with drones throughout the war, including the use of decoys without payloads. On some nights last month, Moscow launched over 300 drones. 'Even if Ukraine was able to damage a significant portion of the Russian bomber force, it's not entirely clear that the bomber force was playing a linchpin role in the war at this point,' Lee said. Ukrainian air force data analyzed by AP shows that from July 2024 through December 2024, Russia used Tu-22M3s and Tu-95s 14 times against Ukraine but used drones almost every night. Sunday's operation might temporarily reduce Russia's ability to launch strategic missile attacks but it will probably find ways to compensate, Lee said. ——- Associated Press writer Hanna Arhirova in Kyiv, Ukraine, contributed.
Boston Globe
02-06-2025
- Politics
- Boston Globe
Ukraine's drone attack on Russian warplanes was a serious blow to the Kremlin's strategic arsenal
While some Russian military bloggers compared it to another infamous Sunday surprise attack — that of Japan's strike on the U.S. base at Pearl Harbor in 1941 — others rejected the analogy, arguing the actual damage was far less significant than Ukraine claimed Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up A look at what warplanes were reported hit: Advertisement Russia's bomber assets For decades, long-range bombers have been part of the Soviet and Russian nuclear triad that also includes land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles and atomic-powered submarines carrying ICBMs. The strategic bombers have flown regular patrols around the globe showcasing Moscow's nuclear might. During the 3-year-old war in Ukraine, Russia has used the heavy planes to launch waves of cruise missile strikes across the country. The Tupolev Tu-95, which was code named Bear by NATO, is a four-engine turboprop plane designed in the 1950s to rival the U.S. B-52 bomber. The aircraft has an intercontinental range and carries eight long-range cruise missiles that can be equipped with conventional or nuclear warheads. Advertisement Before Sunday, Russia was estimated to have a fleet of about 60 such aircraft. The Tupolev Tu-22M is a twin-engine supersonic bomber designed in the 1970s that was code named Backfire by NATO. It has a shorter range compared with the Tu-95, but during U.S.-Soviet arms control talks in the 1970s, Washington insisted on counting them as part of the Soviet strategic nuclear arsenal because of their capability to reach the U.S. if refueled in flight. The latest version of the plane, the Tu-22M3, carries Kh-22 cruise missiles that fly at more than three times the speed of sound. It dates to the 1970s, when it was designed by the Soviet Union to strike U.S. aircraft carriers. It packs a big punch, thanks to its supersonic speed and ability to carry 630 kilograms (nearly 1,400 pounds) of explosives, but its outdated guidance system could make it highly inaccurate against ground targets, raising the possibility of collateral damage. Some Tu-22Ms were lost in previous Ukrainian attacks, and Russia was estimated to have between 50 and 60 Tu-22M3s in service before Sunday's drone strike. The production of the Tu-95 and the Tu-22M ended after the 1991 collapse of the USSR, meaning that any of them lost Sunday can't be replaced. Russia also has another type of strategic nuclear capable bomber, the supersonic Tu-160. Fewer than 20 of them are in service, and Russia has just begun production of its modernized version equipped with new engines and avionics. Russia lost a significant part of its heavy bomber fleet in the attack 'with no immediate ability to replace it,' said Douglas Barrie of the International Institute of Strategic Studies, noting that Moscow's announced plan to develop the next generation strategic bomber is still in its early phase. Advertisement 'Ironically this might give impetus to that program, because if if you want to keep your bomber fleet up to size, then you're going to have to do something at some point,' he said. The A-50, which Ukrainian officials also said was hit in the strikes, is an early warning and control aircraft similar to the U.S. AWACS planes used to coordinate aerial attacks. Only few such planes are in service with the Russian military, and any loss badly dents Russia's military capability. Relocating bombers and impromptu protection Repeated Ukrainian strikes on the Engels air base, the main base for Russian nuclear capable strategic bombers near the Volga River city of Saratov, prompted Moscow to relocate the bombers to other bases farther from the conflict. One of them was Olenya on the Arctic Kola Peninsula, from where Tu-95s have flown multiple missions to launch cruise missiles at Ukraine. Several bombers at Olenya apparently were hit by the Ukrainian drones Sunday, according to analysts studying satellite images before and after the strike. Other drones targeted the Belaya air base in the Irkutsk region in eastern Siberia, destroying a few Tu-22M bombers, according to analysts. Ukraine said 41 aircraft — Tu-95s, Tu-22Ms and A-50s — were damaged or destroyed Sunday. in the attack that it said was in the works for 18 months in which swarms of drones popped out of containers carried on trucks that were parked near four air bases. U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth was briefed on the attack, which represented a level of sophistication that Washington had not seen before, a senior defense official said on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters. Advertisement The Russian Defense Ministry said the attack set several warplanes ablaze at air bases in the Irkutsk region in eastern Siberia and the Murmansk region in the north, but the fires were extinguished. It said Ukraine also tried to strike two air bases in western Russia, as well as another one in the Amur region of Russia's Far East, but those attacks were repelled. The drone strikes produced an outcry from Russian military bloggers, who criticized the Defense Ministry for failing to learn from previous strikes and protect the bombers. Building shelters or hangars for such large planes is a daunting task, and the military has tried some impromptu solutions that were criticized as window dressing. Satellite images have shown Tu-95s at various air bases covered by layers of old tires – a measure of dubious efficiency that has drawn mockery on social media.
Express Tribune
11-05-2025
- Politics
- Express Tribune
How Pakistan became China's air power showroom
Between the night of May 6 and 7, Pakistan and India were locked in the fiercest air battle of the 21st century. As many as 125 fighter jets took the sky, the numbers advantage tilted heavily in India's favour. When the dust settled and the fog of war lifted, Pakistan's claim of downing five Indian Air Force jets — including three of its prized Rafale fighters — sent shockwaves through global military circles. The fact that the French-made 4.5th-generation Rafale was shot down in combat for the first time since it took to the skies was newsworthy in itself. But what stood out even more than the kills Pakistan claimed was the technology it reportedly used to achieve them: Chinese-made fighter jets, missiles, radar, and electronic warfare systems. Since the aerial engagement, analysts and defence industry sources — both Western and Chinese — have spoken to various news outlets about why the live deployment of such advanced weapons, potentially usable in future great power conflicts, will be scrutinised in meticulous detail. 'I think this brings us back to a type of aerial combat we haven't seen in a long time,' Newsweek quoted Walter Ladwig, Associate Fellow at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), as saying. 'Fighter jets had taken a backseat, but now we're witnessing a clash between states deploying their frontline weapons. This is what state-on-state war looks like.' 'Air warfare communities in China, the US, and several European countries will be extremely eager to extract as much ground truth as possible — tactics, techniques, procedures, what equipment was used, what worked and what didn't,' Douglas Barrie, senior fellow for military aerospace at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, told Reuters. As open-source evidence mounted that Pakistan's newly acquired J-10CE fighter jet had downed a Rafale, shares of the Chinese aviation firm Chengdu soared more than 40 per cent in just two days. 'The Rafale is a very modern aircraft and a top-line fighter in the Indian arsenal,' Ladwig told Newsweek. 'India's acquisition of it was a cornerstone of its air force modernisation.' The likelihood that it was downed by a state-of-the-art Chinese fighter came as a 'pleasant surprise' for Beijing, noted Yun Sun, a Chinese military specialist at the Stimson Center in Washington DC, in article by the Financial Times. 'There's no better advertisement than a real combat situation… the result is quite striking,' he was quoted as saying. According to the Financial Times piece, defence attachés from China's Western rivals were already 'impatient' for India to share radar and electronic signatures from the J-10CE in combat mode, so that their own aerial defence systems can be trained accordingly. 'This is the most important global aspect — this is the first time Chinese military equipment has been tested against top-tier Western systems,' said Sushant Singh, a lecturer at Yale University's South Asian Studies programme, in remarks to the Financial Times. 'However this ends, the final reckoning will have implications for Taiwan and for how Western defence firms respond to China's combination of low-cost and high-tech capabilities.' Speaking to The Telegraph, Hu Xijin, former editor of China's state-owned Global Times, stated that the battle demonstrated 'China's level of military manufacturing has completely surpassed that of Russia and France,' adding that Taiwan should now be 'even more scared.' For China, the skirmish tested not only the aircraft but also the systems it employs — like the active electronically scanned array (AESA) radar system it is equipped with and the PL-15 beyond-visual-range (BVR) air-to-air missiles it can be armed with. Aurangzeb Ahmed, Pakistan's Deputy Chief of Air Operations, confirmed that variants of the PL-15 missile were used in the engagement. The hour-long aerial battle, he boasted, 'would be studied in classrooms,' adding, 'We knocked some sense into these guys.' Robert Tollast, a researcher at RUSI, told the Financial Times that the use of the PL-15 missile could be 'highly significant.' 'If confirmed, we've now seen a Chinese-made AESA paired with a beyond-visual-range missile used in combat,' Tollast said. Western nations and Russia have tested their own AESAs for decades, but details from just this single skirmish — such as how many missiles were fired per hit — 'could be tremendously useful for China in evaluating the capabilities of its systems,' he added. Chinese military analysts have long viewed the PL-15 as a top-tier BVR missile. 'But if a hit is confirmed, this becomes a public demonstration of Chinese aerospace prowess,' Fabian Hoffmann, a missile researcher and non-resident fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis, told The Telegraph. 'This is another signal that, in a Taiwan conflict, we shouldn't assume Chinese tech would perform like Russia's in Ukraine,' he noted. The PL-15 is guided mid-flight by an AESA radar located on the launch platform or a separate vehicle. Near the target, its own onboard AESA radar activates, locking on and homing in with high precision. A dual-pulse motor gives it an additional burst of speed around 10 kilometres from impact. 'These are very fast weapons,' Hoffmann was quoted as saying. 'They essentially have a 'no-escape zone'. The shift from external to onboard radar also lets the launching jet disengage and avoid counterfire. There's survivability for the launch platform, and lethality for the missile itself.' According to Rick Joe, an expert on China's military advancements, the Pakistan-India aerial engagement — regardless of the actual kill tally — has significantly boosted the profile of China's tactical air capabilities, both among the general public and former sceptics. 'For those who have been seriously tracking China's defence sector, the fact that the J-10C and PL-15 are performing as advertised should come as no surprise,' he told The Express Tribune. According to estimates by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute and the International Institute for Strategic Studies, approximately 81 percept of Pakistan's military equipment originates from China, including more than half of its 400-strong air force fleet. The military hardware China supplies has evolved along with its own defence industry, Andrew Small, a Pakistan-China relations expert at the German Marshall Fund, told Financial Times. Apart from cooperation on nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles, much of what China used to supply was low-end like tanks, artillery and small arms, Small noted. 'Now, Pakistan is becoming a showcase for some of China's newer capabilities.' India, meanwhile, has become the world's largest weapons importer, shifting from a dependency on Russian arms to purchasing from the US, France and Israel, which now account for nearly half of its recent acquisitions. 'The big advantage the Pakistanis have is that their primary weapons supplier is China,' The Telegraph quoted Walter Ladwig as saying in a different piece. 'India may have a larger defence budget and modernisation programme on paper, but Beijing delivers.' He pointed out that China has rapidly supplied Pakistan with armour, the jointly developed JF-17 fighter jet, and missile systems. India's primary suppliers — Russia and France, providing 36 and 33 percept of imports respectively — have been slower to meet orders. 'India's air force is still flying antiquated MiGs,' Ladwig added. Currently, Pakistan is the only country besides China operating the J-10C fighter. The Pakistan Air Force ordered 36 export-model J-10CE aircraft and 250 PL-15E missiles in 2020. The first six were delivered in 2022, and 20 are now in active service. Egypt is among nations that have expressed interest in the J-10C, while Uzbekistan is reportedly weighing it against the Rafale for its air force modernisation. Nonetheless, defence analysts urge caution when interpreting the results of this technological faceoff as pilot error or rules of engagement may have contributed to the Rafale's reported losses. Speaking to The Express Tribune, Dr James Patton Rogers — Executive Director of the Brooks Tech Policy Institute at Cornell and an expert on drone warfare, disruptive technologies, and international security — echoed that caution. 'If you read Chinese media, you'd think they're now global leaders in fighter jet manufacturing after one alleged shootdown,' he said. 'But we need to see Rafales in full operational deployment to accurately assess how vulnerable they really are to Chinese aircraft.' 'The claims we're seeing go beyond traditional dogfights,' emphasised Dr Rogers. 'We should be more concerned about China's electronic warfare capabilities… The J-10 seems capable of disrupting radar communication systems, impairing the Rafales' situational awareness and forcing them to land — or crash,' he said. That, he believed, was most likely to raise red flags in France, the US and rest of the West regarding just how sophisticated these jets have become. 'If the J-10s are now supposedly outperforming the F-16s, we may be witnessing a new benchmark of China's military capability.' Asked whether this could shift arms buyers toward China, Dr Rogers responded: 'For some countries that were leaning that way anyway, this is the justification that they needed to push them over the edge politically and to make that case… about why to go with Chinese goods over others.' 'If you can make the case that Chinese weapons are militarily superior, it takes lot of the other politics out of it and it's easier to justify in this increasingly contested great power world we live in today,' he explained. 'I wouldn't be surprised if it has boosted the profile of Chinese arms, in particular J-10C and PL-15,' added Rick Joe. 'Whether those nations will actually purchase PRC arms is another matter because procurement is a reflection of politics, cost, tech transfer, etc,' he stressed.
