By Saeed Shah and Shivam Patel
Islamabad/New Delhi, 2 August (Reuters) -Net after midnight on 7 May, the screen in the Operational Chamber of the Pakistan Air Force illuminates in red with the positions of dozens of active enemy aircraft across the border in India.
Air Chief MSHL. Zaheer Sidhu had been sleeping on a mattress near that room for days awaiting an Indian attack.
New Delhi had blamed Islamabad for supporting militants who carried out an attack in Indian Kashmir last month, killing 26 civilians. Although Islamabad denied every involvement, India had promised a reaction, which came in the early hours of 7 May with air strikes on Pakistan.
Sidhu ordered the valued Chinese J-10C jets from Pakistan to clamber. A Senior Pakistani Air Force (PAF) officer, who was present in the operations room, said that Sidhu instructed to target Rafales, a French -made hunter who is the jewel of the India's fleet and never put down in battle.
“He wanted Rafales,” said the civil servant.
The hour -long fight, which took place in the dark, included around 110 aircraft, estimate experts, making it the largest air struggle in the world in decades.
The J-10's shot at least one Rafale, Reuters reported in May, referring to American officials. The Downing surprised many in the military community and raised questions about the effectiveness of Western military hardware against non -tested Chinese alternatives.
Shares of Dassault, which makes the Rafale, immersed after reports that the hunter was shot. Indonesia, which has outstanding Rafale orders, has said that it is now considering buying J-10s-an important boost for China's efforts to sell the plane abroad.
But Reuters interviews with two Indian officials and three of their Pakistani counterparts discovered that the performance of the Rafale was not the most important problem: centrally in the downing an Indian intelligence failure about the reach of the China made of PL-15 rocket fired by the J-10 hunter. China and Pakistan are the only countries that exploit both J-10s, known as powerful dragons and PL-15s.
The defective intelligence gave the Rafal pilots a false sense of confidence that they were out of the Pakistani shooting distance, which they thought was only about 150 km, said the Indian officials, referring to the generally cited range of PL-15 export variant.
“We have lured them in an ambush,” said the PAF officer, adding that Islamabad held an electronic war attack on the Delhi systems in an attempt to confuse Indian pilots. Indian officials dispute the effectiveness of those efforts.
“The Indians did not expect to be shot,” says Justin Bronk, Air Warfare Expert at the Royal United Services Institute (Rusi) in London. “And the PL-15 is clearly very capable of long distance.”
According to the Pakistani officers, the PL-15 that reached the Rafale of approximately 200 km from around 200 km, and even further according to the Indian officers. That would be one of the longest driving air air attacks.
The defense and foreign ministries of India have not returned requests for comments about the intelligence errors. Delhi did not acknowledge that a raafale was shot, but the air chief of France told reporters in June that he had seen evidence of the loss of that hunter and flew two other planes by India, including a Russian Sukhoi. A top manager of Dassault also told the French legislators who had lost a rafale in operations in the month, although he had no specific details.
Pakistan's army referred to earlier comments from a spokesperson who said that the professional readiness and determination was more important than the weapons it had used. The Chinese Ministry of Defense did not respond to questions from Reuters. Dassault and UAC, the manufacturer of the Sukhoi, have not returned any requests for comments.
“Situational Consciousness”
Reuters spoke with eight Pakistani and two Indian officials to merge a report of the air fights, which marked the beginning of four days of fighting between the two nuclear armed neighbors who caused an alarm in Washington. The officials all spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss national security matters.
Not only did Islamabad have the element of surprise with the reach of his rockets, the Pakistani and Indian officials said, but managed to connect his military hardware more efficiently to keep on the ground and in the air, giving it a clearer picture of the battlefield. Such networks, known as “kill chains”, have become a crucial element of modern warfare.
Four Pakistani officers said they have created a 'kill chain' or a multi-domain operation by linking air, land and space sensors. The network included a Pakistani-developed system, Data Link 17, which connected Chinese military hardware with other equipment, including a Swedish-made security plane, said two Pakistani officers.
The system let the J-10s fly closer to India to obtain radarfeeds from the security plane that feared further away, which means that the hunters made by Chinese could eliminate their radars and fly unnoticed, according to experts. Pakistan's army did not respond to requests for comments on this point.
Delhi tries to set up a similar network, the Indian officials said that their process was more complicated because the country of the country from a wide range of exporters.
Retired UK Air MSHL. Greg Bagwell, now a fellow at Rusi, said that the episode is not definitively proving the superiority of Chinese or Western air assets, but it showed the importance of the correct information and the use of this.
“The winner in this was the side that had the best situational consciousness,” said Bagwell.
Change in tactics
After India got goals in Pakistan in the early hours of 7 May, called it terrorist infrastructure, Sidhu ordered his squadrons to switch from defense to attack.
Five PAF officials said that India had used around 70 aircraft, which was more than they expected and provided for the PL-15s of Islamabad with an an objective environment. India did not say how many aircraft have been used.
The struggle of 7 May marked the first large air competition of the modern era in which weapons are used to hit goals beyond the visual range, Bagwell said, and noted that both India and the aircraft of Pakistan remained good in their air spaces during the duration of the fight.
Five Pakistani officials said that an electronic attack on Indian sensors and communication systems reduced the situational consciousness of the pilots of the Rafale.
The two Indian officials said that the Rafales were not blinded during the skirmishes and that Indian satellites had not stalled. But they acknowledged that Pakistan seemed to have disturbed the Sukhoi, whose systems now upgrade.
Other Indian safety officers have taken off questions from the Rafale, a center of the military modernization of India, for the orders given to the Air Force.
The Defense Attaché of India in Jakarta told a university seminar that Delhi had lost a number of aircraft “only because of the limitation of political leadership not to attack (Pakistan) military branches and their air defenses.”
India's Chief of Defense Staff Gen. Anil Chauhan previously told Reuters that Delhi quickly “resolved tactics” “tactics” after the first losses.
After the air fights of 7 May, India began to focus on the Pakistani military infrastructure and he was to show his strength in the air. The Brahmos Supersonic Cruise Missile made by India repeatedly cut through the air defense of Pakistan, according to officials on both sides.
On May 10, India said that it hit at least nine air bases and radarsites in Pakistan. According to Indian and Pakistani officials, it also reached a security plane parked in a hangar in southern Pakistan. Later that day a cease -the fires were agreed after American officials had had conversations with both parties.
'Live -inputs'
In the aftermath of the episode, India's deputy army leader lt. Rahul Singh Pakistan from receiving “Live -inputs” from China during the battles, which implies radar and satellite feeds. He provided no evidence and Islamabad denies the claim.
When he was asked during a briefing in July on the military partnership of Beijing with Pakistan, the spokesperson for the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs said Mao Ning Reporters that the work was “part of the normal cooperation between the two countries and does not focus on a third party”.
Beijing's Air Chief Lt. Gene. Wang Gang Visited Pakistan in July to discuss how Islamabad had used Chinese equipment to put together the “kill chain” for the Rafale, said two PAF positions.
China did not respond when he was asked about that interaction. In a statement in July, the Pakistani army said that Wang “had shown great interest in learning Paf's Battle-Teken-Teken experience in multi-domain operations.”
(Additional reporting by John Irish in Paris, Idrees Ali in Washington, Nur-Azna Sanusi in Singapore and the Newsroom in Beijing; Edit by Katerina Ang)
