BIRDS OF WAR

Pakistan said they shot down five Indian fighter jets while the Indians say three jets “crashed.” Details are foggy and expect massive disinfo on both sides. But I’ve seen enough to say that for Round 1 the Indian Airforce has been mogged.

How did this happen?

In absolute numbers, the Indian Air Force dominates with 513 fighter jets vs 328 for Pakistan. What’s more, they’ve got some real nice birds.

36 French Rafales (Gen 4.5) is the jewel in the crown. About 270 Russian Gen 4 Su-30MKI provides a solid backbone. Then you get a mishmash…indigenous HAL Teja (solid Gen 4), a bunch of older MiGs.

The Pakistani? Not gonna even count the Mirages cuz they are ooooold. 75 F16s which sounds great until you realize they’re handcuffed: US sold them to Pakistan for counter terrorism only. Not supposed to use them against India.

That leaves the Chinese jets: around 50 Chengdu J-10Cs, a Gen 4.5 modern fighter selected to go up against the elite Rafales but not considered as good. Then as the backbone you’ve got about 150 partially-indigenous JF-17 Thunders (known as FC-1 Xiaolong in Chinese) which are kind of like Temu F-16s.

I am dying…dying to know what the actual matchups were. According to the Pakistanis the downed birds include a Rafale, a MiG-29 and a Su-30. Again all this is yet unconfirmed but if true holy shit!

The Rafale costs at least twice as much as the J-10C! We’ve never really seen the J-10C in battle before. We don’t know what it’s made of. Can it really be true that it went toe to toe with a Rafale and bested it?

Again…caution caution caution. We don’t have anything independently confirmed. India is crying fake news but why are three of your birds on the ground?

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