Not just an emphatic victory over Pakistan, Op Sindoor is India’s stern message to China

As the fog of war clears and evidence pile up of a massive, decisive and unequivocal Indian victory over Pakistan, the debate will inevitably shift from the ‘downing’ of Rafale(s), of which there is little proof and no verification, to the proven underperformance of Chinese weapons systems. In the short yet high-intensity warfare, Chinese air defence technology appeared ineffective, unreliable and inferior. Whereas in absence of any real data, the much-hyped ‘success’ of Chinese J10 platform against Indian fighter jets appears overblown.

During Operation Sindoor offensive, Indian projectiles and unmanned aerial vehicles invaded every part of Pakistan at will including hitting even nuclear storage facilities, cratering Pakistan’s runways and China’s credibility.

This raises significant concerns over China’s reputation as an international arms supplier whose warplanes and weapons are the backbone of Pakistan’s armed forces. The ‘performance’ of China’s HQ-9 or HQ-16 SAM systems, that failed to detect, track and intercept multiple waves of Indian airstrikes, will be duly noted in the Global South where Beijing is pitting itself as a cost-effective competitor to traditional players such as the United States or Russia.

The below-par performance of Chinese equipment will also have a bearing on the broader strategic rivalry with India in the Indo-Pacific, with India’s indigenous platforms such as Akash (short range SAM system that can engage multiple targets and has built-in ECCM features) proving their worth during combat against Chinese and Turkish counterparts.

These takeaways, however, were not immediately apparent for the most part due to the industrial scale disinformation campaign launched by India’s adversaries. Pakistan’s existential reliance on an alternate reality in which it is always the victor is unavoidable. In keeping with its philosophy, Rawalpindi generals tried to win the war on social media and Western opinion columns when faced with battlefield reverses.

Pakistan’s military went to the extent of showcasing video game clips and doctored images as ‘proofs’ of its strike on India. What muddied the waters even more are the dubious roles played by China and the West that acted as force multipliers for Pakistan in its fake news campaign, even if driven entirely by different motivations.

It has been fascinating to watch China manipulate the domain of information warfare during the conflict. While official Beijing remained tightlipped, it unleashed an army of bots to run a concerted anti-India campaign on American social media platforms, exploiting the openness of Indian democracy during an active combat situation.

Wildfire unconfirmed reports, amplified by Western media outlets, claimed multiple IAF jets were ‘shot down’ when India launched its punitive and calibrated military campaign against Pakistan’s terror infrastructure on May 7. Social media was awash with Chinese bots mocking Indians for their ‘loss’. China’s effort was straightforward – depict India’s French-origin Rafale fighter jets as inferior to its fleet of J-10 while applying balm to Pakistan’s wounds.

The cliché, truth is the biggest casualty war, was proved anew during the conflict. India inflicted crushing blows on Pakistan’s terror infrastructure, targeting nine terror hubs in PoK and even in Punjab – the heart of Pakistan’s military – killing over 100 terrorists including several high value targets such as Yusuf Azhar, Abdul Malik Rauf, Abu Jundal, Hafiz Muhammed Jameel of UN-designated terrorist outfits Lashkar-e-Taiyaba and Jaish-e-Muhammad. India duly released satellite receipts of the extensive damage caused by its airstrikes.

It was evident that New Delhi has learnt its lessons from Balakot in 2019 when its missile attacks on Pakistan’s terror factories were subjected to global scepticism due to lack of incontrovertible evidence. This time, Indian armed forces provided timestamped, HD-quality images and video clips at multiple media briefings.

The global discourse around the India-Pakistan war, however, settled not on India’s stunning retribution against Pakistan-sponsored terror, the act of avenging the horrific Pahalgam massacre by launching cruise and ballistic missiles deep into the territory of a nuclear-armed power demonstrating technical precision, tactical nous and military superiority – but the disproven ‘fact’ that IAF has ‘lost’ multiple including “two”, “three”, or even “five” Rafale jets.

In this fact-free discourse, there was little to choose between Pakistani propaganda and reports carried by Chinese and Western media outlets. There are several problems with this narrative that seeks to project a Pakistani “victory” over India based on how many fighter jets were downed in combat.

First, the reports are purely conjectural. A frequently cited Reuters report that claims Chinese fighter airplanes have brought down two French-made Rafales, relies on “high confidence” of two unnamed “US officials” and a Pakistani minister’s claim. The report quotes a “defence industry” source, as saying that “at the moment it’s not possible to judge anything. We know so little.”

This report, and another by France24 that relies solely on the claim of Pakistan’s foreign minister, or one by Bloomberg or CNN lacks even a single piece of evidence to back the theory that India has lost multiple advanced fighter jets.

Second, the available ‘evidence’ is inconclusive. Questionable claims have emerged on social media based on the images of a purported wreckage of a Safran M88 engine lying in a field. Some media outlets, not to speak of Pakistani and Chinese handles have jumped on to these as ‘conclusive proof’. The images, however, suffer from “awkward discrepancies” and lack authenticity.

In this age of AI advancement, manipulation of images to build psychological pressure on adversary and satisfy domestic audiences during active combat is par for the course. While India has released geolocated content, including timestamped videos and satellite images showing extensive damage caused by its airstrikes on nine Pakistan-based terror camps and 11 airbases of the Pakistan Air Force (PAF) that have been verified by satellite imagery firms and OSINT experts ( see here or here ), Pakistan has consistently spread doctored images to back its dubious claims of hitting Indian airbases.

Third, beancounting of defence equipment and tallying which side has lost more is pointless. It is possible that IAF has lost some manned aircraft. India has neither confirmed nor denied the speculation while stressing that “all pilots are back home”. During a media briefing, Director General of Air Operations (DGAO) Air Marshal AK Bharti stated that the Pakistani side, too, has suffered losses as “we have downed a few planes” including “hi-tech” ones.

Though the officer didn’t specify, there has been intense speculation over PAF losing F-16 and JF-17 fighter jets, along with Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS) aircraft. Since neither the Pakistani nor Indian fighter jets crossed over into each other’s airspace, there would be little debris to show by way of proof.

However, according to a former PAF chief, Pakistan has lost a prized AWACS aircraft when Indian missiles landed on Bholari airbase in Pakistan’s Sindh province. While Indian airstrikes appeared to have severely damaged a hangar , according to Air Marshal (retd) Masood Akhtar, one of the four back-to-back BrahMos missiles took down an AWACS and resulted in casualties.

Reflect for a moment that a Pakistani hi-tech air asset kept secure in a hangar was smashed by India with a supersonic missile from hundreds of miles with pinpoint accuracy. This should put in perspective the futile debate over how many fighter jets were hit in action.

Fourth, the real question that settles the debate is which side met its strategic objectives. India took out terror camps based deep inside Pakistan. It absorbed everything that Pakistan threw back while suffering minimal damage, and in retaliation, took out radars and PAF-operated Chinese SAM systems through a coordinated drone and UAV attack, and then inflicted precisely targeted, tactical damage on Pakistan’s military facilities and airbases, demolishing hangars, destroying aircraft, rendering runways and bases inoperational – thereby forcing Pakistan to sue for peace.

In effect, India easily overcame Pakistan’s deterrence, established clear military superiority over a nuclear power that has a ‘first use’ policy, and demonstrated remarkable air defence capabilities. All the while the Indian Navy maintained a menacing presence on the Northern Arabian Sea where it remained “forward deployed… in a dissuasive and deterrent posture, with full readiness and capacity to strike select targets at sea, and on land, compelling Pakistani Naval and air units to be in a defensive posture, inside harbours or very close to their coast.”

India is the world’s fourth-largest economy. It can absorb the losses of a few birds as long as strategic objectives are met unlike Pakistan that must rely on IMF loans to put food on the table of its citizens. Case in point, the Americans lost 63 aircraft during Gulf War, and even the Houthis have been taking out America’s expensive drones and fighter jets in a matter of six weeks.

Fifth, the possible loss of Indian fighter jets is much less significant than it sounds in terms of changing the perceptions around the efficacy of Chinese platforms, even if we assume that a J10 has downed a Rafale in a contested airspace.

That is because India took a political decision going into Operation Sindoor not to target Pakistan’s military facilities and only hit terror infrastructure. This self-imposed constraint tied the hands of IAF as it was forced to go in for the first round of airstrikes on May 7 without having completed a SEAD (Suppression of Enemy Air Defenses) mission.

India should have disrupted the adversary’s SAM and early warning functions to minimize the risk, but it didn’t because a political decision interfered with the military operation. Remember that Pakistan was in a heightened state of alert because India had already made its intentions clear.

As military historian and aerial warfare expert Tom Cooper notes in his blog , “the IAF didn’t start with hitting PAF interceptors that were already airborne, nor the Pakistani ground-based air defences. It limited itself to terror-camps only. This left the PAF free to react – and it certainly reacted promptly… The IAF must’ve known this when launching its fighter-bombers. Obviously, the majority of involved Indian jets successfully released their weapons and came away unscathed. But, at least one, more likely two, didn’t manage that.”

Consider the fact that with its hands tied behind its back, India still managed to complete its mission and traumatize Pakistan, render its deterrence nonexistent, redraw the redlines and carve out significant space for conventional warfare beneath the nuclear threshold, establish a new normal and reorient Pakistan’s cost-benefit calculus – and all that Pakistan has to show in return are inconclusive claims of taking down a few fighter jets.

That this insidious debate has bee raging for so long owes to the murky world of international arms competition, lobbies and manufacturers. In a game where billions are spent over perceived insecurities and tensions, manufacturers drive geopolitical narratives that may affect a nation’s procurement decisions.

It may not be a coincidence that major American outlets came out with a series of reports over loss of India’s Rafale fighter jets with scant evidence to back their reports. As Boyko Nikolov writes in Bulgarianmilitary.com, “the swift and synchronized nature of these reports, emerging within hours of each other, has raised eyebrows, prompting speculation about whether they could be part of a broader effort to undermine the Rafale’s reputation and bolster the case for America’s F-35 Lightning II in India’s lucrative aerospace market.”

On one hand there is Western insecurity over China’s advancement in fighter jet technology. If Chinese platforms can overcome the best Western technology has to offer, then China graduates from a ‘near-peer competitor’ to a ‘peer to peer competitor’ . That, it turn, may affect America’s defence spending priorities and drive manufacturers to push for more state-of-the art technology.

On the other hand, China, that was hoping to make a sales pitch to Global South on the effectiveness of its weapons, would jump at the opportunity to market its platforms as “better” than Western ones. Between these security concerns and leveraging of strategic narratives by vested interests, the Rafale debate has overshadowed the more glaring reality of the failure of Chinese platforms that exposed critical weaknesses in Chinese air defence technology.

Through its loitering munitions such as kamikaze drones, India was easily able to neutralize Pakistan’s air defence radars and systems, especially the HQ-9 SAM systems in Lahore. As New Delhi later stated in a release, the IAF “bypassed and jammed Pakistan’s Chinese-supplied air defence systems, completing the mission in just 23 minutes, demonstrating India’s technological edge.”

Clearly annoyed with China’s opportunistic move at seizing the narrative during the conflict, New Delhi further pointed out that “Operation Sindoor also produced concrete evidence of hostile technologies neutralized by Indian systems: Pieces of PL-15 missiles (of Chinese origin); Turkish-origin UAVs, named “Yiha”; Long-range rockets, quadcopters and commercial drones… These were recovered and identified, showing that despite Pakistan’s attempts to exploit advanced foreign-supplied weaponry, India’s indigenous air defence and electronic warfare networks remained superior.”

India’s indigenous capabilities married to seamless integration of air defence capabilities would draw global attention. In that respect, Operation Sindoor hasn’t only been an emphatic and unambiguous military victory over Pakistan, laying down new strategic realities and red lines, but also a significant statement aimed at China. Beijing will head towards the drawing board.

The writer is Deputy Executive Editor, Firstpost. He tweets as @sreemoytalukdar. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views.