The recent fighting between India and Pakistan has provided evidence of the diminishing role of the jet fighter pilot in modern warfare. A large air battle was fought between the two nations on May 6 and 7. India lost at least five jets, some of them advanced French Rafale fighters. Most of the losses were inflicted by BVR (Beyond Visual Range) air-to-air missiles. In the following video clip a Pakistani air force officer describes how their side of the battle was conducted.
🇵🇰Pakistan Air Force describes air battle with 🇮🇳Indian Air Force:
1️⃣ sizeable air packages
2️⃣ AEW, BMC3 critical for air situation pix
3️⃣ Civilian air traffic redirected from AO
4️⃣ No plan survives 1st contact
5️⃣ While truth is 1st casualty, ✅ proactive info push by PAF pic.twitter.com/l7p0nhd2TC— David Boey (@SenangDiri) May 11, 2025
Although this engagement was called a “dogfight” in some press reports, it was nothing of the kind. The missiles that downed the Indian fighter aircraft were launched from 20 to 100 miles away, with neither side crossing into the other’s airspace. No fancy maneuvering or daring aerobatics were needed. The role of the Pakistani pilots was reduced to following navigational directions and launching missiles against designated targets. The absence of successful ejections and recovery of downed pilots on the India side indicates that the targeted aircraft had insufficient warning, making evasive maneuvering impossible.
The Glory Days of Fighter Pilots
The star status of fighter pilots began in WWI, when flying skills and courage were the keys to victory in air-to-air combat. Manfred Von Richthofen, the “Red Baron,” had 80 confirmed kills to his credit. The vast scale of aerial combat in WWII resulted in over 5,000 pilots attaining ace status with more than five kills. A few German pilots achieved over 200 kills on the Eastern Front. The vast majority of these aircraft kills were achieved by rapid-firing guns with short ranges. Targeting depended on the eyesight and aiming dexterity of the pilots. Although popular culture depicts aerial battles as extended maneuvering contests, most kills in air combat after WWI resulted from surprise attacks, and the most successful pilots avoided dogfighting, preferring ambushes and first pass kills. Whatever the tactics, it was human eyes, brains, and muscles that resulted in the victories that made combat pilots heroes.
In the Korean War both sides used jet-powered fighters, and the mystique of the fighter pilot continued to grow. Steve Canyon, the comic book aviator created by Milton Caniff, became the symbol of a hero warrior piloting a high-tech jet in aerial combat. Aircraft guns still did the damage so all of the fighting was in visual range.
Enter the Missiles
During the Vietnam war, air-to-air missiles began to be used extensively in aerial combat. Missiles accounted for about two thirds of the kills made by U.S. fighter jets and about one quarter of the kills made by the North Vietnamese fighters. These early missiles had relatively short ranges and still required visual sighting of the target and maneuvering for a good firing position. After the Vietnam war, missiles became the dominant air combat weapon, with aircraft guns relegated to a secondary role.
As air-to-air missiles became more capable, with greater range and better guidance systems, the balance between WVR (within visual range) and BVR (beyond visual range) engagements also changed, and kills were increasingly achieved when the contending pilots were too far apart to see each other, rendering a maneuvering fight moot.
Returning to the latest fighting between India and Pakistan, the decisive actions were not taken by the fighter pilots. It was the radar operators of airborne surveillance aircraft and the commanders evaluating the tactical disposition of the planes on both sides who controlled the battle. The pilots were effectively just transporting the missiles and launching them under BMC3 direction (battle management, command, control, and communication) against targets too far away to see. This is not a heroic role, and theoretically it could be performed by unmanned aircraft.
Cultural Inertia
The history of warfare is marked by the persistence of ineffective practices. This has resulted in debacles such as suicidal infantry assaults in WWI, unprotected battleships sunk by aircraft in WWII, and the failure of U.S. forces against insurgents in Vietnam and Afghanistan. The meme of the combat pilot as a heroic champion is deeply entrenched in U.S. popular culture and in the ranks of the U.S. military. As a consequence, manned aviation remains a high priority in the U.S. defense establishment. Despite abundant indications of the impending dominance of drones and AI systems in future warfare, the U.S. continues to make massive commitments to manned fighters (F-35 and F-46) and bombers (B-2 and B-21).
Of particular concern is a proposal to develop drone combat aircraft intended to operate jointly with manned fighters. The U.S. Air Force has undertaken the Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) program to build a fleet of drones that would operate in formations directed by manned aircraft. An obvious problem with this concept is the overloading of pilots who would have to manage multiple accompanying drones. The notion of AI drone “wingmen” aircraft waiting for instructions from a stressed and fallible human formation leader raises a serious feasibility question. One could argue that in many circumstances the instructions should be going from the AI drones to the human pilot. Fortunately, simulations can easily reveal shortcomings of the CCA concept. Unfortunately, the Pentagon and the defense contractors have a history of ignoring or distorting test results to favor continuation of flawed programs. The most likely outcome is that the CCA program will deliver too little, too late, and at enormous cost.
Collaborative combat aircraft concept depiction – What could be wrong with this picture?
Conclusion
The era of the heroic fighter pilot is coming to a close as technology relentlessly transforms the character of aerial warfare. Drone combat aircraft, unhindered by the biological limitations of human pilots, will eventually dominate the skies of armed conflicts. Cultural memes are difficult to erase, and entertainment media glorification of jet fighter pilots, like the Top Gun films (total gross: $1.86 billion) will help sustain political support for manned aircraft programs for many years. Military institutional inertia and perverse vendor incentives will continue working to keep human pilots in fighter planes. We can only hope that the costs will be limited to excessive Pentagon expenditures. The worst outcome could be a military disaster if we find that it is enemy combat drones that have the right stuff.
Haig,
This is a reasonably well done summary and stakes out the position for ditching manned fighters. And while you mentioned air-to-air missiles being found wanting during Vietnam and the subsequent re-ascendancy of dogfighting, I’m not sure that tells the whole story. Neither does this one encounter between B-grade powers. If for no other reason than Rafale is not cutting edge by any stretch of the imagination. Major point being, I wouldn’t be so quick to write off pilots with prospects of AI, unmanned UAS platforms, and missiles. Minor point being, this comes at a very bad time for Europeans (France, principally) hoping to sell more of these dogs to 3rd parties because the F-22 smokes any version made. But maybe this is just me, a pilot with a propensity for becoming a curmudgeon wearing both rose colored glasses and drinking the fighter pilot mystique Kool-Aid.
Anyway, this was a good read. Thank you.
Intelligent data concerning threats etc is information burden. In a “dense” combat environment human decision is too slow.
The pilots take their airplane with a “mission plan” that drives the autopilot to get the aircraft in and out of the “dense” combat environment.
AEW linked by BMC3 continues to update the flight plan for avoiding threats and moving to offensive/defensive use of weapons.
Tom Clancy wrote years ago about BMC3 putting target data into the fighter weapons and keeping the fighter not transmitting sensor EMR!
The F-35 and others are already manned drones, too much data human too slow assimilating.
Pakistani AF may have benefitted from longer range air intercept missiles better using BMC3.
USAF has been on this since it used EC121 over the DMZ during Vietnam war. Earlier air defense fighters were ground controlled with minimum input to pilot in the old SAGE system .
Mig-29 was originally designed to be a fast climbing, hard-hitting air-defense platform. Each pilot was paired with a ground controller who directed the fighter to the firing position and designated the targets as the situation demanded on the huge PVO screen in front of the ground controller.
With Mig-31, the ground controller is actually able to send commands to the auto-pilot while the pilot takes a nap. And each Mig-31 can feed the commands and situation data to three other Mig-29 or Mig-31. These designated air-defense fighters also shared data, targets and sectors with the ground based air-defenses seamlessly. Until they were discontinued in the 90’s and transferred to air forces.
As far as we know, the longest air-to-air kill in the war in Ukraine was achieved by an Beriev A-50 sending mid-range corrections to a BWR missile launched by Su-57. The A-50 can allegedly also take control of the S-400 missiles after launch.
All about the PR? Some say we didn’t need men on the Moon either (or Mars) to get all those rocks.
Of course if Top Gun was retro what about all those Sci Fi movies like Star Wars or Dune where the characters are still fighting with some version of a sword? Conclusion: Pentagon soon to bring back swords.
Or biplanes since it may be the only way. Fabric and wood make for a low radar signature.
The main takeaway though seems to be that the Pentagon should think long and hard before taking on Iran, much less China. Tom Cruise though–he’s their boy.
The Japanese did bring back the sword in 1930s, no? (I’m being a bit tongue in cheek, but the samurai style sword, AKA, the New Army Sword, and the resurrection of the samurai mystique were largely interwar phenomena in Japan)
If you consider that air to air missiles are really kamikaze drones then the time is well past for larger “carrier” drones armed with multiple BVR air to air missiles to replace the human piloted “fighter” jet for air to air combat.
The fighter jets extend range, as mentioned above, mobile missile bases if you will.
It depends on the mission. If the mission is to attack people who can’t shoot back, then CCA looks great.
Two tidbits:
“Polish cavalry charges against German tanks in WWII”
Well no, this is a myth that has long been disproved. At Krojanty, the Polish cavalry (successfully) charged German infantry, in line with the Polish tactical regulations for mounted units; it then came under the fire of German armoured reconnaissance vehicles which had advanced to support the scattering German infantrymen — inflicting severe losses on the Poles.
“The U.S. Air Force has undertaken the Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) program to build a fleet of drones that would operate in formations directed by manned aircraft.”
There is an exact equivalent in Europe with the programme FCAS (Future Combat Air System), led by the French, which includes a 6th generation fighter (NGF – New Generation Fighter) controlling a swarm of drones (NGWS – New Generation Weapon Systems), all integrated and managed via the cloud.
So you see, this obsolete thinking of trying to force-fit old-style fighter aircraft in modern unmanned war situations is a malady affecting not just the USA.
Thanks for reporting the Polish cavalry myth. I have removed the reference.
Russian Ohotnik is supposed have gone into the serial production last year. It seems it was originally designed to mainly to extend Su-57’s sensor and targeting range without risking the fighter itself.
The cost of training pilots for the very expensive F-35 exceeds a staggering $10 million. From an economic standpoint, unmanned jet fighters seem inevitable.
Now hold on a minute though, they had to duct-tape a gun pod to the F4 during Vietnam because the prevailing wisdom of the day was that all engagements would be too far away and too fast for gun battles.
Facts on the ground proved otherwise, as the missiles available were too unreliable. The Migs could turn on a dime compared to the F4, so it was a double whammy when they realized dogfights were back.
Don’t be so sure BVR will be the norm, you can be sure drone dogfights are headed our way soon. With the g-forces a drone can endure they should be able to easily evade guided weapons. I predict a return of the gun, unjammable, fast and reliable. Heck, as ECM increases in complexity and power, I wouldn’t be surprised if a low-tech platform (hi Chinese balloons) made a comeback and really flipped the board.
Strafing ground positions is a thing! The idea of hitting a jet with a gun is feasible if not that likely to succeed.
I was in tactical staff job in US Air Force in early 1980’s there was a study to put the GAU-8 that massive 30 mm cannon that makes the A-10 in a pod and sling it to an F-4.
Some engineers came back and informed the pilot mafia that the impulse from the firing aka recoil was too much for any hardware to hold the pod on the F-4.
Thanks for reading an old man’s war story.
Brother, the words that you use are intriguing, but I have no idea it is what that you are trying to say– especially your second paragraph.
I was on the operations-side of USAF late 80s into 90s, so what you write has me a little concerned.
RT has an article today showing videos of drones taking out drones. The ones being taken out are not fighting back or maneuvering, yet.
https://www.rt.com/russia/617423-anti-drone-warfare-video/
Ukrainians posted videos sometime ago of Russian drones that actually avoided the ramming attempts of the Ukrainian drones. As they all did it the same way (dropping and banking one way or the other) it’s assumed they have simple proximity sensors and programmed response.
The purpose of fighter aircraft is to gain and hold air superiority, to enable other types of airpower to be employed safely, and to give land forces an advantage. Western doctrine since WW1 has been to use fighter aircraft for this purpose, and indeed until quite late on there were no alternatives. The widespread deployment of surface-to-air missiles changed this a bit, but their range was still limited and their effect was debatable. In the Cold War a lot of combat was expected to take place over the sea and around the fringes of Europe.
The real development has been the Russian use of layered, networked air defence systems, including some with long range, as a way of gaining air superiority, combined with high-precision long-range missiles to bombard targets that in the past would have been attacked by aircraft. In a war like that, you don’t really need fighter aircraft at all. Indeed, since drones can”t shoot down missiles, it’s doubtful if you even need drones. But aircraft will still be needed for other things.
To be fair, this has been recognised to some extent in the last generation or so: few air forces now deploy pure fighter aircraft. As early as the 1970s, the Tornado was built in two different variants, now, aircraft like the Rafale and the Typhoon have air combat as only one of their roles.
This brings to mind the turboprop Embraer Tucano series of ground attack and reconnaissance aircraft.
See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embraer_EMB_314_Super_Tucano
Airframes can be tailored to niche purposes. Think the Fiesler Storch for Germany and the Lycoming Lysander for the Allies, short take off and landing small planes. Also perfect for artillery spotters. Some times, those satellites might indeed go dark. Then how will C3 figure out what to do?
Someone explain to me why I should care. Other than wasting money which magically appears out of thin air, the failure of American military ventures of this sort seems to be entirely unrelated to the life of the typical person here. Yes, perhaps if this was entirely nipped in the bud, along with the rest of the wasted efforts of our MICC (military industrial congressional complex), so that funds can be used for domestic development – but of course that’s unlikely – we might benefit. But the way I see it, the higher they build this unstable ziggurat the sooner it collapses and thus the sooner something can be constructed from the rubble that might work better for the average person.
Again, forgive an old fart for grouching.
I agree.
K Street has people/lobbyists who sell all this to congress people.
Golden rule, some of the gold goes into business development on K Steert, and they write the studies that seem to sell all this.
Then you have the empires of the pentagon!
Yeah, Old Jake.
they’re all playing their stupid real time Risk game, and i still cant get my damned teeth fixed, in the richest country in the history of the world(tm).
“My” country(USA!) has been at war, in some fashion, in all of my almost 56 years.
ive never been For any of these efforts…and have been actively against them, instead…often(like with Iraq2.0), with rather severe personal repurcussions(i was strangled in a bar by a warhawk drunk who asked me a question(whadya think about lil george?) and didnt like my answer(he should be in chains at the hague).
some of those wars have been undeclared civil wars, against people like me(pothead, genius, thought criminal,weirdo,etc)…and it was all in the service of the Big Boys who own and run everything, and have never held a broom or a hoe.
where is my horse in all this?
i dont have one, having eaten him long ago.
fie, fie fie!
It’s all moot. The manufacture of critical parts of fighter jets, missiles, and electronics has been hugely outsourced to China/BRICS.
So the crazy (200+ years) Met-Gala-esque pervert party is over.
The BRICS, (new bigmom and new bigdad) cancelled the credit card……
“Kids, go play outside. Come back home when the streetlights come on.”
The recent fighting between India and Pakistan was just a skirmish of two unexperienced opponents. A bar fight of sorts, where no one really knows what he’s doing. On the other hand, Russians have been doing real warfare for a while, and got an ace or two. Sadly, they don’t share their data on Intagrams. If I was devising a long term strategy, I would be having whatever Russians are.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-jGDF_4p7M
“Unfortunately, the Pentagon and the defense contractors have a history of ignoring or distorting test results to favor continuation of flawed programs. The most likely outcome is that the CCA program will deliver too little, too late, and at enormous cost.”. There is no “unfortunately” about it as that is the game played by design of the Military Industrial Congressional Complex. How else are they going to be fed by the maximum of public funds from the US Treasury into the future?
Welcome to capitalism. Follow the money.
https://substack.com/@xxtomcooperxx
This guy has a different take on the India-Pak engagement.
https://xxtomcooperxx.substack.com/p/illusions-and-realities-of-cross-b6c
https://xxtomcooperxx.substack.com/p/illusions-and-realities-of-cross
Having a pilot in the cockpit may be seen as a backup system which cannot be done without. Back during the early Vietnam era, the USAF figured that air combat would be all about US fighters lobbing missiles at Soviet bombers so they removed the gun for the F-4 Phantom and downgraded the need for pilots to learn aerial skills. Then they went to Vietnam and it all fell apart. The missiles were still unreliable and heat-seeking missiles when fired were known to have locked onto the sun. When the missiles were gone, US pilots could only rage at NV fighters flying all around them. North Vietnamese pilots had not forgotten aerial skills and it showed in US losses. That is why they created Top Gun for Navy pilots and Red Flag for Air Force pilots – to relearn those old skills and stop the losses to NV pilots – and they put the gun back on the F-4. It worked. The relevancy for today? What if there was a war and ALL the satellite links went down. That would make BVR missile firing impossible as it would stand-off attacks. The drones too would become useless without outside control. Then we would be back in the 20th century with fighters being directed by radar to enemy formations and having to use their own skill once more. So I would maintain fighter training as the ultimate redundancy system
BVR air-to-air missiles don’t rely on satellite signals. Their initial course is guided by inertial navigation, a system of gyros and accelerometers that steers the missile into the general area of the target. There may also be mid-course corrections transmitted by the launching aircraft, then the missile will turn on its own radar for the final intercept. Moreover, military action that takes down the U.S. satellite network is going to start a nuclear war in which there will be bigger problems than winning aerial dogfights.
True story I was in a brief dogfight once with a fledgling bald eagle while flying my hang glider in the Willamette Valley. To be clear, the eagle won, and easily. Still, one of the top five coolest things I’ve ever done.
As we’ve seen with the Russian fiber optic controlled drones in response, there must be huge amounts of research going on about how to break the links between drones and controllers. I wonder when electronic warfare and directed energy weapons will be rolled out to address the issue.