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.
šµš°Pakistan Air Force describes air battle with š®š³Indian Air Force:
1ļøā£ sizeable air packages
2ļøā£ AEW, BMC3 critical for air situation pix
3ļøā£ Civilian air traffic redirected from AO
4ļøā£ No plan survives 1st contact
5ļøā£ While truth is 1st casualty, ā proactive info push by PAF pic.twitter.com/l7p0nhd2TCā 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 toĀ 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.
51 comments
Comments are closed.
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.
The pretty-much-irrelevance of fighter jets has been proven in the Ukraine war, which is state-of-the-art fighting. Manned planes in combat are going the way of the cavalry.
And did you miss that a big squadron of supposedly stealthy Israeli fighter jets, intended to be the first wave of 3 attacks on Iran, realized they were being detected by Iranian air defense radars well away from Iran territory, so they shot their missiles from there, doing not much damage, turned tail, and the next two rounds of attack were aborted?
Although the new B21 bomber has a seat for the pilot, it can also operate as a drone.
I don’t think that Russian General Staff would agreee with this, but it’s not like I get the memo from them. Their pretty-much-irrelevant fighter jets have been doing daily combat patrols for years now, and it’s not like there is some frequent-flyer program going on. :)
Maybe manned planes in combat are not going the way of the cavalry, but more of the way of the tanks. Repeatedly declared obsolete, but somehow they keep on trucking.
P.S. A bit of a digression, but I just remembered a nice illustration of tanks being declared obsolete, by Javelins nonetheless.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OoJsPvmFixU&t=580s (part from 9:40 to 11:21)
There is never going to be another land war in Europe with tanks. :)
Perhaps I should have clarified as in their storied role as fighter jets, as opposed to surveillance.
But the Russians have long recognized that using piloted aircraft where missiles, satellites, and now drones, will do the job as well or better, is a waste of manpower and equipment. So I stand by my original take, which comes from former military officers like Douglas Macgregor.
Small point with regards to your point about Rafale exports, that the US doesn’t export the F-22, so its relative strength doesn’t matter. However, the point stands if slightly modified to say that countries will turn to China for fighters if they are politically able. The J-10CE that shot down the Rafales has a unit cost of ~$40mil while the Rafale is ~$80mil. However, much of it comes down to other radar systems also in the loop, because the Rafale does come with the Meteor missile that is estimated to have similar range as the J-10CE’s PL-15 missile. The implication is that India wasn’t able to get Pakistan’s J-10s on radar for whatever reason, or weren’t able to “quarterback” their missiles from longer-range airborne radar systems.
Intelligent data concerning threats etc is information burden. In a ādenseā combat environment human decision is too slow.
The pilots take their airplane with a āmission planā that drives the autopilot to get the aircraft in and out of the ādenseā 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.
Not quite on this scale, but the old USN “Missileer” concept from 1950s (slow but high endurance interceptors armed with long range missiles operating alongside AEW aircraft also fits into this mould. The technology didn’t quite work out and the concept evolved/mutated eventually to the F14 Tomcat with Phoenix missiles (I take that fighter pilots really objected to flying very slow “fighters” incapable of maneuvering much, among other problems(. But I suspect that technology has sufficiently developed to give this idea another try, probably without the uppity pilots…
Can drones air-to-air refuel?
That would be unnecessary complication even for Pentagon. :)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Atomics_MQ-9_Reaper
MQ-9A Reaper
Endurance: 27 hr
MQ-9B Skyguardian
Endurance: Over 40 hours
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.
Yes, eg the heroic Israeli pilots bombing Gaza.
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.
Software for unmanned jets will need a massive test program. Almost certainly the next step in combat aviation is a human-piloted missile truck with advanced stealth (probably similar tail-less layout to China’s J-36) plus drone wingmen that can fire missiles to distract SAMs or act as distraction itself while the human-piloted aircraft lobs missiles from a safe distance.
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.
The A10 has a very big gun that fires depleted uranium shells.
They were considering to put that same gun on an F4 phantom fighter.
The gun was too big to be practical for that plane.
Right. The F4, the predominant US fighter during the Vietnam War, didnāt initially have a gun because it was believed missiles made a gun was unnecessary.
It also wasnāt very maneuverable and pilots werenāt trained in arial gunnery.
In fact, the poor performance of U.S. fighter aircraft in Vietnam is why the Navy started the Top Gun program.
Due to the fact that the great majority of US fighter jets did not have guns during the Vietnam War, it is difficult to draw any conclusions about the effectiveness of guns vs. missiles from the numbers of enemy planes shot down by guns or missiles.
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 thatās 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
āUnfortunately, 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.ā. There is no āunfortunatelyā 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
I’ve never heard of that guy, so I clicked around to see what’s he about.
https://xxtomcooperxx.substack.com/p/dons-weekly-12-may-2025-part-2
Russia plans to continue their genocide by shipping 50,000 Ukrainian children to camps and schools in Russia āfor summer vacation and re-educationā. 20,000 children had already been forcibly removed by 2023. The older boys were forced to fight in the Russian army.
I guess he has a different take on many things.
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.
Electronic warfare is a thing. Radars can be jammed. So can communications between missiles and aircraft. Really, the Russian /Ukraine front lines is where smart militaries should look to see future trends.
Additionally, I donāt see any country launching nuclear weapons merely because a military satellite was destroyed. Maybe if the entire system for detecting an intercontinental ballistic missile launch was take out, a country could interpret that as a prelude to a preemptive nuke attack. But communications satellites? Not hardly.
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.
My 6 degrees of separation from Adolf happened when I met Gunther Rall at Patrick’s Roadhouse on Pacific Coast Highway about 30 years ago. He shot down 275 planes.
I asked him if he flew the 109, and he said ‘young man, the 109 was an extension of my body’.
Heavy Jamming with some nice EMP bursts – regardless of sources, ^_^ – could change that Scenario very quickly…
Which is why you build the drones with redundant communication systems (i.e. optical, audio). While neither is as good as radio, an EMP shielded drone, particularly a swarm drone, could remain effective after an EMP or radio jamming.
The sophisticated fighter and pilot will likely be around for a while because the US has to be prepared to fight any defenseless third world country in the world over resources, regime change or some other reason such as Iraq in 2003.
The article is, however, correct and if having the latest fighters gave you an edge, Israel would have attacked Iran by now. Yet, every indication is Iran has sophisticated air defense systems which need to be destroyed first and how is that going to happen?
Nonetheless, weāre prepared to send a carrier and fighters to Africa, Venezuela, or back to Grenada but stay clear of Russia and China and Iran.
The big story out of the Indo-Pakistan skirmish is the PL-15; the Chinese gave the Pakistani’s their long-range air-to-air missiles, and those missiles out-performed the European Meteors carried by the Indian Rafales. So the Chinese tech works, and will work just as well over Taiwan.
There’s more to air combat than simply lobbing missiles, though. To be effective, the launching fighter has to be high and fast when it launches it’s missiles, but to survive the inevitable return fire it has to get low and move fast in the other direction, and then reposition itself for a another attack. Most air-to-air kills in World War II actually happened in a similar manner, a high-flying fighter would dive down on an unsuspecting target and then speed away, not giving the target a chance to counter-attack in a turning dogfight.
The piloting skills involved are actually quite similar, not just the technical skills of balancing kinetic and potential energy, but the psychological skills of understanding your opponent’s limited awareness, anticipating his movements, knowing what your teammates will do, and being bloody-minded enough to pursue a kill.
If you listen to the PAF presenter, you’ll hear all this come out. The Indian’s had planned a large-scale air-to-ground strike, hoping to satisfy their honor by blowing up a few buildings, but big enough to deter any Pakistan counter-attack and escalation. The Pakistani’s decided to attack first, using their new Chinese missiles. They waited until the Indian’s were “aggressing,” i.e. moving fast towards the border, but still within Indian airspace. The Pakistanis shot first, before the Indians realized what was happening, and then pulled back before the Indians could respond.
The Indians lost because they didn’t know about the new PL-15, and didn’t realize that the Pakistanis were out for blood. On both counts these are human failures to realize human intentions. I don’t think replacing the human pilots with drones would have prevented those failures.
Anyway, it’s only a matter of time before we see combat between stealth aircraft, where long-range radar-guided missiles are useless, and we’re back to dogfights.
Missiles are not useless against stealth aircraft; they just have to get closer to lock on to the target. A network of low frequency radars can get the missile in the vicinity of the stealthy target, and the missile can do the rest. A stealth plane, once built, doesn’t get more stealthy, but radar and optical detection systems are improving all the time.
A dogfight between drones is different from a maneuvering air battle between human pilots because drones can readily use the kamikaze option, which is rarely exercised by human pilots. A drone that has run out of missiles remains a deadly weapon, but the manned fighter with no weapons goes home.
re: F-35
just a quick comment by Martyanov from today:
https://smoothiex12.blogspot.com/2025/05/meanwhile.html
… in the world of “stealth”.
“A United States F-35 fighter jet recently had a very close call over Yemen. During an operation, rebels fired a missile that came close enough to the aircraft for the pilot to take sudden evasive action. This event made people question how and where the F-35 should be used. The F-35 is considered one of the most advanced fighter jets in the world. It is designed to fly into enemy territory, avoid detection, and destroy important military targets. But in this case, the aircraft was flying in a region where the enemy did not have the kind of large military setup the F-35 was built to fight.”
This is a fodder for fanboys and … stand-up comedians. Houthis, who operate air defense which is, to put it politely, ancient obviously have no issues with detecting, tracking and developing a firing solution (of sorts) against this “stealth” fighter.
The issue here is not even this, devastating as it is:
(graph)
With touted “sophistication” and “stealth” of F-35 being nothing but marketing legerdemain. Nope, it is the fact that this thing is not really a combat aircraft which as of today doesn’t meet ANY of six critical combat readiness criteria and is not survivable in the modern air combat of the XXI century. Simple as that, even when one discounts the issue of pre- and deployment of these hangar queens anywhere in Europe.