An Indian Air Force fighter jet in the sky as the tension remains high between India and Pakistan. Photo / Getty Images
An Indian Air Force fighter jet in the sky as the tension remains high between India and Pakistan. Photo / Getty Images
India’s Air Force may have lost two fighter jets during attacks on sites in Pakistan.
Visual evidence suggests debris from a Rafale and a Mirage 2000, but the cause is unclear.
The losses follow India’s strikes in retaliation for a militant attack in Indian-administered Kashmir.
India’s Air Force appears to have lost at least two fighter jets, including one of its most advanced models, during Wednesday morning attacks in Pakistan and Pakistani-administered Kashmir, according to a review of visual evidence by the Washington Post.
Islamabad said Wednesday it had downed five Indian warplanes. New Delhi has neither confirmed nor denied the Pakistani claims; India’s military and its Ministry of External Affairs did not respond to a request for comment.
In a review of more than a dozen images and videos posted online after the strikes, the Post verified debris consistent with at least two French-made fighter jets flown by the Indian Air Force – a Rafale and a Mirage 2000.
The Post based its findings on analysis by Trevor Ball, a former explosive ordnance disposal technician for the US Army; Etienne Marcuz, an associate fellow at the Foundation for Strategic Research; and a French airpower expert with military experience who shared his analysis on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorised to speak to the media. The experts could not determine whether the planes were shot down or crashed due to other reasons. The fate of the pilots was also unclear.
The loss of multiple fighter jets would represent the worst setback in battle for India’s Air Force in recent memory; in 2019, during the last round of fighting between the nuclear-armed neighbours, India acknowledged one of its jets was shot down by Pakistan.
India's Air Force has suffered a setback with two jets lost amid the Pakistan conflict. Photo / Getty Images
India’s strikes inside Pakistan – launched in retaliation for a deadly militant attack on tourists last month in Indian-administered Kashmir – were the deepest in more than half a century; mutual accusations of drone attacks and border violations in the days that followed have brought the arch-rivals to the brink of full-scale conflict.
“There’s a lot of political weight being put behind the planes because neither side has yet crossed a threshold of full-scale conventional warfare,” said Sameer Lalwani, a fellow at the Washington DC-based Centre for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.
The Rafale, manufactured by the French company Dassault Aviation, is an advanced fighter aircraft first delivered to India in 2019 – one of the country’s most significant purchases in recent years as it sought to modernise its air force and compete with regional powers like China.
The word “Rafale” is stencilled in white on the vertical stabiliser in one image of the wreckage, alongside the letters “BS 001” and an Indian flag. The markings matched those on the vertical stabiliser of an Indian Air Force Rafale seen in images posted online in 2021.
The Post could not independently geolocate the images of the wreckage, which were said to have been taken near the village of Akalia Khurd in Punjab, about 70km from India’s border with Pakistan. But they did not appear to have been posted online before Wednesday, and local reports said Indian military authorities had responded to a crash in the area and collected the wreckage. One farmer was killed by a post-crash blast after being the first to reach the site, the Indian Express reported.
Other photos taken in Wuyan, a village in Indian-administered Kashmir about 130km from the Pakistani border, showed what all three experts agreed was an external fuel tank belonging to a Mirage 2000, an older fighter aircraft also manufactured by Dassault that entered Indian military service in the 1980s.
Fuel tanks can be jettisoned in response to a mechanical failure, combat damage or to make a jet more manoeuvrable in battle, so are not on their own proof of a crash. But just a quarter mile away, witnesses reported a plane crashing into a primary school soon after the Indian strikes began. Part of a jet engine is visible within the flaming wreckage of the school in a video posted the night of the attack, according to Ball and the French airpower expert, which suggests an aircraft went down there.
Locations of reported fighter jet debris. Photo / Washington Post
Another video posted on Facebook by the school on Thursday showed schoolgirls picking up fallen tree limbs and commentators expressing hope it would be rebuilt.
Another video, which the Post could not geolocate but which multiple accounts said was filmed near Akalia Khurd, showed an unexploded French-made Mica missile on the ground, still attached to its launcher, the experts said. Such a missile and launcher could be attached to either a Rafale or a Mirage, they said.
“These missile launch rails are attached to the aircraft, and it being on the ground, along with the large fire in the background indicates a crash likely occurred,” Ball said.
The Post identified an apparent third crash site in Akhnoor, in Indian-administered Kashmir, based on videos and news reports from the day, but it was not possible to determine what type of aircraft was in the wreckage from the available visuals.
Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said Pakistani planes never entered Indian territory and only shot down the Indian aircraft after they had “delivered their payload”.
Arzan Tarapore, a research scholar focusing on Indian military strategy at Stanford University, said India’s silence on the planes was unsurprising.
“The Indian Government during a crisis is typically very guarded about operational details,” he said. “It’s harder to be restrained and control the trajectory of the crisis if you admit to severe losses.”
Sushant Singh, a Yale University lecturer and former Indian military official, said the lack of comment from New Delhi has also allowed Pakistan to “claim a win, and maybe that could be an off-ramp” for escalation.
