Steve Hsu: So, saying oh, we have the best electronic warfare suite. The spectra system will detect the missile coming in and jam it, it will never hit you. It's like, well, how often are you really gonna face a world class missile coming at you? this is the first time, right? And apparently it didn't work.

Welcome to Manifold. Today, I have once again TP Huang as our expert guest. The topic today is the India-Pakistan conflict and its implications for Chinese versus Western military technology. And what I'll do now is start by giving a relatively superficial summary of what happened, but then TP and I will dig into it for more detail.

Now I'm going to give the consensus Western media, Western analysis of events. This is heavily contested by the Indian side, or at least, Indian Netan on X on Twitter. So just for my Indian audience, I understand that the summary of what happened that I'm about to give may not be accurate.

But we're just gonna start with it as a baseline. Also, I'm not gonna discuss politics. Who was right, who was wrong. We're gonna spend zero time talking about Islamic extremists. We're just gonna talk about a conflict that occurred between two professional armies, and we're gonna talk about what we learned about the weapon systems from that conflict.

So, May 6th, May 7th, the Indian Air Force launched an attack across the border into Pakistan. At certain sites that they said were, operating locations for Islamic terrorists. The Pakistan Air Force was aware or became aware of the activities of the Indians very early on, through long range sensing.

They scrambled their fighter jets. They ensued a roughly one-hour air battle, which many people say was the first of its kind. So, it was the first large scale air battle, which involved something like a hundred plus, modern fighter jets, electronic warfare planes, et cetera, UAVs as well. But the entire conflict took place beyond visual range.

So, it's possible. None of the probable that none of the pilots ever saw each other, all the attacks. Were made via long range sensing IE radar. And the consensus opinion is that in that, brief air battle, the Pakistanis shot down at least a few modern jet fighters from the Indian Air Force, including at least one al, which is a French made plane from Desso, which is reputed to be one of the best non fifth generation or 4.5 plus generation fighter jets in the world.

The Indians paid a lot of money for these refals, reportedly something like $300 million. The Pakistanis were mainly operating Chinese hardware in the form of J 10 Cs, which are a single engine fighter that they purchased from China and JF seventeens, which are jointly produced. Single engine fighter that the Pakistanis and the Chinese collaborate to make.

The media has reported this as a J 10 C kill of at least one, Al, probably also a MIG 29, perhaps a Mirage 2000. And perhaps also, I forgot what it was su an su something. So, let's just stop there and let me go to TB Huang and he can add a little more color and expertise to what I just said.

TP Huang: Hi, Steve. I'm glad to be back. And I think this is one of the most interesting things we've seen in the military blogosphere for a long time because you very rarely do you get like these humongous battles where over a hundred aircraft are involved. And, by military standards, these are also fairly modern air forces.

So, you're not talking about something like the Russian versus Ukraine, where, the Russians are clearly, supposedly a much more capable air force than the Ukrainians and or something between Armenians and Azerbaijan. Which are just like very small air forces. On paper, I would say before this, I think it was very even, in terms of technology wise, the two Air Forces were considered to be relatively even.

The Indian Air Forces were bigger, but they, in the Air Force, also had to deal with, I guess two from Battle because they can't fully devote all their military resources to Pakistan, because they also have to deal with China on the other side. It was a very, it interesting, setup for a lot of the, I guess the aviation geeks out there.

And, the interesting thing is back in 2019, they had fought, fought over the air, when last time this happened. And it was very famous because the Pakistani claim that they. Shut down three Indian aircraft, and the Indians claimed they shut down one Pakistani aircraft. I can, if I can remember correctly, but the most interesting part is that the Indians had one of their pi planes shut down in Pakistan.

So, the Pakistanis actually captured one of the Indian pilots. So, this was obvious that they, in very conclusive, actually shot down the Indian Air Force aircraft. And so, this was a very humiliating moment for the Indian Air Force. And since then, since that time, I would say that you had a case where both air forces in this most recent conflict were very, Conservative, they didn't want to get in a situation where one of their pilots could get captured. So, you see that in the actual battlefield that report that we read. All the aircraft actually stayed within their own boundaries. So, the net result of that is, the actual battles had to happen at a longer distance because if both sides stayed at least 15 kilometers, within their own border, then you know, at minimum the engagement zones are probably like 30 to 40 kilometers, which is beyond visual range.

And there just really haven't been that many BVR kills in modern history just for the fact that, You know, for the most part when it's between, well, the NATO Air Force and, like a Leicester Air Force, the NATO Air Force normally has such a commanding dominance over the battlefield that they're able to, have complete overview of what's going on and get a little closer before they're because before they, they feel the need to like, be a hundred percent sure and shut down, shoot down the opposing aircraft.

So, whereas in this case, we had a more evenly even matchup and neither air forces were willing to get too close to the border. Any battle had to happen from a much further distance out. and the great thing about that is, due to the longer distance at which they operate, we really got to see what the current generation will be beyond visual range.

air battle should look like. Or at least how we think it should look like. I think that's a starting point. That's where we were at the start of May, May 7th, and,

Steve Hsu: Let's not go to the second part of the conflict. Let's just stick to the air battle for a second.

And so let me just say that the two missiles that were probably involved were the PL 15, which is a Chinese missile, and the meteor on the Raffa, which is a European missile. And the, one of the key issues here is does one of them outran the other, some people report that at least the Chinese version of the PL 15 has a range of something like 300 kilometers could potentially shoot down an opponent from 300 kilometers away. I think the media range is somewhat less. And then the second issue is how well networked those missiles are. In other words, how do they find their target?

Are they getting the targeting information from the radar on the fighter jet that shoots the missile or from an AWAC plane, which is somewhere else? Or is it using its own internal radar on the missile? why don't you just comment on that set of uh, topics.

TP Huang: Yeah, so I, I think it's important to just talk about the entire battlefield, what Air Force is used to actually track down the other side and such. a lot of these concepts I've heard from basically people who know this stuff a lot better than I do talk about this. I'll just try to do a layman version of it and hopefully I don't offend too many people saying, this guy's a moron along the way.

Me, my understanding is just generally at a very high level, the modern battlefield, right? It's very obvious that you need to first find the other side in order to shoot them down, and then you don't want them to find you. So that's why we moved to steals. TAL has become such an important part of,

Newer generation aircraft, like the fifth generation, are a lot stealthier than the fourth generation. And the sixth is gonna be a lot stealthier than the fifth generation. There's also a lot of investment being put into different kinds of radars and sensors to actually track and use more modern things like compute computation and elbows to actually, find out, the harder to discover flying objects in the air.

One of the things that people don't really think about when they talk about air battle is what I call electronic emissions. So, whenever you do any kind of communication, whether it's like, turning on your radar where you're sending radar pulses out, whether it's, um, data linking, so you're communicating with other aircraft.

Within your Air Force or you're talking with satellites, or you're just talking with the missiles that you're sending out. All these things require electronic transmissions along the way. Whenever you have electronic transmissions, there's things that can happen. Obviously, one, they could be interrupted, right?

If there's very strong electronic mag magnetic pulses along the way, it could get disrupted. you could have a thing where people detect you, the radar pulses or the communication waves that you're sending out and then have an idea of where you are. And then there's also the cases where, I don't know if this happens or not, but maybe they can spoof your presence along the way.

Steve Hsu: But electronic warfare and this entire emission is a huge part of modern warfare to the best of my knowledge. Let me just add one thing I forgot to say. Is it, so I mentioned, what are the different sources of, radar, location of the enemy here? I mentioned wax planes, the radars on the fighters, and then also the final targeting radars that are on the missiles. But I didn't mention the ground radar.

So, another issue here is that these are neighboring countries. They have ground radar that has been observing the takeoffs and landings of all the planes there. Opponent for many years. And so, it could literally be that the ground radar notice knows where all the enemy planes are and just if your data links are right, it can communicate that to the fighter jet or to the missile itself.

Sorry to interrupt. Go on.

TP Huang: yeah. So, what's kind of interesting about this, if you believe the Pakistani side of things is very, everything makes a lot of sense if you actually look at the Pakistani side of things. So, this is why I personally think the Pakistani story was not too far from the truth. So, one of the things I had been trying to figure out for the longest time before they did their presentation was, because one of the wreckage that people posted online of Rafa was from at least 70 kilometers away was on the Indian border.

So that meant the aircraft was probably shot down from well over a hundred kilometers away. And this kind of kills is just so difficult to consider because first you actually have to pick up the RFA from really far out, and then you have to actually get some kind of a di start tracking a little bit.

And then you have to um, probably have something that can establish weapon grade, resolution tracking on the rfa. And finally, the missile itself has to actually lock onto the rfa. Once a missile goes like a hundred kilometers, it runs out of energy. The question I had in my head was, how is it possible that a modern four, 4.5 generation aircraft was very modern, radar warning systems and electronic warfare suite and can turn pretty well get, get killed from this far out. So, one of the interesting things is that the Pakistanis were basically telling us exactly when the Indian aircraft were taking off from the air and which air bases they were leaving from, and, also, how many aircraft were taking off.

which tells me a few things. One, they had pretty good access to the Chinese satellites. They're very close allies to China. As you may know, right now globally, really only America and China have these ISR constellations in the air. So, as a close ally that buys mostly Chinese weapons, Pakistan wouldn't.

Most likely get full access to the Chinese ISR constellations. So, they would have a good idea of when the aircraft themselves take off from the runways. And there's also a huge radar station in southern Tibet that can look into India. If you have an aircraft that takes off 300 kilometers within India's own border, then it is probably going to be 600 kilometers.

So, 500 kilometers from the ax and the ground-based radars. And it's probably gonna be at least 400 kilometers away from the fighter jets. So those are at a kind of distance you wouldn't think can actually track just based on the geography and the, you know, the mountainous regions and whatever.

So I think it's pretty high likelihood that one, they got tipped off where the aircraft were taken from. And two, there's these electronic intelligence satellites in the air from China. That was used to actually further pick up the general direction of the Indian aircraft.

And then you also have the Chinese radar system in Southern Tibet that I think probably also picked up on the Indian radar because the Southern Tibet radar was very high in the mountains. So, we can see further away. There's nothing blocking it.

Steve Hsu: Yeah, so this specific aspect to the story has, I think, gone very hot in the last couple days, especially in Indian media where they are now claiming that a very big part of the Pakistani success came from active assistance from the Chinese side. I don't know. Everything you said is plausible.

I just don't know how true or not true it is. Certainly, I wouldn't, I think that the incentive is definitely there for the Chinese to do this because they support the Pakistani side and secondly, if the air battle turns out to be a big victory for the Pakistanis using Chinese weapons, it's a huge PR victory for China.

So, yeah, I, I wouldn't put it past 'em to have assisted in such an active way.

TP Huang: I think in general, right? Like it's pretty well known that China at a minimum provides commercial grade satellite guidance to the Russians and pro and quite possibly the US military is accusing China of also providing commercial grade, satellite imaging to the Huis and the.

Maybe not the Hussies, but the Iranians. I think there's a pretty good chance that, like someone, that anyone, anytime you buy weapons from China or us, you are given the full package, right? You're not just getting the aircraft and the aircraft themselves, but you're getting the entire combat system.

You're getting the operational controls, you're getting the access to the satellites, and you get to train on how China or the US use these systems. So, I think this is part of the story and, whether or not this was Pakistani against India or like if China had sold this to Egypt or something like that, then I think you would be supplying this regardless.

But I think what I'm trying to get at is that it was very interesting because I'm Indian. Aircraft did not appear to have a good knowledge of where the Pakistanis were based on what I was looking at. And the Pakistanis seemed to be very aware of how many Indian aircraft there were.

cause they were saying 72 plus. And the Indian Air Force said there were a total of 80 aircraft that they scrambled. So that's if you have 72 if you're that close, if the Indians, Pakistanis had that good view of where the Indians were coming from, then India was doing a pretty poor job of actually hiding their assets.

Steve Hsu: Right. So, I don't have a high confidence opinion on how crucial, Chinese radar and satellite coverage were to the Pakistani performance, but I, it's definitely a possible, it was very crucial, the story, I think, which at least as of the first, the briefing on the first day after the battle by the, I think it was the Vice Air Marshal of Pakistan, which I highly recommend.

I'll put a link in the show notes to that briefing because I think he, all sides maybe during, conflict, are using propaganda and disinformation. you should take everything with a grain of salt. But he seemed quite credible to me, and what he said seemed quite plausible. So at least as of that time, the impression I got was something more like using ground radar and sac and with the j tens and j seventeens keeping their radars off, so they were harder to detect.

They were nevertheless able to track the Indian planes and launch the missiles using the tracking information, which came not from the fighter jets themselves, but from other sources. and then the missile itself could, can receive the PL 15 can receive midcourse guidance. So, it can get itself pretty close to the target, fighter jet before it turns on its own radar for final, target acquisition.

And so that was the picture I had, as of that first briefing. Do you think that's still consistent with how it was done?

TP Huang: Yes. And um, what we saw is, and I don't wanna offend too many Indian military supporters out there, so this is just my view based on what I think happened and the Pakistani reports and some of this stuff, and it checked out to me just, thinking about things a little bit, is that, the Pakistani, seemed to understand.

The Air Force seemed to understand pretty well that you need to keep your, what I call them, I said earlier, the electronic emissions down. So that means, keep your radar. Off for the longest period possible. So, the other side's radar warning receiver doesn't pick you up. So, we have what we call the low probability of intercept modes, on these modern aircraft.

When they use aesa aircraft, they often use the phrase LPI, to describe the situation where, you know, the radar is because they're sending separate pulses that are different every time they're harder to pick up. Rafa has the LPI radar and the modern, block three JF seventeens and also the J tens were all using LPI radars.

But even so, I think it's just based on their training that the Pakistanis had with the Chinese Air Force and how the PLA Air Force was actually fighting. The packaging studies understand that the LPI part of it does not, is not like absolute right. you still should keep your radar off and emissions off as long as possible,

Steve Hsu: Yeah. One of the reasons why I felt the briefing given by the Vice Air Marshal was credible is because, these militaries, I, as you said, Pakistan and the PLA Air Force have trained together a lot, and the specific tactics in the design of the weapon systems from the PLA. Are public.

So, they tell you things like, yeah, we have a missile that can get its targeting information from a networked system, right? And all this is public. These are features of the missile and they sell an export version of the PL 15. These are all features of the technology that people have been talking about for many years.

And if you are an actual analyst, military analyst, this is how you theorize that BVR warfare is actually going to go down. And so, when the Pakistan guy was briefing it, I was like, this is just going down the way that it's designed to go down. And on the other side, a lot of the people on the sort of Proin Indian side who didn't want to accept that this actually happened, didn't seem to be aware that this is literally how most people who think seriously about air warfare think the next generation of Air War is gonna be conducted.

TP Huang: Yeah, I think it's, based on what I know about how Air Force Air, so why I wrote about this concept of h what, this is what they call like the Chinese Air Force calls, air, asset, A track, asset B launches and asset C guides it. So basically, you have ground radar, or you initially track the enemy aircraft, and then you have your J 10 launching the missile, and then you have the AAC guiding the missile to the target.

And depending on how good you think P 15 is, it may or may not be able to hit the targets, without fighter jet radar. Also turning on the radar at the end. So basically, the wax radar resolution is gonna be lower than your typical fighter jet radar resolution. but you can see if, see things from further out.

So if it's not good enough that at some point, the fighter jet itself needs to get a little closer to the enemy aircraft and turn on, its own radar to guide the, the missile for maybe the last guide it until it gets to five to 10 kilometers maybe 10 kilometer off like a, more modern aircraft with that's a little steely like real before the PL 15 can actually lock onto the, graph fall in this case.

Steve Hsu: as an algorithm, you just say you have some assets. A, B, C, D, E. Right? So, the algorithm, if it's all networked and the amount of information that has to be exchanged is relatively modest because I'm just telling the missile what the velocity, position velocity of the target is at any given moment.

it's not a lot of bits, right? so the algorithm would be like, oh, the asset, which is furthest away but can still measure X and V, enough of the target does it and transmits to the missile, but then you pass it off once, if the ax can no longer get, granular enough measurement of those quantities and it passes it off and the fighter has to turn on, it's.

And then in the final phase, the missile itself turns on its radar and, but not until the last minute so that the fighter jet maybe doesn't even know it's been targeted. It may not see the missile because the missile is a pretty low radar cross section itself. and so, like that, like the way you would do this seems like pretty just algorithmically, pretty straightforward.

And so, to me, like hearing the Pakistanis brief this, they weren't saying anything other than what you already thought was gonna be the standard procedure for how to conduct this kind of air battle.

TP Huang: Yeah, so that's the entire thing that was interesting about how it played out. It very much felt like Pakistan was fighting like a modern era warfare, whereas India was not in this case because, what Pakistan was doing was what you think, from beyond visual range, should work out in the 21st century.

Whereas India, if I was, if India was fighting the way I think it should have been fighting, then I would've expected very heavy electronic work, fair pressure on the um, on the missiles that they're coming in. I would expect that they would be able to somehow, somehow, disrupt the data, linking a little bit with the missile and the aircraft, disrupt this kill chain a little bit.

And possibly I would also expect that they can pick up that they got locked. The aircraft itself could. Pick up, they got locked down by the opposing radar at a much earlier point. If you actually listen to the recordings, if the Pakistanis were actually able to record the Indians talking, Indian Air Force pilots talking to each other, that's actually quite embarrassing.

And if that's actually the real recordings, then what it tells us is that the rafale pilot did not even see the missile coming. They just suddenly lost contact with that pilot.

Steve Hsu: Just to comment on that. So, at the press conference, I encourage anybody who's really into this stuff to listen to it. They had radio transmission recordings of the flight group, in which one of the Rafales was shot down. and amusingly this, the call sign for the whole group was Godzilla.

So, I think you had the flight leader, Godzilla four, communicating with Godzilla three saying, Godzilla three, are you there? And getting no response. And then Godzilla four reports, maybe back to the ground, an explosion in the air. So, it's basically, if this recording is real, it's literally the flight leader, like trying to find his colleague and, notice and then seeing a big explosion.

And they somehow managed to capture this radio transmission and de, I guess decrypt it somehow. I don't know whether these are normally encrypted or not. They should be,

TP Huang: they should be encrypted. But in 2019, the Pakistani also were able to capture communications between the Indian pilots. Apparently the five years, the Indian Air Force did not improve in that area in the last five

Steve Hsu: Yeah. Now the Indian side immediately just said, these are just fake. This never happened. And so do I, but I'm not sure. I wouldn't be that surprised if there really was a squadron called Godzilla and Godzilla three got shot out of the air.

TP Huang: It kind of passes a smell test, at least on some aspect that the rafale didn't spot the incoming missile or didn't spot it until it gets laid. Because if you get shot down from that far out, PL-15 is what we call a two-stage missile. It can, the first stage it goes and at a certain point slows down a little bit as it gets close to the target, then it.

goes into its second stage, then can pick up the energy again to try to actually strike down the aircraft. but even so from that far out is still pretty hard. what this would indicate is that the, one, it's the PL 15 itself. if you just look at it, it seems to be very hard, it's very stealthy, right?

Like its very narrow, very low cross section in the front. So, it's pretty hard for the radars to pick up. and I don't think the RFL radar itself picked up and it probably also didn't turn on its seeker until the end. Right now, it's the only in service, beyond visual range missile to, to have its own like a seeker.

So, this is its major advantage over everything else. It has an AA sticker with. I think it's 192 TR m mi MMIC units in there. it can do the, it can do the same where it sends out different pulses to try to track down. And it's very, it's harder to pick up by the opposing aircraft.

So, it, so it, from that perspective, it is harder for the opposing aircraft to actually pick up the missiles coming and actually, make movements to get away from that. So, when people compare P 15 to the AM RAS, I do think the Amram is at a disadvantage in this just because of the seeker technology alone, and this is also one of the reasons why, US Air Force has been investing in this new project, An IM two 60 as a.

Steve Hsu: I think for the current, the two sixties are not deployed yet. And so, for the deployed US missiles and the meteor, I think the PL 15 both has, because it has an actively electronically scanned array, An ESA, seeker radar system, that gives it an advantage. And then also I think it out ranges both the media and the existing US aims.

So, I think currently it's possible the Chinese side has the advantage in air missiles.

TP Huang: Yeah, I guess that it's probably, I would say they're probably comparable in range. but I think it's not had a notable advantage over the An IM 120 C series or at least, probably has an advantage over an IM one 20 D also, if the stated 300 kilometers is actually correct.

Steve Hsu: But I think I, in my opinion, the biggest advantage, so still is still having the aesa radar in the front. And that just makes us so much, that just makes us so much more capable in terms of tracking the opposing target and then actually not getting easily jammed up. Yep. So, in an earlier episode of Manifold, I interviewed a guy called Barat Carna, who's a very prominent guy in India. He was actually on the advisory committee for Nuclear Strategy for India. So, he's a senior, strategic thinker, military thinker in India and has written many books on the subject.

And although he himself is not an expert on air combat. He, of course, knows everybody in India, and he even quoted a former air Marshal of India in the community in the message that he sent me. And he also posted something on his blog about this. And at least, several of the people he communicated with, again, senior military people in India believe this whole picture that the Indian Air Force was not able to locate the J tens and J seventeens that were the JF seventeens that were firing.

They didn't detect the missiles until it was too late. And actually, subsequent to this bad outcome in this first air battle, they basically didn't fly any planes after that

TP Huang: Yeah, I think it was pretty obvious that the Indians did not fly any planes after that. And that's also probably why we didn't see any more shoot downs after that, after that first event. Because if you have a situation where you get, I think at least three or four got shot down, you get three or four, your aircraft shut down and you don't even see the other side.

That's a very scary moment for the pilots. For the pilots themselves, psychologically speaking, they might feel like 10 or 15 aircraft got shut down because they're their co-pilots. They didn't see them, like, if you had a case where you shot CSL on the other side and then you shot down one or two of them and they shot down three or four of you.

That's one thing, but it felt as if, if the thing had happened the way it did, we think it did, then the gap between the two air forces is quite large. So that's why. So that's why I find this very plausible.

Steve Hsu: Yeah, let me comment on this. cause I think Pro Indian commentators would just deny everything that we've just been saying. And I just wanna point out that this guy, Barat is. One of the most nationalistic Indian guys. He's for India, India doesn't have a fully modern hydrogen bomb.

And he's all for India, getting that So he's pretty aggressive in terms of what he wants for Indian military modernization, but he's realistic. A and b, he is very well connected. He spoke to a former air marshal of India. And at least in those circles, they accept this as the picture of what actually happened.

TP Huang: So, I just wanna throw it out, that out there, Yeah, and I think it's, whatever you tell your public is one thing, right? It's very important for the military themselves to understand where the failures are and where they need to improve, right? The worst thing that can happen, is if they are in the air force themselves too, if they realize they had a few aircraft shut down and then they just pretend that nothing happened.

Like there, there need, there would need to be like, serious trainings, changes your training and how you acquire, make your acquisitions

Steve Hsu: Internally, because they're professionals, I'm sure that is what they'll have to do. But Modi doesn't want anybody talking about it, doesn't want the media talking about it, doesn't want the average Indian to know that this happened. But let me state an alternative hypothesis, which is that in the original raid that happened the night of May 6th, the Indians telegraphed to the Pakistanis saying, hey, we're actually doing this for like internal political reasons, and we wanna ex, we're gonna execute a raid.

We're not gonna attack military targets, we're gonna attack, quote.

Islamic terror targets, which are actually civilian targets. We're not gonna attack your air bases or your planes. And so, we just telegraph all that and maybe the Indians just thought the PACS will let us do this. And they were not expecting the PACS to react so aggressively.

And so maybe they weren't really on their ball game that first night that what you said, TP, which is that they didn't seem to be behaving operating in modern 21st century BVR, air tactics. Maybe they weren't because maybe they thought they had telegraphed to the PACS that we're just gonna do this symbolic thing and don't attack us, and then we won't escalate.

And maybe that was their mistake. However, I don't think that's plausible because the fact that they didn't fly any planes after that suggests they really were, concerned about the outcome of that first battle. And it wasn't just because of a failure on their own part of not taking all the right steps.

TP Huang: Yeah. I, that when you, were des describing the situation, I had the exact same thought in my head, which is that, one, if you are gonna hit the other side, and if you're gonna send aircraft, if you believe in the Pakistani side, there’s a, of the Indian Air Force coming over, there was the, there were, they were as expected, you had the attacking.

Aircraft and you have escorts, right? Their aircraft have the, you know, each aircraft has its own roles in what its missions are. So, whenever you have aircraft in the air, even if you didn't expect the other side to respond the way they did, you should still take basic precautions, like how you fight a battle, right?

Steve Hsu: There's a talk like, for like professional air pilots, that you try to train the way you wanna fight in real war. Yeah, I don't think it's plausible that I think you could claim that, oh, we Indians, we're just gonna do something symbolic. And there was a tacit understanding this wasn't gonna be military on military and that is why they prefer they had a bad outcome on the night of May 6th. I think that's not plausible because of the fact that they didn't fly any planes after that.

I think they literally did learn something very negative about the situation from the night of May 6th, and that's why they didn't fly any planes after that.

TP Huang: Yeah, and I totally agree with you on that one.

And I think that, the fact that the Pakistanis did not take advantage of that situation tells me that the Pakistanis themselves also have a lot to work with, to work on.

Steve Hsu: Yeah, I thought one of the greatest lines of the Pakistani Vice Air Marshal when he gave his briefings was, he said, we showed restraint the number of kills could have been much higher. And I think what the Pakistani side has said consistently since then is that we only fired at planes that we saw fire at sites in Pakistan.

So, of the 70 plus planes that were in the air for the Indian Air Force, only a subset fired at ground targets in Pakistan. And the Pakistani claim is they only fired at those planes. They didn't fire at all 70 planes that were in the air. In his words, we showed restraint.

TP Huang: And, you know, like normally I'd hate to see what the next Indian Pakistan conflict will look like because the stakes have already been raised in this one. Normally, in the previous conflicts, normally you have one side shoots on missiles, lots of missiles over, on some irrelevant target.

Then you see the counterstrike a few days, a couple days later, right? And this was already so much nastier than what we previously expected.

Steve Hsu: the stuff that happened in the last year or two in the Middle East is mostly like people not really going for the jugular. Like, oh, I'm gonna telegraph that. I'm gonna fire some missiles at this base. And, but then, we don't need to escalate. If you're okay, then I'm okay. There's a lot of that kind of diplomacy.

I don't see it here because we, we know, haven't talked about what happened after the air battle. We can get to that in a second. But yeah, basically. It's a very bad situation because the Indians are telling their public that they actually won this overall conflict. And the Pakistani side is telling its public that they won.

So that means that the next time something happens, all hell could break loose.

TP Huang: Yeah. and I think the next time this happens, we would not have this, like things will look a lot different than the way they played out this time. if the Air Force knows that they have a disadvantage in the air battle. I think they, they're just gonna attack the, the air bases in, in phase one,

Steve Hsu: Yeah, they could go immediately to that and then there could be nuclear weapons at some of those air bases. It's very dangerous. So let me, before we generalize, let me drill down on something.

So, I. To get to the real like system-on-system stuff.

Okay. So, let's assume a rafale really did get shot down and let's assume a rafale got shot down, from long range, let's say over, well over a hundred kilometers away by a PL 15 I think that's, most people believe that. Like other online Indian commentators, I think everybody else in the world thinks that's true.

So, let's think about what this means. So it doesn't tell you about the dog fighting capability of the J 10 or the JF 17 or whatever, but it tells you something about the networked information environment of that PL 15 missile, and the quality of its, final seeker and of the ability of the al radar system and electronic warfare system called Spectra to detect and jam that missile on its way in.

So, I think there are some very granular things that, you know, like this piece of the story, which again, like we don't know for sure if it's true, but most people believe it's true. If that's true, it does tell us some very granular things. a generation 4.5 plus very expensive European made jet was shut down from well over a hundred kilometers by a PL 15.

It might've even been an export version of the PL 15.

TP Huang: First of all, I would say the rafale itself is, in my opinion, a pretty respectful aircraft. A lot of the Western, analysts thought that Rafa is, they, in their mind, was significantly better than J 10 C before this happened. I never thought that, because, you know, like if I was looking at the, you know, the basic stuff like the radar systems and electronic warfare and things like that, and I just knew the Chinese system was probably better because, they were using gallium nitrite TR modules and, China is the world's leader in telecom and the French are not.

But, like a lot of people have archaic views of these things, so they don't understand that. Um, so for me they were like, very comparable and I thought J had a slight edge in the beginning. But I think what we saw actually is that the system really matters and, doctrine tactics really matters beyond visual range.

Prior to this battle, the French were very good at marketing their system saying that referrals never were lost on the battlefield. And this is, almost as good as a fifth-generation aircraft because we have the Spectra system,

Steve Hsu: The Spectra system always struck me as just plain marketing, having spent plenty of time in the tech world, right? So, the best thing you can market, say you're selling like, internet security software, you can just say whatever you want about your product because nobody ever gets to actually test it under real conditions.

So, saying oh, we have the best electronic warfare suite. The spectra system will detect the missile coming in and jam it, it will never hit you. It's like, well, how often are you really gonna face a world class missile coming at you? This is the first time, right? And apparently it didn't work.

TP Huang: Yeah, and I think that's to the detriment of the French. This really shows systems really matter. So having your own satellite network that you can provide to the others, having, being able to sell your acts that, have, that they're willing to work, to do the data linking, having your own missiles, that are, full range of missiles and having your own electronic warfare aircraft, I think the Pakistani got help from China in converting while they, the a YX into an electronic warfare aircraft.

I think all these things really matter when you're doing systems. We know from the discussions that I heard on the Chinese side that the Pakistanis and the PLA really practiced, much and things like that. Basically, what I didn't understand before this most recent combat was actually the Pakistanis actually.

Not particularly good at beyond visual range. And then they went up against some of these exercises against the PLA and basically the PLA wiped the floors on them. And then, they shared ideas, obviously, like the Pakistani also helped the PLA on how, on the stuff that they learned. But there was a lot of, things that Pakistani Air Force wasn't able to experience

Steve Hsu: You're talking about annual training exercises that have been happening for many years, and people familiar with that stuff would just not be surprised by the description of the battle, because the battle happened the way these guys actually train, because they think that's how 21st Century air combat works.

TP Huang: Yeah. And I'm not sure that Indians actually got the full training that they need. and I don't wanna be mean about that, but like a lot of times, when you're training with, US Air Force and you're not the closest ally, right? The US Air Force is not gonna show you their best tactics.

They're not gonna show all the secrets, Pakistanis and the Chinese are very close. So, when the Pakistanis come to train with China and the Pakistani's oh, we want to experience what electronic warfare looks like because we experienced this in a recent exercise with the Turkish Air Force and the US Air Force.

Let's, I think we think we can, we can do better against you this time. And then they, then they get into these simulations, with the Chinese Air Force, and they can't even get a lock onto to J 16 for a couple days because the, they've just never experienced that level of electronic warfare and the kill

Steve Hsu: So, this issue about the quality of electronic warfare, again, this is a highly technical thing and you're only gonna know how well you. technology works against the other side under real battlefield situations. cause people aren't gonna show you their best stuff, right? So, if I'm shopping, I'm in an unaligned country and I'm shopping for a fighter jet, they're gonna let me, my pilots fly it.

So, I'll know whether it has particular aerodynamic characteristics or this much thrust or max speed or climbing capability. Those things are easy to validate. How will I know whether the Spectra EW system really does foil Chinese missiles? I'm not gonna find that out until India and Pakistan have a battle, right?

And so, we did find that out, I believe.

TP Huang: Yeah, and it made a lot of sense to me that the, the spectral was, entirely overrated in this case because, if you think about it, this was probably developed, the development probably started at least 10 years ago on the system

Steve Hsu: before AA seekers were to be found in missiles.

TP Huang: Yeah. The Europeans, the ALS use, like gallium arsenide, trans TR modules on their, on their aircraft. And technology wise, it just seems to me like at least half a generation behind what, even what the J 10 C uses. So, from that point of view, I think it was always weird to me that a lot of the military analysts thought that the rafale had this major advantage on the radar system.

Steve Hsu: Most people who are quote military analysts, I can guarantee you do not understand any physics. And so, like the difference between gallium nitride and gallium arsenic, they don't know the difference. What is the difference? Or they don't know, after 10 years, how much better is the signal processing, the chip set or the algorithms used by one side versus the other.

Like them, they have no concept of how these things work. And whereas if you tell me like, oh yeah, one side has more powerful, active, electronically scanned array radars and they have much more modern chip sets and algorithms cause their systems are 10, 20 years newer than the other side. Like for sure I can imagine big disparities in performance.

TP Huang: Yeah. And also, it makes me wonder if like most of the Western Air Forces are falling behind indoctrine because you would think that the Indians have been training with some of the NATO Air forces. And the Pakistanis would've experienced some of this too, training with some of the NATO Air Forces. So, it makes me wonder if they are, are the NATO Air Force just not showing any of their tactics?

Like Americans, they're not sharing with obviously, the French or the French maybe are, not sharing the best when they're, when they train with the Indians. They, like some of these basic things like, don't turn on your radar until,

Steve Hsu: You got little. Beyond sharing best practices, I just question whether even the Americans. When was the last time an American fighter jet had to face a peer adversary?

TP Huang: Ooh, actually this is a good question. I can answer. Actually, the PLA and the US Air Force, they face off against each other regularly on the East China Sea. And you don't read about it because there's no actual. Battle going on, but emission control from what I hear is a very huge issue for both

Steve Hsu: but I've never heard the US Air Force say things like, oh, we have an electronic warfare system on the F 35, so that if the PL 15 is trying to lock on and, close the final 10 kilometers, we'll just blind it or blah, blah, blah. I've never heard claims like that. And secondly, like, how would you know, because no, PL 15 has ever been fired in anger at a US jet.

So, the whole thing is not no, what anybody says is not necessarily credible until the actual combat happens.

TP Huang: So, I think this is very important to, to know and like the US Air Force really, I think has a lot of classified stuff on the electronic welfare. Systems, right? And, these things are not being shared with the regular public, I think. And, and I think it's, yeah.

Steve Hsu: You could imagine there's some spy stuff or maybe some secret observation of oh, how does the seeker on the PL 15 work? Or what's its electromagnetic signature? you could imagine the Americans have some stuff like that, and then we design some EW countermeasures on our jets and et cetera.

But when the French boast about this and they say oh, but spectra, Ew, so you should pay 300 million per Rafa. That's gotta be bullshit. Like how do you, how does the French government know that Spectra ew, is viable at all against a PL 15? They have no idea.

TP Huang: Yeah, and I think the French right now are probably telling the Indians not to fly RFA for a while because you're damaging our sales prospects.

Steve Hsu: So, I think that part where but like the, sorry, I'm getting on one of my hobby horses, but if you read like debates between military analysts who have political science degrees and no physics or engineering degrees, like the, just the reasoning is faulty. Like I don't see a scenario where the de so really knows how well its Spectra, EW system works against state-of-the-art missiles.

I just don't think they know. Of course, they're gonna lie and market it to you as if it works. It's like antivirus software companies telling you how well their antivirus software works, but they don't really know because I used to be in this industry. They don't really know because they don't know the full threat spectrum until they finally face it.

But there, of course, they're gonna market it to you as if it works perfectly.

TP Huang: Yeah, so I think, after this Rafa's gonna lose some sales. I'm pretty sure of that because if you're India at this point that you're, you really should not order any more rafales really. Because it's very expensive. And yeah.

Steve Hsu: Barra Carna and in what he told me and what he wrote on his blog, he said, yeah, there's a group of experts in India. These are very nationalistic. Military strategists in India, some of them former senior military officials who were like, it was a mistake to buy the Rafa.

They just say this explicitly. so, they were saying it before this incident happened. It's not a crazy opinion to think that the Indians should not have bought Rafa.

TP Huang: Yeah. So, I think what happened is after 2019 when the Pakistanis shot down and captured the Indian pilots, right? Indians felt like a lot of urgency into getting, a more modern aircraft

Steve Hsu: was a MIG 20. Was that a MIG 21?

TP Huang: mid 21. Yep. And maybe they felt what the aircraft they had wasn't.

Competitive, or at least wasn't significantly better than what the Pakistani had, and that was not an acceptable situation. And the best aircraft they could get on the market at the time was, rafale, because two 50 sevens weren't ready and the F 30 fives probably weren't offered to the Indians at the time.

Steve Hsu: but they over, but they, I think they overpaid like crazy for their refals.

TP Huang: Yeah. And they probably did that because they needed immediate delivery and because the French ordered rafales, the Pakistani decided they needed to order jacie.

Steve Hsu: Yep.

TP Huang: That's kind of like how we got here today. I think the interesting thing is that the Americans didn't really even expect, allow the Pakistanis to use their F-16s.

It's pretty much like the Pakistani in this case was just relying on the Chinese system to fight, monogamation of, Russian and French systems on the Indian side.

Steve Hsu: Yep.

So now we've reached an hour, and we spent the whole time on the air battle. After the air battle. Basically, both sides are just launching drones and missiles at each other. Although there is a claim by the Pakistanis that they damaged, maybe the radar of an S 400, air defense system in India.

And I believe that was a J according to the Pakistani side. That was a JF 17, firing a Chinese air to ground missile. What do you think about those events?

TP Huang: Yeah, I think, if the Pakistani actually had the, the full air dominance, like basically the Indians weren't flying up at that time, they really did not take advantage of the situation because, If the other side basically is not intercepting your aircraft, at minimum you can fire them from your own side of the border.

The fact that the Pakistanis only had one JF 17 shooting at the S 400, and we don't know if we actually hit the radar unit that they claim. but you would expect there to be more damage if they were actually making a concerted effort to do the ground attacks on the Indian side.

So, this tells me that either the Pakistanis missed an opportunity, or they were just not confident enough in their ability to penetrate like the Indian Air Defense protected by the S 400.

Steve Hsu: Do you think, let me put it this way, do you think we learned anything about the S 400 or the HQ nine? So, HQ nine is the Chinese Air Defense missile system that the Pakistanis have. Do you think we learned anything about either of those systems from what happened the next day?

TP Huang: I think when it comes to error defense, you're never gonna intercept every missile that comes at you, right? So that's why people have the multilayered defenses and, that's why, a lot of it is really also depending on how good your radar is, your operational control and things like that.

Based on the New York Times Photos Zone, stuff like this, it does appear like Indians scored more hits on the Pakistani air bases than vice versa. So that would tell me either the, Pakistanis decided that they didn't have enough missiles so they couldn't, intercept all the Indian, miss Indian attack missiles coming in, or they were getting overwhelmed by what the Indians were sending over, or the radars themselves, or probably a combination of the radars themselves.

not fully picking them up.

Steve Hsu: I think the satellite imagery tells us the Indians did more damage than the Pakistanis did to the other side, with the possible exception of this S 400. but I'm not sure what it tells us about the quality or the performance of individual systems.

TP Huang: Yeah. I think like, you know, when you talk about systems, there's a lot of stuff involved here. I think that they even have the best air defense system, but your electronic warfare units are not tech, are not doing the best job that they could, your radar units are not, finding the incoming missiles.

Your, maybe your acts are not helping out your air defense unit to track incoming missiles. Then it makes actually shooting down a supersonic missile, like bramos, a lot harder. And we did see that the Pakistanis shut down a whole lot of drones. There were just photos of shut down Indian drones everywhere.

But it seemed like they didn't have great success shooting down the bravos.

Steve Hsu: Yep. I wanna close with an anecdote, from an F four. I think it's an F four fighter pilot, an American who was fighting in the Vietnam War. And this is relevant to the quality of systems, air defense and electronics, warfare, jamming and stuff like this. So, this is a kind of well-known anecdote.

This fighter pilot, I think he was flying in F four over Vietnam, and the Air Force brass said, you know, you, we've equipped your plane with an amazing, electronic warfare system. So don't worry about the Vietnamese surface-to- air missiles. Then, you'll be able to jam them, or they won't hit you.

And from his own experience, this F four pilot knew this was all bullshit, right? because he had seen, I think some of his comrades shut down by these surfaced air missiles despite the quality of the air, the electronic warfare stuff, they were told that they had. Okay, so now this guy's on some mission with some huge bombers.

Like he's flying, escorting, for some huge bombers. And he was then told on this mission, don't worry about the big bombers because they have an even more powerful electronic warfare system than the one on your fighter on your F four. And this guy didn't at the time, he says, I didn't really think that.

Like I knew they were lying about the EW system on my plane. cause I knew it didn't work. but I just assumed it actually worked for this giant bomber that I was escorting. But then he said, as soon as we started our mission, like the North Vietnamese started firing surface to air missiles. And I watched this giant bomber crack apart like an egg.

That's literally the language that he said. Spraying, flaming jet fuel through the sky. I realized that its EEW system also didn't work. so, this is, and this is a fighter pilot for the US Air Force, they lie to him. Why don't they lie to people they're trying to sell the planes to,

TP Huang: Yeah, I, I. Probably believe that and the Indians probably feeling a little ripped off at the moment.

Steve Hsu: Yeah, I mean that, that electronic warfare, that's such a complex ethereal thing. I would just never believe what people tell me. It's also system versus system. So, it may work perfectly against some primitive old missile from 20 years ago, but it may not do anything to a more modern missile.

Yeah, I think the Indians, they probably, are gonna come out of this and try to acquire a more modern aircraft where the electronic warfare actually works. In some way the best choice for them is to get the F -35 in terms of capability. But there are other like implications that they may or may not be happy to go with

Yeah, but then they're locked into the US complex and they're captive to the, if they don't do what the Americans say, the Americans can switch off some systems in the F 35 or so, cripple their F 35. There are a bunch of reasons why you would care, and wanna be careful about buying stuff like that.

This guy, Barrett Carna that I keep mentioning, whom I had on the podcast already, he's not for India buying F 30 fives either. So, he thinks that's even more of a waste of money than the al. they're in a pretty tough situation actually.

TP Huang: Yeah, so I think the Indians actually have a pretty tough situation right now. And, in the future I would think that the two main lines of the system that you are getting is either the Chinese one or the American one. And the Chinese one, obviously they're not gonna get, and the American one, it comes with political questions that they may not want to attach themselves to either.

So, this is a delicate question for them.

Steve Hsu: Yep. All right. Any final comments you wanna make about stuff that happened in between India and Pakistan?

TP Huang: Yeah. I would say that it will be really interesting just for me to see what Indians do after this. it would tell you a lot about what they're, what they learn about this experience. cause I don't think they could order any more rap files for the Air Force after this.

Maybe the Navy could, but not the Air Force. And so, the choices are basically the Russians two 50 sevens or the American F 30 fives. It is a very tough question of what's gonna be good enough for them because, whatever they get is likely to mash up against the Chinese J 35 a.

Which is probably gonna be sold to Pakistan somewhere, sometime later this decade. I think the Indians have a lot of resource advantage, military successes are not purely based on your economic size.

Steve Hsu: Yeah. just for the audience, so the J 10 C, which is the most advanced fighter that Pakistan has and is believed to be responsible for the Al Kill, that's not even the leading-edge fighter. It's actually two generations in a way behind the leading-edge fighter in China. And I believe, TP would know the answer to this.

I believe that Chinese are no longer buying more J 10 Cs for their own air force. They're only buying, they're only making J 20, which is a more advanced fifth generation stealth fighter, and they're exporting J tens, but they don't actually acquire more J tens for their air force.

TP Huang: Yeah, they haven't for a while because it's too short range for them. once they got J twenties ramped up and J sixteens, they just don't need the J 10 C more J Cs anymore. And they’re probably gonna go with just J 20 and J 35 a's in, in the near future.

Steve Hsu: Then, and then probably a lot of drones. So, the plane itself that may have caused a deep seek shock, in military technology is not even a plane that's considered, the frontline, the what the Chinese are. Acquiring right now, it's only for export. Now, the missile may have been a state of the RPL 15. We don't know for sure.

TP Huang: nah, that's getting overridden too. They have a new version of the PL 15 that's gonna be a little better secret wise. It's gonna be longer range and it can fit better inside the uh, the stealth aircraft.

Steve Hsu: Okay. But at this moment in time, it's possible that the Pakistanis did have the same PL-15 that's deployed by the Chinese military right now. Yeah.

TP Huang: It is possible theoretically. Yeah. I don't know for sure.

Steve Hsu: Yep. Okay. Thanks a lot for joining me. I hope the audience enjoyed it. If you are truly interested in the military technology competition between China and the United States, this was a very key, new set of data, to update on.

TP Huang: Yeah, this was really interesting for all the air nerds.