IAF got air superiority over Pakistan during Operation Sindoor: European think tank

New Delhi: The Indian Air Force achieved “air superiority on Pakistan air space” during Operation Sindoor, allowing the force to continue with long-range strikes against the enemy infrastructure, a European think tank has said in a new report.

“By the morning of May 10, the IAF had succeeded in achieving air superiority over a significant portion of Pakistan’s airspace. This in turn enabled it to continue long-range strikes against enemy infrastructure at will, at least for as long as it retained sufficient stocks of munitions such as BrahMos or SCALP-EG,” the Centre for Military History and Perspective Studies (CHPM) says in the report.

“At the same time, the Pakistan Air Force had lost the ability to repeat the operations it had conducted so successfully on May 7, owing to the loss of its forward air-surveillance radars and the threat posed by S-400 systems to its AWACS and stand off weapons delivery platforms,” it notes.

Pakistan’s own strikes conducted between May 7 and 10 had been largely thwarted by Indian defences, says the CHPM, an independent Swiss research institute set up in 1969.

The agency observes that while it may be difficult to accurately analyse the outcome of the conflict because of the difficult-to-verify claims and counter-claims by the two nations, but “sufficient elements” have appeared to indicate the IAF’s air superiority.

The CHPM analysis conducted by Adrien Fontanellaz flags that the Indo-Pakistan conflict also underlines an increasing importance of long range air to ground weapons.

“Missiles such as the Rampage, CM-400AKG, BrahMos and SCALP-EG, whose ranges vary from 250 to 600 kilometres, were the spearhead of both air forces’ operations,” it says.

According to the analysis, Operation Sindoor has demonstrated that air warfare is more more than a contest between air forces as it involves a wide variety of sensors and offensive and defensive effectors.

“The Indian forces demonstrated clear superiority over their adversary, proving that weapons previously considered obsolete, such as anti-aircraft artillery, can play a significant role within the ecosystem, provided their fire-control systems are compatible with the overall integrated network,” it notes.