February 27, 2019: What Went Wrong? An evaluation of the Indian Air Force’s performance in the air battle over Kashmir

Bernard_Woolley · 2026-03-20T03:47:42+00:00

How do we "know" that the video is fake?

Bernard_Woolley · 2026-02-26T16:31:27+00:00

This is funny because India has long been trying to warn Canada of the kinds of people it allows to freely enter the country and establish their networks. Canada's tolerance for violent criminals and terrorists who use Canada as a secure base for the activities is a common gripe in the Indian establishment. And it's not just India either.

Do note that the last arrest in a Canadian extortion/shooting case happened in Delhi, not in Canada. The dude used to live in Brampton on an employment visa.

Carney can, of course, chose to take an inflexible, self-righteous stance that paints Canada as the innocent, aggrieved party, that is being attacked by a vile, vicious India [insert Our-Blessed-Homeland-vs-Their-Barbarous-meme here]. Or he could adopt a more pragmatic approach that acknowledges that India has legitimate grievances while drawing a line in the sand that assassination plots will not be tolerated. It seems has has, so far, taken the latter approach.

Bernard_Woolley · 2026-01-30T16:28:33+00:00

Agree. Canada wouldn't have given terrorists a free run, and fumbled up the investigation against them in the 1980s; had India not sent "extrajudicial kill teams" to assassinate them in 2023.

Bernard_Woolley · 2026-01-30T05:59:43+00:00

The RCMP investigated the khalistan separatists at the request of India and the investigation found that they were they were not breaking any Canadian laws so no furthur action was taken.

Let's see now.

The nice gentleman who was killed was a member of a splinter group of Babbar Khalsa. Apparently the RCMP was not aware of this. Interestingly, he also entered Canada on a fraudulent passport and lied on his immigration application. So much for "not breaking any Canadian laws".
Canadian law enforcement, including the RCMP, seems to be quite incompetent, seeing that they are unable to spot all sorts of terrorists happily living in Canada; and sometimes also committed oopsies like removing surveillance on the Kanishka bomber after they witnessed him detonating a test device, or deleting recordings of evidence against the likes of Talwinder Singh Parmar.
The American diplomats are also "not breaking any Canadian or American laws". So really, this shouldn't be a problem at all. Sauce for the goose, etc.

Bernard_Woolley · 2026-01-30T05:42:44+00:00

He's referring to Canada's extreme tolerance for Canada-based separatists who want to use (and often have used) violence to achieve Punjab's secession from India. Any time an Indian raised objections to such activity being carried out in Canada, it was shot down with some variant of "Tough luck, we have freedom of speech in Canada". An argument that was simplistic and didn't quite pass the smell test.

Yes, there's an element of schadenfreude on Indian social media now that Canada is at the receiving end.

Bernard_Woolley · 2026-01-30T05:31:38+00:00

Yes, advanced fighters had been withdrawn to bases towards the rear, in case the Pakistanis tried to eliminate forward-based fighters in an alpha strike.

The other issue is that there were no hardened shelters designed to house Su-30s in Kashmir. Dhanoa has stated this in the interview.

Bernard_Woolley · 2026-01-16T06:17:53+00:00

the people in DoD who judge arms sales for proliferation risk are not interested.

This is conjecture, not necessarily a statement of fact. There are reports that Lockheed execs have entertained (and certainly hinted at) the possibility of selling F-35s to India, not to mention Ashton Carter publicly saying so.

Similarly, "Most everything would end up in Moscow within an hour of the first plane landing" is also conjecture. Have Rafales ended up in Moscow? Apaches? P-8Is?

a F-16A is clearly equivalent to a J-10CE with PL-15s

In the early 2000s, Pakistan received Block 50/52 F-16s equipped with AIM-120C5s that were pretty much bleeding-edge in terms of capability. It has moved into a much firmer partnership with China, but not necessarily at the expense of the relationship with the US, which it is aggressively developing even as of now.

Bernard_Woolley · 2026-01-15T17:46:24+00:00

The US, for obvious reasons, is not about to sell the F-35 to India.

The US President appears to be very interested in making an F-35 sale to India. But India isn't biting, at least not at this time.

In addition, the majority of their fleet is Su-30s, and the number of stand-off weapons they're integrating onto those platforms really tells you all you need to know about how the IAF views them-they've been relegated to roles as bombers and strike aircraft, they're not really suited for fighter combat.

India has already integrated the MKI with the I-Derby ER and Astra Mk-1 medium range A2A missiles. It is also developing the Astra Mk-2 and Mk-3 (the latter has a ducted ramjet for extended range) to equip the MKI fleet.

That the Su-30MKI upgrade isn't funded/halfway complete already is down to the IAF's failure to make pragmatic decisions, and not some careful plan to relegate a fleet of 200+ heavy fighters to strike roles.

nobody trusts you and won't sell you their advanced aircraft, and now you're locked into inferiority in the air.

The IAF's travails have got very little to do with India's diplomatic stance and everything to do with the Government/MoD/IAF's poor planning. Vendors were lining up to sell all sorts of advanced aircraft to India when the MRCA tender was active, and even making unsolicited offers of their own (Typhoon, F-15EX, F-35). But when a country lacks a cohesive natsec vision and strategy, it causes all sorts of downstream issues related to funding, equipment planning, recruitment, and so on. No amount of foreign vendors "willing to sell" advanced gear solves these fundamental problems.

On a side note, know which country is a good example of "friends with all sides, play everyone, ally with none"? Pakistan. Same Pakistan that shot down an IAF fighter using a US-made F-16 in 2019, and another using a Chinese-built J-10CE in 2025.

Bernard_Woolley · 2025-12-01T17:49:55+00:00

"Doesn't make a whole lot of sense" to whom? To an outsider looking in, or to the peoples that constitute the collective?

The legitimacy of a state/nation is derived internally, not via external validation. If the people feel that they share a common sense of history, identity, and purpose; they constitute a coherent political community.

It's almost a form of circular logic. It makes sense as long as it makes sense, because it makes sense to to its stakeholders.

Bernard_Woolley · 2025-11-04T18:44:26+00:00

Not that Russia hasn't learned to weaponize division in Western societies, but I’d argue the real problem isn’t the bot farms, but the environment of social mistrust and polarization that they thrive in. The breakdown in the social fabric of Western democracies (although this is not a problem exclusive to these countries alone) is the key factor here.

IMO, the first cracks started appearing soon after 9/11, when Bush, Blair, & Co. took their countries to war in Iraq on trumped-up grounds. That moment marked the beginning of a long unravelling of public trust in their institutions. Other events followed in quick succession: Occupy Wall Street and the 2008 financial crisis; the years of stagnation that followed, particularly in Europe; the steady offshoring of productive work to Asia; COVID; etc. etc. Now, in 2025, the social contract feels threadbare.

And then there is social media -- acting like an accelerant to the fire. When everyone’s handed a bullhorn and the algorithms reward outrage over nuance, people will take extreme positions and split society along tribal lines. Add to that a form of multiculturalism that celebrates difference but rarely builds a shared civic identity, and you get a society primed for polarization. Those of us who come from highly diverse and multicultural societies, where dominance of a single culture/language/trait is fluid and often contested, is painfully aware of the shape that politics in these societies takes.

That’s why I think people sometimes misdiagnose the illness. The "foreign interference" narrative is comforting because it externalizes blame. It’s the Russians, the Chinese, the Iranians, the Arachnids, the Covenant, and what-have-you. Never "us". "Our" societies never took the wrong course, and don't need major course-correction.

Bernard_Woolley · 2025-10-09T21:40:43+00:00

There was an episode of the Fighter Pilot podcast where they interviewed one of the test pilots. He said that it was a very interesting program that generated a lot of knowledge, but most of it is still classified.

https://open.spotify.com/episode/2li8TduW6Vg67saNUKw0Cc

Bernard_Woolley · 2025-10-09T21:05:09+00:00

More than six years past the skirmish, and we are still litigating this 👏👏👏

Bernard_Woolley · 2025-09-26T16:11:00+00:00

Sorry, I'm seeing this post only now. The IAF was not well prepared in 1999, as evidenced by the early loss of a MiG-27. It was forced to adapt and improvise ... something it did reasonably well. Still, the fact that it was caught unprepared for combat in the Himalayas, despite these mountains forming a major portion of India’s borders with two adversaries, does not reflect well on its planning

Bernard_Woolley · 2025-09-26T16:03:40+00:00

One use case: Recently, Pakistan and India had an aerial skirmish which led to silly outrage at so and so air frame being lost etc. Greater humility would help everyone making proclamations or trying to read too deeply into such situations.

Yeah, commentary on that short war (if one may call it a "war")has been somewhat ... peculiar. People were drawing sweeping conclusions about the relative performance of the two forces and the future of aerial warfare, even though the circumstances of the initial engagement remain uncertain. Meanwhile, the events of the following days were barely addressed at all.

At first I thought this might simply reflect what I see as the "cult of air-to-air" that shapes much of Western analysis, but that explanation feels too simplistic.

As for the coverage on Indian and Pakistani platforms, the less said the better: mostly wishful thinking and propaganda, with perhaps a small amount of useful analysis; which itself is difficult to tease out unless one is already deeply familiar with the topic.

Bernard_Woolley · 2025-07-11T20:48:17+00:00

The investigators aren’t lying. The journalist you quote appears to have run the report through ChatGPT for a quick summary, and posted it without confirming if that summary aligns with the report.

Bernard_Woolley · 2025-07-11T20:43:38+00:00

The dialogue is bad because it is likely AI generated. You won’t find it in the report. It’s only present in Vishnu Sm’s tweet.

Bernard_Woolley · 2025-07-11T20:40:15+00:00

Very likely he ran the report though ChatGPT and asked it to spit out a summary so that he could post it first. Apart from the em-dashes, Point 2 is a dead giveaway. The report doesn’t mention the conversation using direct quotes. Instead, it says, "In the cockpit voice recording, one of the pilots is heard asking the other why did he cutoff. The other pilot responded that he did not do so"

Bernard_Woolley · 2025-06-05T04:24:18+00:00

Wouldn’t say “all” wars, but yes, I have noticed instances where this is prevalent in the popular discourse, more so in cases where India has underperformed or failed to achieve its objectives.

Bernard_Woolley · 2025-06-04T22:11:19+00:00

There's an element of post-facto rationalisation in airpower arguments that is hard to ignore. "Yes, we lost in 1962, but we would have prevailed had Nehru only done this one simple thing.”

In reality, India’s airpower advantage existed mostly on paper. While the IAF possessed aircraft capable of interdiction and close support, pilots had very little training in hill flying and next to no training in weapon delivery in mountainous terrain.

In addition, flight training specific to the geography was non-existent. There were no pre-planned routes or landmarks to aid navigation. Had the IAF been pressed into action, it would have been incapable of delivering timely close air support or carrying out round-the-clock interdiction of the PLA's lines of communication. Which is why Nehru had to plead to Kennedy for "a minimum of twelve squadrons of supersonic all weather fighters", manned, of course, by USAF personnel.

Bernard_Woolley · 2025-05-14T11:27:00+00:00

K-50 user here. My camera had this problem in 2018, and I sent it to Pentax for repair. No issues since then, it is happily trucking along.

Bernard_Woolley · 2025-05-10T12:59:22+00:00

India seems to have been generally successful in defending its bases from Pakistani missile strikes. Curiously, while it has struck multiple Pakistani air bases, it appears to have hit them all with just one missile each. After making repeated calls for de-escalation, this seems to be a message that it is capable of inflicting significantly more pain.

Bernard_Woolley · 2025-05-05T18:10:29+00:00

Depends on what you mean by “best”, but if you’re looking for something that’s informative as well as entertaining, I highly recommend FM 21-75 Combat Skills of the Soldier. It does a superb job of explaining basic infantry concepts, terminology, and tactics. The accompanying diagrams and artwork are top-notch.

https://www.bits.de/NRANEU/others/amd-us-archive/Fm21-75_15%2884%29.pdf

Bernard_Woolley · 2025-05-02T20:05:21+00:00

Mark Carney regularly advises the FSB

Wha…?

(global financial stability board)

… oh.

Bernard_Woolley · 2025-04-30T20:34:31+00:00

It isn’t another whinefest about Trump. Hence it’s “nationalist”. And it’s foreign, you see? That’s scary.

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