India and Pakistan are fighting with a mixed bag of foreign-made fighter jets, and the aircraft kills are being counted

Nuclear powers India and Pakistan are clashing again, and one side is already claiming kills in air battles that sound like a hodgepodge of foreign-made fighter aircraft.

Pakistani officials said Thursday that the country has shot down five Indian fighter jets and a number of drones since India launched cross-border strikes earlier this week, kicking off a new round of fighting between the nuclear-armed neighbors.

Ishaq Dar, Pakistan’s foreign minister, said the country’s air force “engaged with the Indian fighter jets in self-defense” and shot down five aircraft and an undisclosed number of aerial drones.

Dar said Wednesday Pakistan used Chinese-made J-10C jets in its response to India’s strikes the night before. He identified some of the Indian aircraft downed as the French-made Rafale fighters, according to the state-run national news agency.

The five aircraft that said to have been shot down consisted of three Rafales and two Russian-designed fighter aircraft: a MiG-29 and a Su-30, per reports citing Pakistan’s military.

That is quite the mix of fighter aircraft. Both countries fly jet designs from all around the world, and some of those jets are apparently going head-to-head in battle.

Pakistan, for instance, flies Chinese-made J-10s, the joint Pakistani-Chinese J-17 fighter, American-made F-16s, and French Mirages, while India operates the French-made Rafales and Mirages, Russian-origin Su-30s, MiG-29s, and MiG-21, UK Jaguars, and a homemade fighter jet known as the Tejas.

The J-10C Pakistan touted, as it claimed victories over the Indian Air Force, is a single-engine, multi-role aircraft manufactured by the Chinese aerospace conglomerate Chengdu Aircraft Industry Group. Pakistan received its first batch of these fighter jets — upgraded versions of the original J-10 — in 2022. They can carry bombs, air-to-air missiles, and rockets.

The Rafale is a twin-engine multi-mission fighter aircraft manufactured by the French aerospace company Dassault Aviation. India is one of only a small number of countries that operate these fighter jets and fields 36 of them. Recently it signed a deal to purchase more than two dozen more for its navy.

And then the Mikoyan MiG-29 and much larger Sukhoi Su-30 are twin-engine fighter aircraft developed in the Soviet Union by Russian aerospace firms. These two jets are operated by dozens of countries around the world and can carry out various missions.

The MiG-29, introduced in the early 1980s, was built to counter the American-made F-15 and F-16. Meanwhile, the Su-30 entered service in the following decade. These aircraft represent a major component of India’s air power. The country fields hundreds of them.

Business Insider could not independently verify Pakistan’s claims that it shot down the five aircraft. India’s defense ministry and its embassy in the US did not respond to queries about the aerial engagements.

Information from these clashes can be unreliable. During the 2019 clashes, India claimed that one of its MiG-21 pilots defeated a Pakistani pilot flying an F-16. The US later called that into question.

Reuters reported that US officials confirmed that in the latest clashes, Chinese-made J-10s were used to down at least two Indian aircraft.

Not just planes, but drones too

Lt. Gen. Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry, a spokesperson for the Pakistani Army, said Thursday that Islamabad had destroyed a dozen of India’s Harop drones — loitering munitions, or one-way attack drones, packed with explosives. The weapons, which can linger over a target area before striking, are made by Israel Aerospace Industries.

Chaudhry, during a press conference, displayed images purporting to show debris from the downed Indian drones. “The armed forces are on a high degree of alert, and neutralizing them as we speak,” he said.

India on Tuesday night said that it launched strikes against nine “terrorist infrastructure sites” in Pakistan and Pakistan-administered Kashmir, signaling the start of a new military operation — Operation Sindoor — that Islamabad has labeled an act of war.

The latest round of fighting, which has sent tensions soaring between the two rivals, follows a massacre last month in Indian-administered Kashmir, which left 26 people dead. India has historically accused its neighbor of supporting cross-border terror, though Pakistan has denied involvement in the attack.

India’s defense ministry initially said that no Pakistani military facilities were hit, “reflecting India’s calibrated and non-escalatory approach.” But on Thursday, New Delhi said that it had targeted air defense systems and radars across the border.

Pakistani leadership vowed to respond to the Indian strikes, and the country has already hit back at India with mortars, artillery shells, drones, and missiles, New Delhi said. Several people have been killed in both countries over the past two days.

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