What if the IAF does not engage in air combat with the PAF but instead blocks the sky with S-400 and strikes the airport with BrahMos? The PAF would need some aircraft to perform dangerous missions.
That’s a fair question, but it assumes a much cleaner separation between “air combat” and “missile warfare” than actually exists.
First, systems don’t operate in isolation, people operate them. The effectiveness of something like S-400 depends heavily on the training, experience, and situational awareness of its crew, as well as how well that crew is integrated into the wider C2 network. Long-range SAMs are powerful, but they are also complex, information-hungry systems. Their performance is inseparable from the quality of cueing, decision-making, and coordination under pressure. I doubt the Indians are prepared to this level.
Second, S-400 does not “block airspace” in a vacuum. Its effectiveness depends on:
1. cueing quality,
2. sensor survivability,
3. EM conditions,
and how well operators maintain situational awareness in a contested environment.
In a peer-level fight, long-range SAMs become part of the air battle, not a substitute for it. They require protection, deconfliction, and constant management, and they generate emissions that can be detected, characterised, and responded to over time.
Third, stand-off missile strikes (e.g., BrahMos) reduce pilot exposure, but they do not remove risk, they shift it. Missiles follow predictable paths, have finite inventories, and depend on accurate, timely targeting. Longer time-of-flight actually expands the defender’s decision window, especially when operators are alert and well-integrated with sensors and command nodes.
Fourth, even in a missile-centric scenario, aircraft are still required, just in different roles:
1. airspace surveillance,
2. defensive counter-air,
3. AEW&C support,
4. battle damage assessment,
5. and deterrence patrols.
Missiles don’t adapt mid-campaign; trained crews in aircraft and C2 nodes do.
Finally, this returns to the system-level point. Pakistan’s objective is not to “win dogfights,” but to maintain a contested battlespace. As long as that contestation exists, shaped by systems and the people operating them, no single tool, whether S-400 or BrahMos, can impose unilateral control without cost.
So yes, any conflict would involve dangerous missions. But the idea that air combat can simply be bypassed through SAMs and stand-off missiles overlooks both the human dimension of warfare and the reality of modern, peer-level air operations.
Air combat doesn’t disappear; it just changes form.
