message of a previous indian jet fighter on onother forum :
"When I stated it, no one in the forum believed it. I very clearly stated that no Rafale was shot down. But 2 of them did have splinter hits. One was restored to flight Ops the very next day. Now the world is relaying what I had told. Lot of people believed the lies of PAF and the deep fake generated by Chinese. Please understand, in a war deception and narrative makes a lot of difference. The tactical mistake done by IAF on early morning of 7th May was to use Hammers instead of Scalp for hitting targets close to the border. This put Rafales in the harms way and they got attacked by nearly every fighter airborne at that time of PAF. They did a good job in evading the incoming missiles but lack of Metoer as an offensive weapon plus the mistake of using Hammer to strike targets, caused this. Max number of PL-15s were fired on Rafale formations. IAF then learnt the lessons and used Rafale for deep strike missions using scalp which delivered unprecendented accuracy. Kirana was hit by a Scalp.
I had at that time told you that scalp is a very costly weapon while Rampage used by Jags was far far cheaper and yet as effective. I also told you that IAF will go in for more Rafale. I was opposed by my friends from France.
Do you the the silverline of this tactical mistake of IAF? PAF fighters in order to shoot down Rafale came very close the borders of India which brought them within the range of our LRSAM and S-400. That is how we shot down 5 of their fighters using SAMs. So Rafale may have had gone into harms way but was effective as a bait."
