South Asia: A leading American aerospace analyst has offered a sobering reassessment of the evolving airpower dynamics between Pakistan and India. Speaking with Air & Space Forces Magazine, Michael Dahm—Senior Fellow at the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies and former U.S. Navy intelligence officer—outlined how the Pakistan Air Force (PAF) has leveraged Chinese-supplied platforms, sensors, and missiles into a coherent, integrated combat system that now threatens to outpace India’s traditionally superior numbers and reputation.
At the heart of this reassessment lies the kill chain—an interconnected process of detection, tracking, targeting, and engagement that has become the core metric by which modern air forces measure operational readiness and combat lethality.
“Pakistan is capable of integrating ground-based radars with fighter jets and airborne early warning aircraft,” Dahm emphasized, noting that the recent operational use of this capability, documented in Chinese media, marks a major milestone in regional air combat doctrine.
To understand the strategic shift in South Asia, one must appreciate the criticality of the kill chain in modern warfare. The term originates from the U.S. military lexicon and describes a systematic process: Find, Fix, Track, Target, Engage, and Assess—a cycle now supercharged by artificial intelligence, encrypted datalinks, space-based sensors, and machine-assisted targeting algorithms.
What distinguishes the PAF’s accomplishment, according to Dahm, is not merely the possession of advanced platforms, but the successful fusion of these assets into a single, operational ecosystem.
This capability was reportedly tested in a recent confrontation along the contested Indo-Pakistani aerial boundary, where Pakistan is believed to have shot down an Indian Air Force (IAF) Rafale fighter jet using a Chinese-supplied PL-15E missile fired from a J-10C, with targeting data relayed by a KJ-500 airborne early warning aircraft and tracking initialized by ground-based radars.
“The Pakistani Air Force deployed… ‘A’ launched by ‘B’ and guided by ‘C’, hitting its intended target,” Dahm summarized. “That’s the kill chain in action.”
While Indian officials have neither confirmed nor denied the alleged downing of a Rafale, the incident was first reported in China Space News, a defense-focused publication closely linked with China’s military-industrial complex. According to their May 12 report, the missile strike occurred at an astonishing range of 182 kilometers, which, if verified, would constitute the longest air-to-air kill in history.
The weapon in question, China’s PL-15 long-range BVR missile, was specifically designed to counter the U.S. AIM-120D and the European Meteor. Armed with an active radar seeker and dual-pulse solid rocket motor, the PL-15 is believed to have a maximum range exceeding 200 km, especially when launched at high altitude and speed.
The engagement, as reconstructed by defense analysts, may have followed this sequence:
- Detection: A Pakistani ground radar or passive detection system picks up an Indian jet entering a contested airspace sector.
- Tracking: The data is relayed to a KJ-500 AEW&C platform orbiting in secure airspace, which maintains continuous target tracking.
- Targeting: The KJ-500 calculates an intercept solution and transmits it to a J-10C fighter patrolling in an adjacent air sector.
- Engagement: The J-10C fires a PL-15 missile using only initial targeting information.
- Midcourse Guidance: The KJ-500 continues to guide the missile using secure datalinks until the missile’s onboard radar activates in terminal phase.
Battle Damage Assessment: ISR platforms assess the hit, completing the kill chain.
This structure bears striking resemblance to the U.S. military’s CJADC2 (Combined Joint All-Domain Command and Control) strategy, which envisions real-time, multi-domain data sharing between all platforms, from ground sensors to fighter jets to satellites.
“It’s not just about who has the better jet or faster missile anymore,” Dahm stated. “It’s about who has the tighter, faster, and more resilient data network.”
India, by contrast, finds itself encumbered by a legacy of eclectic procurement. Over the past four decades, the IAF has built its fleet from diverse sources: Russian Su-30MKIs and MiG-29s, French Rafales and Mirages, British Jaguars, and indigenous Tejas fighters. While these platforms are individually capable, their lack of interoperability has become a critical vulnerability.
Even simple real-time communication between jets of different origin—say, a Russian Su-30 and a French Rafale—requires third-party middleware, causing latency, encryption issues, and often outright incompatibility.
“India’s air combat assets don’t speak the same digital language,” Dahm observed. “That’s a problem when milliseconds matter.”
Moreover, India fields an equally diverse arsenal of BVR missiles: the French Meteor, Russian R-77, Israeli Derby, British ASRAAM, and the Indian Astra. Each system has unique targeting data formats, midcourse guidance protocols, and fire-control interfaces. This creates logistical nightmares and operational inefficiencies in combat scenarios requiring joint targeting or shared sensor data.
In contrast, Pakistan has gradually aligned its air combat doctrine around platforms almost entirely sourced from China and the United States, resulting in a far more streamlined data architecture.
Its key assets—the JF-17 Thunder, J-10C, KJ-500 AEW&C, and Chinese radars—are designed to integrate natively with each other. Communication links, targeting protocols, and EW defenses operate in a single digital domain.
The KJ-500, a 360-degree radar surveillance platform similar in function to the U.S. E-3 Sentry, acts as the nerve center for PAF operations. It can coordinate multiple fighters, provide long-range radar cueing, and even direct missile guidance in real time—tasks that remain fragmented within India’s force structure.
Dahm also pointed out the possibility that some of Pakistan’s AEW&C aircraft have been converted to electronic warfare (EW) platforms, allowing them to jam or spoof enemy radar and communication during engagements. This would further complicate Indian response efforts, especially given the IAF’s current lack of a dedicated EW fleet.
Crucially, Dahm warned against reducing the comparison to a contest of hardware alone.
“What does this say about Chinese technology versus Western technology? Probably not a whole lot,” he explained. “But it says a lot about systems integration, tactical training, and doctrinal alignment.”
Pakistan’s kill chain success appears to be the product of intentional design, with China acting not just as an arms supplier, but as a systems architect—delivering aircraft, missiles, sensors, training, and software as a single integrated suite.
This “plug-and-play” model eliminates the delays and complications seen in India, where aircraft are purchased first and retrofitted later with various foreign and domestic subsystems, often at great cost and delay.
The implications of this shift are profound.
Whereas India once held a clear edge in terms of fleet size and budgetary outlays, the kill chain-centric approach embraced by Pakistan offers asymmetric advantages that level the playing field—or even tilt it in Islamabad’s favor in some scenarios.
Consider a future dogfight scenario:
- Pakistan’s J-10C detects a target using data from a ground radar via the KJ-500.
- Within 10 seconds, a missile is airborne with real-time guidance support.
- In contrast, India’s Su-30 detects the same target, attempts to confirm it through a Rafale’s data feed, but finds the Rafale can’t “talk” natively to its Russian counterpart.
- The delay in target confirmation prevents a coordinated response, while the PL-15E is already approaching terminal phase.
- This is not a far-fetched scenario—it’s precisely the type of engagement simulated by modern militaries, and one that Pakistan now appears better prepared to execute.
India will likely respond to these developments in several ways:
- Accelerated Integration: Pushing for seamless interoperability across its platforms via indigenous combat clouds like the IACCS (Integrated Air Command and Control System).
- EW Investments: Developing homegrown electronic warfare aircraft to counter Chinese jamming capabilities.
- Indigenous Solutions: Relying more heavily on Indian-made platforms like the Tejas Mk2 and Astra Mk3 missiles to standardize software and fire-control systems.
But such transformations are time-consuming, politically sensitive, and expensive. Meanwhile, Pakistan’s streamlined force, refined by Chinese doctrine, grows more lethal with each passing year.
What emerges from Michael Dahm’s analysis is not merely a report on a single aerial kill, but a paradigm shift in how airpower is defined and projected in the 21st century.
For Pakistan, the kill chain represents more than tactical advantage—it is a validation of its long-term strategic bet on systems integration and doctrinal coherence.
For India, it is a wake-up call—a reminder that air superiority in the digital age is no longer guaranteed by numbers or reputation alone.
