Opération Sindoor: le succès aérien de l’Inde passé sous silence
Operation Sindoor: India's Overlooked Aerial Success
As the Paris Air Show at Le Bourget opens in Paris, the Rafale will be the talk of the show. The flagship of French manufacturer Dassault Aviation was engaged in combat against Pakistan during Operation Sindoor on May 7. While one of these aircraft was destroyed, the raid led by India appears to have been crowned with success.
In military matters, there is "know-how" and "communicating." It seems that New Delhi has neglected the latter. Since the end of the air raid on May 7, a vast information campaign led by Pakistan, with the support of China, has attempted to impose two ideas: India lost a large number of aircraft during Operation Sindoor, including several Rafales, and the Chinese aircraft equipping the Pakistani Air Force outclassed their adversaries.
However, Western military personnel who have assessed the military outcome of Operation Sindoor have made a completely different assessment: "Sindoor was a total tactical victory and a complete failure in terms of communications, almost a defeat," they say.
One of the largest air operations in decades
Sindoor is one of the largest air operations conducted in South Asia in several decades. More than 60 Indian Air Force aircraft were engaged against some 40 Pakistani aircraft, including Chinese-made J-10s. These Indian airstrikes targeted infrastructure linked to armed groups accused of being responsible for the Pahalgam attack in Indian-held Kashmir on April 22, 2025. "The aircraft engaged each other from a distance, without crossing the border," experts note.
To understand the mechanics of the operation, we must look back and consider the conflict between India and Pakistan in 2019. Again, following attacks by armed groups in Kashmir, India struck Pakistan in retaliation. A lightning and unannounced air attack led to a significant risk of escalation between the two nuclear-armed countries. Here too, India shut down its communications and failed to acknowledge the loss of a Mirage 2000 from one of its fighter squadrons.
For Operation Sindoor, New Delhi wanted to prevent the conflict from escalating. India therefore warned Islamabad that strikes would be carried out. The Pakistani army therefore knew where and when the Indian response would occur. But since 2019, two capability-related factors have intervened: in the meantime, New Delhi has acquired the Rafale and Islamabad has received military support from Beijing.
9 Targets in the Indian Air Force's Crosshairs
On the night of May 6-7, 2025, the Indian Air Force conducted its raid with very ambitious objectives and a deliberate risk-taking that allowed for crew losses. They had nine targets in their sights: armed group training camps, a Pakistani army command and control center, ground-to-air systems, and surveillance radars.
The 60 Indian aircraft involved, including Rafales and Mirage 2000s, had planned three waves of bombing to reach their targets. One strike was enough. "They arrived like a boxing ring, in a very constrained space. They were eagerly awaited by the ground-to-air defense and 40 Pakistani aircraft." Despite this, they hit all the targets!” says an observer very close to the case.
Under the wings of the Indian fighters, they carried Air-to-Air Mica and Météor missiles (from the French missile manufacturer MBDA) for aerial combat, and A2SM bombs and Scalp missiles for ground targets. The Indian crews expected to suffer significant attrition. Yet, in one wave, they achieved all their objectives, some even being hit multiple times, an “overkill” in military jargon. Two factors made the difference, Western military personnel note: “the excellent intelligence they received, which matched their political objectives, and the high level of qualification of the pilots.”
"It must have moved in flight!" emphasizes French Air Force General Bruno Mignot. "60 planes is a big raid indeed. And if they lost 4 or 5 aircraft, it's not much. Especially if they were warned. That means they were sure of themselves, it also means they know that the Pakistani equipment wasn't up to scratch. An air raid works on a lot of things. There's the initial intelligence: Who? Where? How? Then there are target files, it's almost a science, it's targeting. And so targeting consists of choosing the type of munitions to send, the angle of arrival of the bomb on the target, but also the setting of the proximity fuze. Whether the bomb should explode immediately or whether it should be given time to embed itself in the target before it explodes. This requires capabilities that few countries possess."
A balance sheet largely in India's favor
Sindoor was one of the largest air battles since World War II. It ended in an Indian victory that led to a very rapid de-escalation between the two belligerents. "They demonstrated the weakness of Pakistan's defenses," military sources indicate. "They only lost a few aircraft, while Pakistan lost more than ten."
While it is confirmed that a Rafale aircraft was destroyed, doubts remain about the cause of its destruction. The aircraft may have been the victim of friendly fire.
A Chinese information maneuver
As soon as the operations ended, Pakistan launched a formidable information campaign, amplified by China, to discredit the Dassault Aviation Rafale.
In its confrontation with India, Pakistan's tactic was to turn its strategic failure into an informational victory.
Accounts linked to Islamabad spread the narrative that several Indian Rafales had crashed as a result of Pakistani fire. These posts were echoed in statements by the Pakistani armed forces claiming the destruction of five enemy aircraft, including three Rafales, during nighttime combat between May 6 and 7.
This information was accompanied by a series of fake images circulated on social media.
In addition to the Rafale, this maneuver, intended to highlight India's failure, also aimed to denigrate French industry, undermine the Franco-Indian partnership, and promote equipment from competing Chinese and Russian industries.
Despite great frustration on the French side, Paris reportedly requested clarification before the Paris Air Show, India has not changed its habits and has not commented on Operation Sindoor.
In the hours following the confrontation between the IAF and the Pakistani Air Force, and even before the first raid of Operation Sindoor, numerous narratives intended to discredit the French aircraft spread on social media. Accounts claiming to be those of military experts immediately focused on the loss, real or supposed, of one or more Rafale fighter jets, almost completely omitting the destruction of Russian-made MIGs and Sukhoi fighters.
Even as some internet users sought to cross-reference open-source videos to try to establish as much as possible the death toll, other accounts, mainly Pakistani and Chinese, immediately shifted the focus to the commercial aspects of this confrontation, boasting the supposed superiority of the Chinese equipment used by the Pakistani army.
Fake news circulated regarding the cancellation of a Rafale order by Indonesia, while Paris and Jakarta further strengthened their defense partnership during President Emmanuel Macron's visit to the country. Other comments cast doubt on the UAE's Rafale order, as was already the case in the summer of 2024.
It should be noted that at the time the posts denigrating the French aircraft's performance were published, no one really had a clear idea of the circumstances surrounding the losses on either side.
It was only the next day that India held a belated press conference detailing the strikes, while Pakistan announced the loss of several Indian aircraft, including Rafales, from the very beginning of the fighting. This statement was echoed in particular by Turkish accounts, while neighboring Greece is fielding French-made Rafale fighter jets.
Parody accounts, close to the Chinese nationalist sphere, also sought to ridicule the Indian military, pointing out the ineffectiveness of its expensive equipment.
In the United States, conspiracy accounts touted the capabilities of Pakistani aircraft. Finally, in Paris, CNN claimed that a French military source had confirmed the loss of an aircraft, while the French military declined to comment.
will be saved by not making a large booster section for each missile.
