July 19, 2025: India was an enthusiastic user of their newly acquired S-400 Air Defense Missile System/ADMS. In a recent May 7-10 confrontation with neighboring Pakistan, the S-400s proved to be a disappointment. Several other systems performed poorly. The brief fighting between India and Pakistan left India the net loser. Pakistan fought using 42 jets versus about 70 for India. Pakistan used several Chinese J-10C fighters which cost India three French Rafale jets and two Russian models, a MiG-29 and a SU-30MKI. Two S-400 missile launchers were damaged. This came after successful Indian airstrikes on over half a dozen Islamic terrorist targets on Pakistani territory in Kashmir as well as Pakistan air bases. India and Pakistan have been fighting over who should own all of Kashmir since 1947’.

The biggest surprise was the successful combat test of the Chinese J-10 jet. Since 1988 China has tried to get an original modern Chinese fighter design operational. The J-10 was the aircraft that succeeded. The J-10C version uses more composites in the airframe and has improved electronics. This includes a new AESA radar. J10s are the most widely used modern Chinese-designed jet fighter, and it is still in production.

The J10 looks something like the American F-16 and weighs about the same at 19 tons. Like the F-16, the J10 has only one engine and the aircraft is longer than the F-16 to accommodate the larger Russian/Chinese engines. It's no accident that the J10 resembles the F-16 because Israel sold China the technology for their Lavi jet fighter, a super-F-16 design that Israel abandoned in 1987 because it was too expensive. China always insisted the J10 was an original Chinese design but after the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991 a lot of Russian engineers and scientists who assisted China in developing the J10 revealed details about how the Chinese had access to the Lavi design data and used it extensively. Israel won’t comment because the U.S. cracked down on Israeli sales of military technology to China during the 1990s.

China used the J10 to advertise its new aircraft development capabilities. Chinese-developed electronics include a glass cockpit, helmets with built-in Head-Up Display/HUD), look and shoot capabilities and AESA radar. J10s got the first Chinese fire control systems that handled satellite or laser-guided smart bombs. The J10 was the first to receive targeting pods, ECM Electronic Countermeasures/ECM pods and improved fly-by-wire systems. The J10 was also the first Chinese jet fighter to switch to Chinese-made engines rather than ones bought from Russia. Until 2019 the J10 still depended on the more reliable Russian made AL-31 engines. That has now changed with the WS10 standard on all newly built J-10s and for those in need of an engine replacement.

Another casualty of this brief conflict was Russia’s most modern air defense system, the S-400. In the recent conflict, Indian S-400s were unable to detect or bring down any Pakistani aircraft. The Pakistani I-10s used Chinese PL-15 air-to-ground missiles to damage Indian S-400 sites.

The current version of the S-400 uses a radar that can detect targets up to 400 kilometers away and launch S-400 missiles at targets up to 75 kilometers distant. Unfortunately, most modern jet combat aircraft carry an array of countermeasures to defeat missiles fired at them from the ground or other aircraft. In addition to missiles fired from the ground, warplanes also must worry about missiles fired from jet fighters. These are often more effective. At the same time, Russia has found that their S-400 missiles are more effective against ground targets, which can be hit at distances of up to 350 kilometers. Russia developed a S-400 system called the 48/6DM that is effective against air targets but can also accurately hit ground targets up to 230 kilometers away. The warhead weighs 180 kg and contains enough explosives to be effective against ground targets that are usually major Ukrainian cities. These places are often defended by American Patriot, which often succeed in intercepting Russian air defense missiles used against ground targets.