AESA radars have LPI mode so it is not too far fetched for PL-15’s radar to operate in LPI as well. However, when the missile goes pitbull the target’s pilot has just a few seconds to respond anyway. Might not even matter.
The Kashmir conflict 2025.
- Thread starter ohan_qwe
- Start date
At least one SAAB-2000 was destroyed at Bolari, from what I read, along with 5 KIA. And if a base compound is being hit, it certainly cannot be said to be a 'miss', like Balakot was. But overall, it was indeed a message. India was never going to put Pakistan in a position where it becomes impossible for them to go down the ladder.
American media itself admitted that bombing Noor Khan AFB is what started the cease-fire discussion. Indian kept on hitting base after base until the next day afternoon before Pakistan eventually accepted the deal. A war is won or lost depending on the political goal being achieved or not. India's goal was to make Pakistan accept the new normal.
The last time something India struck Pakistani AFBs was in 1971. It didn't happen even during Kargil.
The HQ-9 is quite an expensive system, which is demonstrated by Pakistan purchasing only one HQ-9P battery for its army since 2021. There might be even fewer HQ-9BE in service with the PAF. There is simply no way for Pakistan to defend all of its main military infrasctructure using the HQ-9 series; even if the HQ-9 system was present at those airbases during India's attack, the defending forces might have reserved the HQ-9 for missiles targeting highly-critical parts of the airbase whilst letting other missiles through. For the record, this is allegedly what happened during Iran's attack on Nevatim Air Base in October 2024.
All of this is to say that the biggest weakness of Pakistan's HQ-9P/BE network is numbers. Even if the existing launchers expended all of their rounds with a 100% hit rate, Indian missiles still would've made their way to their targets.
You can assess a system's effectiveness only if you have the target hit rate (i.e. # of successful hits / # of launched missiles), not because an area supposedly defended by the said system managed to get hit.
Pakistan can improve this situation by purchasing less-expensive alternatives such as the HQ-22/FK-3, although I'm not sure just how much cheaper those systems would be. The up-ranged HQ-16FE is also supposedly in Pakistani service but there is no photographic evidence of that, plus I'd expect the number of such systems to be very small.
There is no proof of SAAB being damaged. Please stop reading from your Indian media and wait for neutral sources to do damage assessment. You seem like a reasonable guy and you know how bad our media is (both Pakistani and Indian side).
Yesterday, you claimed that you guys had hit a nuclear storage facility which turned out to be false:
Initial Images of the bases you've hit so far:
The one thing I’ll concede is that it has clearly revealed weaknesses in Pakistan’s air defense.Hopefully, those gaps will be addressed soon.
FK-3 is a good idea since you can integrate it easily with older missiles like HQ-2. This is one of the reasons Serbia bought it.
Not sure how the FK-3 would integrate well with Pakistan's legacy FM-90 and SPADA 2000 systems, but generally-speaking it would help with logistics and interoperability if Pakistan keep purchasing SAMs from China.
Interestingly the HQ-22 is speculated to have been adopted by the PLA because the HQ-9 was too expensive to be deployed in huge numbers. If China is having trouble buying the HQ-9 in bulk, then one could only imagine the strain that the system would have on Pakistan's budget.
They don’t have any HQ-2 left or did they never have any? I’m not an expert on PAF legacy SAMs.
I don't know which system is deployed in Karachi but there were so many successful interceptions over Karachi yesterday.