I wanted to say more but this comes as a surprise.
"...Operations are still ongoing..."
My guess is, they remain in a heightened alert state and ISR assets are still at work to check for more possible ceasefire violations after India retaliated with drone strikes for last night's CFV.
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Anyway, just to get our thoughts in order as we begin the phase of analyzing how the air operations unfolded, I think one of the aspects that we need to pay particular attention to is the
use of AESA-based seekers on the PL-15s, and how they must have affected the equation with SPECTRA's ability to jam/spoof incoming active-guidance threats.
We know that evading AIM-120C-5s with regular pulse-doppler seekers was not a problem for our aircraft even back in 2019, thanks in part to externally carried jammers like EL/L-8222. The internally carried SPECTRA suite was meant to provide a similar capability to the Rafale - but the advent of AESA seekers make matters complicated, as I had previously predicted:
So the information we want keeps coming in. https://www.eurasiantimes.com/hold-scrapping-mmrca-was-a-blunder-india/ “MMRCA should have gone through. It was a blunder not going for it. It would have brought world-class manufacturing facilities to India and skill development. The French were...
www.strategicfront.org
"...But even that will become difficult as missiles with 60+ TRM AESA seekers will become commonplace in the next decade. Unlike FCRs where the TRMs have to conduct multiple roles, an AAM seeker has only one job: maintain lock on the target no matter what. So they will be tailored with ECCMs of such frequency-agility that it becomes impossible to spoof them with a smaller transmitter with fewer TRMs (meaning less frequency-agility of your own, even if you somehow figure out their algorithm).
At that point, a lot of current-gen integrated SPJs (including Rafale's emitters) will become obsolete and aircraft that rely on them for self-protection will no longer be considered survivable as frontline fighters unless flying inside the bubble of a podded escort jammer. The key will be to evade detection entirely and obtain look-first/shoot-first so that the problem of dealing with these next-gen AAMs is for the enemy to figure out..."
Admittedly, at the time I was writing that, I had no idea that the PL-15 already had an AESA seeker. I thought the Chinese were yet to operationalize that technology. So I was off the mark on that part - they won't become a problem next decade, they've already become a problem NOW.
Now we need to see how this informs IAF decisions going forward. First, let's see what they disclose after winding up the operation.