I grant you that Aesa radar are phenomenally capable, but in the RF spectrum. There are counters being develop to it, which the Indians hope their Rafales will be able to employ. The need for IRST to give a secondary, a passive, and a more public ally releasable form of evidence in the event a false flag attack is used against us, should be considered based on the asymmetrical threat being posed against us.
we don’t need a KAL 007 or USS Vincennes type incident throwing off our entire PR strategy when we are defending ourselves.
The spice jet’s IFF was squawking an Indian Military callsign. This is why an IRST with a separate IR image based threat library can help confirm or contradict the information from the radar and IFF.