If the next skirmish is going to take place any time soon, then the chances of seeing Tejas in action would be grim keeping in mind that the aircraft has not yet gone through proper weapons integration and testing.
What weapons are you referring to?
It has already been tested with R-73E with HMDS and Derby BVRAAM and cleared for use. However, the operational squadron, No.45 'Flying Daggers' has IOC jets that do not yet have the FOC release software to use the Derby missiles. It will come in due course. As of now, they're still based at Sulur AFS and might move to a forward air base either by this year end or early next year. Covid-19 has delayed all plans as of now.
So IAF thinks that PAF would be using a CM as a nuke? Pretty damn dumb if you ask me.
Either way, PAF can take out AWACS air base in Punjab with MLRS quite easily leaving IAF with only 3 AWACS stationed quite far from the action.
What makes you think that PAF air bases are safe? India has the advantage of strategic depth, whereas most PAF air bases are at most a couple hundred kms from the border.
IAF AWACS are mostly based in Agra. Targeting air bases is not so simple and they have terminal air defences to handle sub-sonic cruise missiles.
I dont think it would matter in a war.
Indians tried to launch brahmos on Malir Garrison, Karachi and other installations only last year.
We took out 6 targets with Stand Off Weapons.
And I dont think any country would just bush the retard button without confirmation of an actual nuclear strike.
India never attempted to launch Brahmos. If it had, nothing could stop a Mach 3 cruise missile from hitting it's target.
And no, not a single target was hit with the stand-off weapons. They landed at safe distances, either deliberately (as claimed by PAF) or because their targeting was hampered due to the MiG-21s that intercepted the package (as claimed by the IAF).
Yar that's all fine and dandy...but what I wanna know is that why was the indian phalcon missing in action in spite of being in the air in the theater of operation on Feb 27th?
Who told you it was missing in action? The Phalcon AWACS is the one that registered the electronic emission of the F-16 disappearing.
That said, the indians have actually prepared and tried a massive cruise missile attack, only to be
detected before attack and given a message in kind.
the Indian Navy was deployed and on alert for any escalation from the Pakistani side that would lead to an all-out war. They didn't "try" a massive cruise missile attack, because both sides de-escalated. Not because anything was detected or any message given. If war breaks out, they will be used, message or no message.
I think he meant flying that low over an enemy airfield. No one is really performing such tactics anymore. The RAF suffered significant casualties in the first Gulf War with its Tornados using this tactic.
The air refuelling capability was added later and not part of the original design. In my view, if it had been integrated from the beginning, there would have been a better solution. Could have gone for something similar to the Saab Gripen using Cobham retractable probes. However, a solution similar to the Sepecat Jaguar would have been ideal. If similar sized aircraft such as these two can integrate retractable probes, I can't see why we couldn't do that for the JF-17.
Gripen's refueling probe is designed that way because they retrofitted it into Gripen Cs. It is a bad bad design, and Gripen pilots consider it to the worst thing about the Gripen. Refueling with it is hard even though it has FBW FCS.