A stunning claim by a decorated former Pakistan Air Force (PAF) commander has reignited the debate over the real extent of India’s combat losses during one of South Asia’s most consequential air battles in decades.
Air Commodore Khalid Chishti, a seasoned officer with more than 3,000 flight hours and two top gallantry awards to his name, has gone on record alleging that a Chinese-made HQ-9B long-range air defence system brought down one of India’s advanced Rafale fighters during the four-day conflict in May 2025.
Speaking during a podcast that has since sent ripples through regional military and strategic circles, Chishti described how the HQ-9B’s advanced phased-array radar and long-range missiles successfully intercepted the Rafale or, as he noted, potentially a Sukhoi Su-30MKI over Pakistan-administered Kashmir on 6 and 7 May.
While the Pakistani government’s official line maintains that its Chinese-supplied J-10CE fighters armed with the PL-15E Beyond Visual Range (BVR) missile were solely responsible for India’s aircraft losses, Chishti’s claim adds a new layer to the region’s evolving airpower equation.
His revelation effectively highlights Islamabad’s deepening reliance on integrated air defence networks and the decisive role of China’s HQ-9B system in extending Pakistan’s anti-access/area-denial (A2/AD) envelope.
In a conflict where both sides deployed their latest frontline fighters, airborne early warning assets, and modern missile systems, the assertion that a ground-based HQ-9B battery contributed to a Rafale kill underscores just how complex contemporary air warfare has become.
According to Chishti, the radar on the HQ-9B managed to detect the Indian jet despite its radar cross-section reduction features — a testament, he argues, to the Chinese system’s upgraded electronic counter-countermeasures and phased-array radar technology.
This stands in stark contrast to official statements issued by Pakistan’s Directorate of Inter-Services Public Relations (DGISPR) and Defence Minister Khawaja Muhammad Asif, who had insisted that J-10CEs equipped with PL-15E missiles brought down the Indian jets.
Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar went further, claiming all five Indian Air Force (IAF) fighters lost — including three French-built Rafales worth an estimated USD 240 million (RM1.1 billion) each — were destroyed by PAF J-10Cs engaging beyond visual range.
“The Rafale fighter jets that were so highly touted failed miserably, and the Indian Air Force pilots proved they were not skilled,” Dar said bluntly at a press briefing following the clashes.
This conflicting narrative has triggered renewed interest among analysts over how the HQ-9B fits into Islamabad’s layered air defence architecture, which has quietly matured into one of the region’s most robust anti-air networks.
The HQ-9B, an evolution of China’s flagship HQ-9 series developed by the China Aerospace Science and Industry Corporation (CASIC), is widely seen as Beijing’s answer to Russia’s S-300 and S-400 systems.
With its extended intercept range of up to 260 kilometres and an engagement envelope that stretches from 500 metres to 30 kilometres in altitude, the HQ-9B is designed to tackle multiple threats — including stealth aircraft, ballistic missiles, and low-flying cruise missiles — even in an electronic warfare-contested battlespace.
Each HQ-9B battery typically consists of a phased-array fire-control radar, up to eight transporter erector launchers (TELs), each carrying four ready-to-fire SAMs, and a mobile operations command centre capable of integrating feeds from airborne and ground-based sensors.
Pakistan’s decision to procure the HQ-9B in 2021 — reportedly for a package estimated at nearly USD 500 million (RM2.35 billion) — came at a critical juncture in South Asia’s arms race.
The move was widely interpreted as a strategic response to India’s acquisition of the Russian S-400 Triumf, a long-range system that New Delhi began inducting into frontline service in 2023 to shield its airspace against Chinese and Pakistani incursions.
For Islamabad, the HQ-9B not only plugs a crucial gap in its high-altitude, long-range air defence capability but also signals Beijing’s willingness to export its most advanced anti-access platforms to close strategic partners.
Military planners point out that the May 2025 dogfights over Kashmir — described by observers as the region’s largest air battle since the Cold War, involving an estimated 125 fighters from both sides — revealed the extent of Pakistan’s integration of ground-based defences and airborne assets.
The kill chain reportedly combined real-time target data from Chinese-supplied KJ-500 airborne early warning and control (AEW&C) aircraft with PAF’s new AESA-equipped J-10CEs, older JF-17 Block III “Thunders”, and HQ-9B batteries to create overlapping kill zones.
India, meanwhile, has struggled to reconcile the conflicting reports around its losses, even as multiple senior Indian military leaders have offered partial admissions.
At the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore, Chief of Defence Staff General Anil Chauhan conceded India had “lost fighter aircraft” but sidestepped the exact numbers.
“What is important is not whether the jet went down, but why it went down,” Chauhan told Bloomberg TV, subtly pointing to operational shortcomings and tactical lapses.
Air Marshal A.K Bharti, when pressed by local journalists about the alleged loss of three Rafales, deflected with a terse remark: “Losses are part of combat,” further fuelling speculation that the IAF’s worst fears about the PL-15’s extended reach may have materialised.
The PL-15, which arms the PAF’s J-10CE fleet, was developed by the China Airborne Missile Academy (CAMA) and is now considered one of the world’s most dangerous BVR missiles.
With an estimated range of over 200 kilometres and an advanced active radar seeker coupled with datalink guidance, the PL-15 is often compared to the US AIM-120D AMRAAM and the European Meteor, both benchmark weapons for long-range air-to-air engagements.
Combined with the J-10C’s AESA radar and real-time data feeds from AWACS platforms, the PL-15’s extended envelope enables Pakistani pilots to launch from standoff distances, creating a serious tactical dilemma for India’s Rafale and Su-30MKI pilots.
But Chishti’s revelation of the HQ-9B’s claimed success in scoring a kill demonstrates that Islamabad’s air defence doctrine is not solely dependent on its air combat fleet.
Instead, Pakistan’s strategy now revolves around integrated kill chains that fuse fighter aircraft, SAM batteries, early warning radars, and electronic warfare assets to impose overlapping threats on intruding forces.
For Beijing, the credibility of the HQ-9B’s performance in combat will likely become a key selling point as China aggressively markets its air defence systems to other countries seeking alternatives to Russian and Western-made SAMs.
Across Asia and the Middle East, the HQ-9 family has already found customers in Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, with growing interest reportedly from nations like Iran and potentially Saudi Arabia, as they hedge against tightening US or European restrictions.
With tensions simmering in multiple theatres — from Taiwan’s air defence identification zone (ADIZ) to disputed islands in the South China Sea — the relevance of long-range, high-altitude, electronic warfare-resistant air defence systems is only expected to grow.
For South Asia, the May 2025 air clash may go down as a watershed moment in the region’s air power balance, proving that modern air battles are no longer the exclusive domain of dogfights between fighters but complex multi-domain engagements where ground-based missile batteries can shape outcomes just as decisively.
As Islamabad and New Delhi both analyse lessons learned, the HQ-9B’s starring role in Chishti’s account cements the system’s place as one of the most closely watched and debated assets in the evolving South Asian security landscape.