Operation Sindoor: Blow-by-blow account of the 88-hour air battle revealed

Operation Sindoor: Swiss study reveals blow-by-blow account of the 88-Hour air battle

A Swiss military analysis pieces together Pakistan's drone swarms, missile attacks and failed S-400 hunt, revealing how repeated tactical attempts failed before the ceasefire on May 10, 2025.

New Delhi: For four nights during Operation Sindoor, Pakistan threw everything it had into the skies, sending up hundreds of drones, firing long-range missiles, launching cyber intrusions, using electronic jamming and flying manned aircraft along the edge of India's air-defence envelope. But none of it fetched the desired result Islamabad was seeking, reveals a detailed Swiss military study.

Published by the Switzerland-based Centre for Military History and Perspective Studies (CHPM), the reconstruction traces how Pakistan carried out the air campaign in waves, each larger than the last, and why each one failed to cripple Indian air power or air defences.

Authored by military historian Adrien Fontanellaz and translated by former French defence attaché to India Benedict Smith, it is one of the most detailed foreign assessments so far of the India-Pakistan air conflict that took place between May 7 and May 10, 2025.

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The research was reviewed by a committee led by Claude Meier, chairman of the CHPM and a retired Swiss Air Force major general who served as chief of staff of the Swiss Armed Forces from 2016 to 2020. Defence strategist Joseph Henrotin and international security specialist Arthur Lusenti were also part of the panel.

By the final morning, the report concludes, the air war had reached a point where Pakistan could no longer influence events in the sky.

“Sufficient elements appear to indicate that, by the morning of 10 May 2025, the Indian Air Force had succeeded in achieving air superiority over a significant portion of Pakistan's airspace. This in turn enabled it to continue long-range strikes against enemy infrastructure at will, at least for as long as it retained sufficient stocks of munitions such as BrahMos or SCALP-EG,” the report said.

The study confirms that the air confrontation opened late on May 7 with two Indian strike packages involving Rafale and Mirage 2000 aircraft aimed at the Jaish-e-Mohammed headquarters in Bahawalpur and the Lashkar-e-Taiba base in Muridke.

One formation deliberately entered Pakistani airspace at low altitude before executing a pop-up attack with an aim to provoke interception. Pakistan responded by scrambling more than 30 fighters and firing PL-15 long-range air-to-air missiles. The prime targets were Rafales jets.

Islamabad later claimed six Indian aircraft had been destroyed. The Swiss assessment confirmed losses of at least one Rafale (serial number BS001), one Mirage 2000 and one additional fighter assessed as either a MiG-29 or a Su-30MKI, while adding that several Indian pilots evaded incoming missiles.

Indian Chief of Defence Staff General Anil Chauhan rejected Pakistan's claims in an interview with Bloomberg in Singapore last year. “What is important is that, not the jet being down, but why they were being down,” he said, adding, “Numbers are not important.”

According to the report, Pakistani ground-based radars and electronic listening stations, which were supported by an Erieye airborne early warning and control aircraft, detected the Indian formations shortly after midnight.

Over the next 20 minutes, Pakistan identified eight groups of six to eight aircraft along four axes, totalling around 60 aircraft, including 14 Rafales, later reinforced by additional combat jets.

The PAF scrambled 32 fighters (F-16s, JF-17s and J-10Cs), concentrating most of them from Lahore to east of Islamabad. Once Indian aircraft released their weapons, the PAF chief ordered pilots in the eastern sector to engage aggressively while limiting exposure to return fire.

J-10C and JF-17 fighters fired multiple PL-15 salvos. An HQ-9 or HQ-16 surface-to-air missile battery also engaged Indian aircraft. Rafales were designated priority targets because of their symbolic value.

Pakistan later claimed six Indian aircraft had been destroyed inside Indian airspace. The Swiss study states that wreckage imagery confirmed fewer losses. “The discovery of multiple PL-15 missile casings on Indian territory indicates that other IAF pilots successfully decoyed or evaded some of the missiles fired against them,” it added.

What followed, the report suggests, was a transition from air combat to saturation tactics.

As early as the morning of May 7, Pakistani artillery opened fire along the Line of Control (LoC). That night, the PAF launched a large-scale operation involving more than 300 drones and JF-17s firing CM-400AKG missiles, designed to home in on radar emissions and disable Indian air defences.

Drones targeted Indian Army forward posts, headquarters, logistics hubs and air stations, while also attempting to trigger Indian radar activation for electronic intelligence mapping.

“Songar drones, capable of delivering small offensive payloads, and much more sophisticated, Turkish-designed Yihaa-III suicide drones, operated within or behind decoy drone formations. In parallel with these kinetic actions, the PAF also conducted a series of cyberattacks against both military and civilian targets,” the report said.

Indian defences was intact. Anti-aircraft guns destroyed more than half the incoming drones, with jamming and spoofing systems playing a decisive role.

“Crucially, the integration of the Air Force's IACCCS and the Army's Akashteer network allowed the Indians forces to fuse data collected by optical and electromagnetic sensors. As a result, the Pakistanis failed to accurately map the Indian electronic order of battle following this initial strike,” the report said, explaining how Indian radars were activated only briefly and only when targets were well within range.

Pakistan repeated the manoeuvre on the night of May 8-9 by launching around 600 drones and extending targets to air stations such as Adampur and Srinagar. S-400 batteries were treated as high-value objectives.

A third wave followed on May 9. It was larger and focussed almost exclusively on air stations and nearby S-400 systems. F-16s and JF-17s were used more intensively, operating at the periphery of Indian air defences.

Pakistan claimed success through cyber and electronic warfare and said a JF-17 had fired CM-400AKG missiles at the S-400 battery in Adampur.

Applying its verification standards, the Swiss study found no evidence of damage and rejected Pakistan's claim.

According to the report, the first Pakistani drone wave triggered a pre-planned Indian escalation.

On May 8, the IAF began a focussed interdiction campaign against Pakistani air-defence infrastructure using Harop and Harpy loitering munitions. Eight sites were struck on May 8 and four more on May 9, including early-warning radars at Chunian and Pasrur.

One Indian S-400 battery engaged a Pakistani Erieye or electronic warfare aircraft at a range close to 300 km.

By the early hours of May 10, Indian intelligence detected preparations for another Pakistani strike. Between 02:00 and 05:00, the IAF launched BrahMos, SCALP-EG and Rampage missiles from within Indian airspace, hitting seven sites up to 200 km inside Pakistan.

A second wave followed at 10:00, expanding targets to include manned aircraft. The Sargodha Air Base was rendered inoperative after missile impacts at runway intersections. The Jacobabad Air Base suffered hits on an F-16 maintenance hangar, a radar and supporting infrastructure. At Bholari, a hangar housing Erieye aircraft was severely damaged.

The IAF assessed that at least four or five F-16s, one Erieye, one C-130, several MALE drones, two radars, two command-and-control centres and one SAM battery were destroyed on the ground using around 50 long-range munitions.

Pakistan reported that the Erieye at Bholari was lightly damaged and repaired quickly, though five personnel were killed.

By noon on May 10, Pakistani military authorities requested a ceasefire, the report said. India accepted, having met the political objectives assigned to Operation Sindoor.

The study added that claims from both sides relied heavily on radar and electronic intelligence data, which can misinterpret evasive manoeuvres or electronic countermeasures as confirmed kills.

It also added that the opening night represented a setback for India. “The loss of at least one Rafale provided the adversary with a key element to support its public relations line of operation,” the report said.

The authors attribute that initial setback to several factors, including Pakistan anticipating the operation, the longer-than-expected range of the PL-15 missile, low-altitude tactics and cooperative targeting using the Erieye and Link-17 data systems.

“If this was the case, JF-17 and J-10C fighters may have had the option to keep their radars off and to fire PL-15 missiles with active radar guidance using targeting data transmitted by the Erieye,” the report said.

By the end of the 88 hours, the study said the outcome in the air was already clear, not because of one decisive strike, but because repeated efforts to break through India's defences had failed.

Source: ZeeNews
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