India’s External Affairs Minister Visits France to Repair Ties Strained by Alleged Rafale “Performance” Issues ??

(DEFENCE SECURITY ASIA) — India’s External Affairs Minister, S. Jaishankar, is poised for a critical diplomatic offensive in France this week, a strategic visit widely perceived by astute defence analysts as an urgent attempt to recalibrate a pivotal partnership now visibly strained by recent, contentious combat allegations concerning the advanced French-made Rafale fighter jet.

This high-stakes diplomatic engagement underscores mounting geopolitical anxieties and the accelerating re-evaluation of global military technology, particularly within the increasingly volatile Indo-Pacific theatre.

Beyond the formal engagements at the Élysée Palace, the Indian foreign minister’s European itinerary notably includes crucial stops in Belgium and Germany, signalling a broader, concerted push to fortify New Delhi’s ties with key European capitals amidst escalating regional and global uncertainties.

A recently issued statement from the Indian Ministry of External Affairs, while couched in customary diplomatic pleasantries, offered a subtle glimpse into the underlying tensions: “Our relationship with France is underpinned by deep trust and strong commitment, where both countries work closely across all areas of strategic and current importance, besides sharing similar views on various regional and global issues.”

However, this veneer of diplomatic cordiality belies a significant, rapidly widening fissure stemming directly from the intense India-Pakistan aerial skirmishes of early May 2025, during which Islamabad audaciously claimed its Chinese-origin Chengdu J-10C multi-role fighter jets successfully engaged and downed six Indian Air Force (IAF) aircraft, including a startling three Rafale fighters.

These extraordinary assertions by Pakistan, if definitively substantiated, would mark a pivotal, unprecedented moment in contemporary air warfare, representing the first alleged combat losses of the highly touted Rafale platform, a jet extensively marketed for its superior multi-role capabilities and combat pedigree.

Crucially, these provocative claims from Pakistan were reportedly bolstered by intelligence assessments originating from both American and French sources, lending an unsettling degree of credence to the allegations, despite an unyielding disavowal from New Delhi.

India’s unwavering refusal to acknowledge any Rafale losses, even in the face of accumulating external corroboration and mounting satellite imagery analyses, has ignited accusations of a deliberate “cover-up” regarding the combat efficacy of its prized French-built combat aircraft.

The burgeoning controversy has inevitably penetrated India’s robust domestic political sphere, with a prominent state minister and former Indian Air Force pilot, N. Uttam Reddy, publicly challenging Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s central government to exhibit greater transparency regarding the alleged shoot-downs, particularly those involving the sensitive Rafale platform.

Reddy, serving as the Minister of Irrigation and Public Supply in Telangana state, sharply and publicly criticized the Modi administration’s perceived opacity, stating: “We welcome the safe return of Indian Air Force pilots safely after successfully carrying out their missions.”

He continued, delivering a potent political jab, “Nevertheless, the central government must provide an explanation regarding reports alleging that one of the country’s fighter jets was shot down.”

Reddy, a key figure within India’s formidable opposition Congress party, further demanded at a high-profile New Delhi press conference, “The government must also disclose the number of Pakistani fighter jets that were successfully shot down.”

Adding another layer of unsettling complexity to India’s carefully managed narrative, General Anil Chauhan, India’s Chief of Defence Staff, recently offered an unprecedented admission during an interview with Bloomberg in Singapore, confirming that the IAF had indeed sustained aircraft losses in the recent aerial conflict with Pakistan, though he conspicuously refrained from specifying the exact number or types of aircraft involved.

This marked the first public concession of aerial combat losses by a top Indian military official in the post-Pulwama era, yet the deliberate lack of specific detail continues to fuel intense speculation and global scrutiny.

General Chauhan, speaking at the prestigious Shangri-La Dialogue, strategically pivoted from the immediate combat outcome to a broader, more profound strategic concern, asserting: “What is important is not whether the fighter jet went down, but why it went down.”

This statement, while perhaps intended to deflect attention from the alleged losses, inadvertently amplified underlying anxieties about the Rafale’s operational performance and the IAF’s overall combat readiness.

The already delicate strategic rapport between New Delhi and Paris is understood to have deteriorated significantly following persistent reports that India allegedly rebuffed a critical request from Dassault Aviation, the Rafale’s venerable manufacturer, to dispatch an independent audit team to inspect IAF Rafale aircraft in the wake of the post-conflict claims.

This unprecedented rejection by the Indian government of Dassault’s audit team has sent palpable tremors of apprehension throughout the global defence community, raising profound questions about transparency, accountability, and the inherent trust dynamics within critical bilateral defence partnerships.

Intelligence reports from a consortium of international sources, extensively corroborated by rigorous open-source defence analyses, consistently indicate that Dassault Aviation had, in fact, deployed a specialized technical team to India with the explicit, urgent objective of investigating potential systemic vulnerabilities in the Rafale platform that might have contributed to the alleged asset losses.

However, India reportedly denied this specialized team full access to the IAF’s frontline Rafale squadrons, igniting intense speculation across global defence capitals that New Delhi is actively attempting to obscure deeper, more systemic internal deficiencies related to operational preparedness, maintenance protocols, and overall pilot proficiency standards.

The perceived recalcitrance stems from India’s alleged apprehension that Dassault Aviation might, during its audit, attribute any reported Rafale performance shortcomings not to the aircraft’s inherent design or manufacturing, but rather to critical systemic failures within the IAF itself, including pressing issues such as persistent pilot shortages and chronic, long-standing maintenance backlogs.

These underlying anxieties are indeed well-founded: a damning audit report by the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG), presented to the Parliamentary Defence Committee months prior to the recent conflict, meticulously documented a critical shortage of 596 pilots within the IAF, an alarming figure that represents a significant increase from 486 in 2015.

Attempts to train a projected 222 new pilots annually between 2016 and 2021 reportedly fell significantly short, exacerbating a severe human resource deficit within India’s complex air defence framework and jeopardizing future operational readiness.

Compounding this multi-faceted crisis, the IAF’s foundational backbone for basic pilot training, the Swiss-made Pilatus PC-7 Mk-II aircraft, has been plagued by significant, recurrent serviceability issues for several years, further hampering the consistent and effective development of new aviators.

Furthermore, the controversial Agnipath recruitment scheme, intended to modernize India’s armed forces, has introduced new uncertainties regarding the long-term retention of experienced personnel and the cultivation of combat-ready aviators, potentially exacerbating the existing pilot deficit.

At the precise moment the conflict erupted, India possessed only 31 active fighter squadrons, falling critically short of the minimum 42 squadrons deemed absolutely essential by its own defence doctrine for a credible, two-front deterrence posture against both China and Pakistan.

French authorities are understandably expressing considerable disquiet over the unfolding narrative, feeling that the highly capable Rafale is being unjustly scapegoated for what they perceive as India’s broader, underlying structural military weaknesses, particularly given the aircraft’s unequivocally demonstrated combat effectiveness in other demanding theatres, including those in the Middle East and Libya, when properly integrated, meticulously maintained, and expertly operated.

However, this strategic impasse is demonstrably not a one-way street; India, having long felt the strategic pinch, has consistently voiced public grievances regarding Dassault’s steadfast reluctance to provide full, unfettered access to the Rafale’s highly sensitive avionics system source code – a deeply contentious issue that has persisted since the landmark US$8.7 billion purchase agreement was finalized in 2016.

Without this absolutely critical source code, Indian defence engineers remain fundamentally unable to independently update software, seamlessly integrate indigenous weapon systems, or conduct deep-level maintenance and future upgrades on the aircraft’s crucial mission-critical systems, thereby severely impinging on the nation’s strategic and operational sovereignty in real-time combat scenarios.

This long-standing technical impasse has now unequivocally escalated into a significant, geopolitically charged strategic liability, starkly revealing the inherent limitations of external defence procurement without a comprehensive, reciprocal framework for genuine technology transfer and indigenous control.

Indian defence analysts, across the political spectrum, are increasingly interpreting this as a clear, unmistakable indication that Western defence manufacturers prioritize the stringent protection of their intellectual property and proprietary technologies over ensuring the long-term combat capabilities and strategic autonomy of even their most vital clients, such as India.

Meanwhile, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has not hesitated to opportunistically exploit this perceived vulnerability, leveraging it as a potent propaganda tool to diminish India’s strategic standing and challenge the perceived superiority of Western military hardware.

Following credible reports of India’s recovery of a relatively intact PL-15 missile, allegedly launched by a Pakistani fighter during the recent aerial engagements, China’s aggressive “wolf warrior” diplomats took to prominent social media platforms, publicly ridiculing India’s defence capabilities and highlighting its technological dependencies.

“India spent US$288 million for each Rafale, but they do not have access to the source code,” a Chinese official provocatively declared on Platform X, underscoring the deep-seated proprietary limitations.

The official further added a pointed taunt: “They also claim to be able to ‘extract software’ from the fragments of PL-15, even though they themselves cannot access the core system of their Rafale jets,” highlighting a perceived hypocrisy in India’s technological ambitions.

While undeniably provocative and designed for maximum rhetorical impact, these pointed Chinese barbs underscore a burgeoning, uncomfortable reality: Chinese-made weapon systems, particularly the sophisticated PL-15 beyond-visual-range air-to-air missile (BVRAAM), are no longer merely competitive but are proving to be exceptionally capable, even potentially superior to certain established Western counterparts in actual combat scenarios.

The PL-15, believed to have been directly involved in the alleged downing of Indian Rafale jets, is equipped with a miniaturized active electronically scanned array (AESA) radar seeker and utilizes a dual-pulsed solid-fuel rocket motor, allowing it to achieve formidable speeds approaching Mach 5 and engage targets at ranges exceeding 200 kilometers (though the export variant, PL-15E, sold to Pakistan, has a reported range of 145 km).

When seamlessly integrated with the advanced Chengdu J-10C multi-role platform, the PL-15 arguably grants the Pakistan Air Force (PAF) a critical “first-shot” advantage and enhanced kinematics over IAF aircraft, many of which still rely on older, less capable beyond-visual-range missiles such as the MICA and early variants of the Meteor.

For India, the profoundly embarrassing prospect of its exorbitantly priced, top-tier Western Rafale jets being potentially outmatched by a Chinese-Pakistani system not only inflicts significant prestige damage but also fundamentally challenges its long-held regional security doctrine and strategic procurement philosophies.

For decades, India’s defence acquisition strategy has been firmly anchored in the foundational belief that Western military systems provided an undeniable, qualitative technological edge against adversaries primarily fielding Chinese or Russian-origin equipment.

However, that deeply entrenched strategic belief is now confronting its most rigorous, public, and potentially devastating real-world test, with profound, far-reaching implications for future global arms markets and the very architecture of strategic alliances.

While the alleged Rafale losses remain officially unconfirmed by New Delhi, India’s persistent, categorical refusal to permit an independent, third-party audit by Dassault itself raises fundamental questions about transparency, the integrity of combat claims, and the inherent trust dynamics between a major defence buyer and its primary, long-standing supplier.

This ongoing controversy has transcended the traditional confines of the military-industrial complex, escalating into a significant, politically charged polemic within India, with opposition parties reigniting long-standing allegations of financial irregularities in the Rafale acquisition and demanding a comprehensive, independent performance audit of the aircraft in combat.

The Indian Ministry of Defence now faces immense, sustained pressure to fundamentally reassess its future defence procurement strategy, meticulously weighing the tactical benefits of acquiring cutting-edge foreign platforms against the overarching imperative of achieving true strategic autonomy through robust indigenous production capabilities and genuine, comprehensive technology transfer.

At the international level, the geopolitical ramifications are undeniably significant and complex. For Pakistan, the combat effectiveness demonstrably exhibited by its J-10C aircraft, armed with the formidable PL-15, marks a notable strategic achievement in its enduring quest to rebalance regional air power dynamics.

For China, the PL-15’s alleged success in combat serves as a powerful, real-world validation of its rapidly maturing, integrated, and increasingly trusted arms export model, particularly appealing to developing nations seeking advanced military capabilities often without the geopolitical conditionalities frequently associated with Western systems.

Conversely, for established Western defence manufacturers like Dassault Aviation, the accumulating reputational damage is palpable and may prove exceptionally difficult to mitigate in the long term; the Rafale, previously lauded as a virtually unassailable, premier multi-role platform, now faces uncomfortable scrutiny not only from its geopolitical rivals but, more critically, from its own discerning and increasingly questioning customers.

— DEFENCE SECURITY ASIA