Maybe they don't want the Cybertruck of fighter jets losing panels.
The stealthy fighter jet continued safely to its destination after losing a small panel on takeoff.
www.oklahoman.com
Maybe they prefer their aircraft to stay aloft.
Each F-35 costs tens of millions of dollars to build, and the Defense Department had about 620 of them in 2024, according to a government report.
www.usatoday.com
It's track record isn't exactly stellar.
Maybe India figures it needs China's J-10C fighter jet and its PL-15 long-range missile:
The downing of the Rafale, the jewel of India's fleet, surprised many in the military community and raised questions about the effectiveness of Western military hardware against untested Chinese alternatives.
www.reuters.com
SLAMABAD/NEW DELHI, August 2 (Reuters) - Just after midnight on May 7, the screen in the Pakistan Air Force's operations room lit up in red with the positions of dozens of active enemy planes across the border in India.
Sidhu ordered
Pakistan's prized Chinese-made J-10C jets to scramble. A senior Pakistani Air Force (PAF) official, who was present in the operations room, said
Sidhu instructed his staff to target Rafales, a French-made fighter that is the jewel of India's fleet and had never been downed in battle.
"He wanted Rafales," said the official.
The hour-long fight, which took place in darkness, involved some 110 aircraft, experts estimate, making it the world's largest air battle in decades.
The J-10s shot down at least one Rafale, Reuters reported in May, citing U.S. officials. Its downing surprised many in the military community and raised questions about the effectiveness of Western military hardware against untested Chinese alternatives....
But Reuters interviews with two Indian officials and three of their Pakistani counterparts found that the performance of the Rafale wasn't the key problem: Central to its downing was an Indian intelligence failure concerning
the range of the China-made PL-15 missile fired by the J-10 fighter. China and Pakistan are the only countries to operate both J-10s, known as Vigorous Dragons, and PL-15s.
The faulty intelligence gave the Rafale pilots a false sense of confidence they were out of Pakistani firing distance, which they believed was only around 150 km, the Indian officials said, referring to the widely cited range of PL-15's export variant....
The PL-15 that hit the Rafale was fired from around 200km (124.27 mi) away, according to Pakistani officials, and even farther according to Indian officials. That would make it among the longest-range air-to-air strikes recorded....