While the challenges faced by the India’s armed forces are no secret, its loss of a plane last week to a country whose military is about half the size and receives a quarter of the funding was still telling. An Indian Air Force pilot found himself in a dogfight in February 2019 with a warplane from the Pakistani Air Force, and ended up a prisoner behind enemy lines for a brief time.
The pilot made it home in one piece, however bruised and shaken, but the plane, an aging Soviet-era MiG-21, was less lucky.
The aerial clash, the first by the South Asian rivals in nearly five decades, was a rare test for the Indian military — and it left observers a bit dumbfounded.
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