Is this Chinese missile a dud or India’s biggest air defence headache?

At a press briefing on May 11, Air Marshal A K Bharti showed images of a largely intact Chinese PL-15 missile that was recovered from Punjab. It was fired from a Pakistani fighter jet during India’s four day near-war with India.When it was first publicly seen nearly seven years ago, the Chinese missile was projected as being a competitor to the US and European air-to-air missiles not just in terms of the distance it could travel, but also in terms of speed and guidance.However, the missile’s combat debut during Operation Sindoor has prompted speculation over whether the Chinese weapon proved itself as the most advanced missile in its class.Why PL-15 was a great leap forward for ChinaThe AIM family of guided air-to-air missiles was developed by the US decades ago but has remained the mainstay of the US defence forces, undergoing multiple upgrades. However, the current US version - the AIM-120 - is said to trail competitors from Europe and China. In the case of China, the first credible air-to-air missile is said to be the PL-12 which made its debut around 2005. From there, the country is said to have made a massive leap forward with the PL-15. Like the AIM, the PL-15 is also powered by a solid fuel motor, but unlike other similar missiles, it is believed to have a dual-pulse solid motor (it has two areas of solid fuel to power its motor instead of a single one). The multiple areas of solid fuel are believed to be separated by a flame retardant layer that allows the missile to use each pocket of fuel as needed to increase its speed or range as required. The closest competitor in terms of speed to the PL-15 is believed to be the Meteor air-to-air missile developed jointly by multiple European nations. While this missile also has a solid fuel motor, it also has what is known as a ramjet, which is liquid fuel-powered and gives it a boost in speed and the distance it can cover. India’s Rafale jets come equipped with MBDA (a defence manufacturer) Meteor missiles. However, the PL-15 is believed to achieve much higher speed by the time it makes contact with its target.“The fly-out speed of the Meteor is likely between Mach 3–3.5, whereas at burn out the PL-15 is likely travelling in excess of Mach 5,” Douglas Barrie, a senior fellow for military aerospace wrote in a blog for The International Institute for Strategic Studies in 2022.Mach 5 is five times the speed of sound. To put in perspective, the Rafale jet’s top speed is Mach 1.5 and few combat jets exceed a top speed of Mach 2. Most combat jets don’t exceed Mach 3 to ensure better control for the pilot and prevent excessive fuel consumption. How do air-to-air missiles work? Air-to-air missiles (AAMs) have come a long way since their development began after the Second World War, but the broad structure of this type of missile has remained the same. The motor of the missile powers it, while the seeker section and fins are used to manoeuvre it towards a target. The warhead section explodes once the missile makes contact with the target or is close enough to the target. Over time, there’s been an evolution in these missiles not just to hit targets after travelling extremely large distances but also in the technology guiding them to catch up with jets that have gotten faster. Where the missile once relied on the heat signatures of jets to target them, these missiles now touch speeds upwards of four times the speed of sound and can now even be guided to the target by a different aircraft. The best known version of radar-guided missiles features in the film Top Gun: https://ty.fatv8.com/3sw663_1rkmuflfzqrun/5prkysza?1eqt=4zmleBb7TIWVJ0Nkp US has been at the forefront of air-to-air missile technology for decades. Its missiles have been used the most in active combat, are largely reliable and have been viewed as progressing to keep up with the times. The Soviet Union is believed to have come the closest in terms of matching the technology during the Cold War but after the programme fell apart after the fall of the USSR. China's air-to-air missile programme initially almost entirely relied on help from the Soviet Union and their products were largely seen as versions of the Russian missiles. But over the past couple of decades the country’s missile programme has advanced rapidly and by some estimates has surpassed the US.A report by the UK-based Royal United Services Institute said that while the PL-15 had a much longer range than the US missile, the Meteor might have a significantly larger ‘no escape zone’ for the target aircraft beyond 100 km due to its ramjet propulsion system.Guiding a missile to its targetAn air-to-air missile is only as good as its ability to track down a target. To ensure that happens, the air-to-air missiles have gone from tracking the heat emitted by jet engines to being guided by radar.In movies, you might remember target aircraft releasing flares to misguide missiles that are tracking the heat of the aircraft's engine. This manoeuvre may now have limited use.The PL-15 missile is guided by AESA, which stands for Active Electronically Scanned Array. Unlike earlier where a radar signal from the jet which fired it guided the missile to its target, an AESA has many small antennas which allow a missile to simultaneously and independently track different targets. Such radars prevent the target aircraft or ground devices jamming the missile’s radar while in flight. But what makes the PL-15 stand out is the ability for multiple aircraft and radar to guide the missile’s journey. While the jet firing the missile can track a target only over a distance that’s limited by the aircraft’s radar, an Awacs (Airborne Warning and Control System) aircraft can guide the PL-15 over a longer distance towards its target. Most Awacs can track an aircraft that’s nearly 400 km away. “This allows for cooperative targeting, where the AWACS can guide the missile beyond its standard range. This capability may not have been fully understood by us initially,” said Manoj Joshi, distinguished fellow at the Observer Research Foundation in a chat with TOI+ after the ceasefire was declared. First, ground systems locked onto targets, then fighter jets launched missiles from safe distances, and finally an Awacs aircraft seamlessly attempts to guide the missile to its mark. Joshi said the Indian defence forces might have underestimated the extent of the close links between the targeted terrorist organisations and the Pakistan defence forces. “Under normal circumstances, in a conventional air operation, if India were planning to strike targets inside Pakistan, the first step would be to suppress Pakistan's air defences. But on the first day, Indian forces did not do this because they wanted to avoid the perception of directly attacking Pakistani military targets. As a result, the Pakistani air defences — which were left intact — were able to strike back,” he said.How the Chinese missile is already changing the gameWhile the Chinese PL-15 missile may have only just made its battle debut, it had already prompted the US to work on improving its own air-to-air missiles. “The US is also working on the Lockheed Martin AIM-260 Joint Advanced Tactical Missile as an eventual replacement for the AIM-120. The US has closely guarded performance goals for the AIM-260, which has been in development since around 2017, but its requirement was informed by the capabilities of the Chinese PL-15, including its projected 200 km range,” Douglas Barrie from IISS wrote in a 2024 blog post. The recovery of a largely intact PL-15 in Punjab during Operation Sindoor could give India and its allies a closer look at its workings, and possibly a chance to adapt its own defences to it. It’s also unclear why these unexploded missiles were found in India and what it says about their stated capabilities. There’s also a PL-17 air-to-air missile that's already under development which could only increase the reach of the Chinese missiles to nearly 400 kilometres, while sharing many features with the PL-15 in terms of tracking. “The PL-17 may combine use of a passive sensor with receiving target-location updates from offboard sensors for much of the missile flight, making it harder for the aircraft being targeted to recognise it was under attack,” IISS’s Barrie had written.