I just want to state this before my milsperg:
There is about a 0% chance any of this shit will get tested. This is going to be a repeat of 2019. India will do some initial HVT strike with more-modern aircraft to make sure they get the important stuff deep over the LOC then will down grade to using their garbage teir planes for mass counter-retaliation strikes.
This is both a cost-savings measure and a deescalation; India's Rafales might be able to take a nuke to Islamabad and Pakistan has to respond accordingly. A MiG-21 ain't.
The plane Pakistan shot down back then was a Mig-21 for gods sakes, and for their part Pakistan flew no combat sorties, just had jets in the air to posture.
Also I mention elevation a bit later on, but when assessing the impacts of Drones on the fight, a fight in Kashmir would be taking place above the operating envelope of most of the cheaper drones.
I rate CAS aircraft rather lowly after seeing the SU-25's mediocre performance from both sides in the Ukraine war, not that the planes failed to deliver ordinance on target, but in that CAS aircraft fare extremely poorly against modern air defense, and even worse in contested airspace. You can see the shift from CAS to multi-role aircraft with the Russians using the SU-34 with UMBKs to hit targets from beyond the range of Air Defense, the US made the same realization decades ago with the A-10 being mostly replaced with F-15 Strike Eagles using JDAMs. Aircraft that are both older and significantly less capable and durable than the SU-25 belong in the "bad" tier if ether side is using S-300 or IRIS equivalents for air defense.
A lot of the Russian Su-25 losses after the early stage were due to airframe failure: Either near misses that later became fatal or just airframe stress. Nearly all Ukrainian Su-25 losses involved some sort of AtA action from Russian CAP - either direct shoot down with stand-off missiles or forcing an Su-25 to manuever where AAD could get a lock. It even then took multiple launches, usually a half-dozen or more, missile span Russia can pull of due to lack of threat to their jets.
This is unlikely to look like Ukraine (and that's if it pops, which I doubt it will. Its going to 2019 all over again). Ukraine and Russia both have obscene levels of AAD of at least "poses a threat that can't be ignored" level, and the size disparity of Ukraine's airforce has prevented Ukraine from launching effective CAP. In a Pakistan/India engagement environment AAD would be less of challenge and both sides would have sufficient combat aircraft to run interference for attack jets which makes them less vulnerable to AtA, which would allow them to operate under AAD envelope as intended, pilot skill and airframe maintenance providing.
The Jaguar itself has over-wing hardpoints for Sidewinders as well as it bomb load, so while it's not an air superiority fighter by any stretch, it would be a threat to any Pakistani cross-border strikes.
I guess what I'm saying is I'd put attack aircraft into their own categories.
For the Jaguar specifically, it'll come down to how well they are maintained. They got a very good rep in both British and French service for reliability, so the plane is solid if the ground crews are. And that's a pretty big IF.
I judged the rest of the aircraft mostly based on time of introduction. I'm well aware that a highly modernized F-16 is a capable combatant, but even it has shown age over Ukraine, albeit in very small numbers under adverse circumstances.
Ukraine's F-16 are hand-me-downs to (effectively) WARPACT pilots and the delta between NATO and Soviet-Pattern planes is
vast. Ukraine has lost 2 F-16s. One was due to pilot error (NATO and Soviet horizon indicators are inverted, Pilot very likely got confused and should not have been allowed at the stick; he knew somoene and had minimal training) and one to enemy action from a S-400 ambush - an ambush that wouldn't be possible without (effectively) no opposing CAP allowing Russia to set it up.
Pakistan, on the other hand, got their F-16s in 1983 - they have had multiple generations of pilots who have flown nothing but F-16s and trained replacements to fly F-16s. They are also keeping them up-to-date. These the "oh shit" arm of Pakistan's airforce so there has been no fucking around or playing political favoritism with the pilots.
You'd be better off looking at the IDF over Syria for performance.
MiG-29Ms have fared poorly in Ukraine against SU-34/35s, It has been 3 years and I cannot recall a single time a MiG-29 (or any variant thereof) has shot down an SU-27, 30, 34, or 35. In general, it seems like the big fighters (SU-27, F-15) have aged much better than their small contemporaries (MiG-29, F-16). Of course, as you said, Pakistan isn't running around with upgraded SU-35s and the like, so this may be the MiG's first time to shine.
The MiG-29/31 is an airsuperiority fighter. Its designed to operate at high altitudes for AtA roles, something that just doesn't materialize in Ukraine. The AAD density keeps both sides launching at stand-off ranges. The issue with the MiG-29 (and 31 which is just an upgraded 29) is that its a bit of a hanger queen and IIRC nearly all of Russian losses after the first couple months have been due to pilot error or airframe failure.
edit: Oh there was one MiG-31 that got got by Ukaine doing a SAM-ambush. But not regular occurance; Russia doesn't use their MiG-29s much because they have Su-34 and Su-35 which are much more appropriate to the environment and, to try to keep the geopolitics brief, a high-flying long range Mig-29/31 air superiority fighter getting close to NATO borders is more likely to get knickers in twists than a Mult-role shorter range Su-34/35
Another thing to remember, as we talk about operating ceilings, is that any combat will take place at a much higher elevation than the current kurfluffle in Ukraine. Upper cap and engine performance numbers that don't matter when you're over flat land are likely to start mattering a whole lot when the ground is 5000ft up.
As for the Chinese aircraft, I simply assumed that being recent = decent electronic suite. There's no combat data on them at all, so this will be eye-opening to China.
What I've heard
on war thunder forums, the #1 source of real world combat platform data from folks I trust to know about such things:
The JF-17 is absolute garbage. They were made to be SAM-soakers for Pakistan's F-16s. They are better than nothing, but their engines are garbage, the avionics are shit, and they mainly rely on the missiles to do the heavy lifting.
Basically as the F-16 was supposed to be a cheap fighter to protect other dedicated craft, the JF-17 is that but even cheaper to screen their F-16s. They are good for bombing the Taliban and making your opponent have to plan around something that launch sidewinders, but they operate on the premise "4 mediocre jets with heatseekers are more likely to get an enemy to turn around than 2 good jets"
The J-10 however has very limited data. And more importantly, instead of the JF-17 "multirole" the J-10 is primarily intended for air superiority missions (but lacks the performance to be classed as such). In that case the engines are garbage, but the avionics are improved and its possible, especially against India's older craft, it might prove itself.
, Mirage V (7
