You didn't know that upgraded M2Ks come with escort jammers? I guess not...
It seems that you don't know many things about French aircraft capabilities. When someone talks about it you stick your fingers in your ears and say Nah Nah Nah Nah. I am still waiting for an account of an MKI swatting a Rafale.
There were 4X MKI in the battle and didn't get a single kill with 24 targets to choose from. IAF said if Rafale was in the sky, most of those would never have made it home,
Escort Jammers don't prevent missiles like Aim-120 which have good Home on jam capabilities, while jamming helps in denying lock early on, the aircraft is still get's eventually locked and those Aims were probably fired from in long range Home on Jam mode, this means the MKI would then have to go into defensive maneuvers at speeds while chaffing it's way out of the missiles' lock. Just turning on your jammer and praying to god won't help, one needs to get their ass out of the missile's way.
To speculate that even a 4 ship Rafale would choose to engage with a 24 ship formation is stupid to say the least. This would invariably require some crossing into LOC making the aircraft also susceptible to ground fire and SAMs and while some Paki aircraft would die, so would some Rafales or MKI (Paki airspace is not like Libya or Syrian or Afghan airspace where aircraft can have low risk run through any day). While the Rafale would have managed to probably get a shot off, those guys would have run with their tails in hand eitherway. SOPs were clear, we do not engage first unless they get through to the LOC.
The 24 ship formation was a trap essentially, going in would have been playing directly into their plot. In the past, Mi-17 was shot down during Kargil was shot at by 3 stingers, they have no big shortage of MANPADS.
While Rafales or MKI or any other aircraft can dodge a missile or two, a barrage of Manpads is just asking for death.
Even in the case of Rafale, they'd be coming home without firing anything, perhaps a few tail shots of Meteor fired on receding targets but again, the enemy would go defensive, run and hide, Pakis are very good at it. When fired upon first by the F-16, the Rafale too would have to go into defensive run, it's MAWS and internal jammer would delay the lock, but the Rafale would still need to chaff and turn away. It would be another story if the Rafale or MKI fired first but SOPs didn't allow it. When the MKI was shot at it, the F-16s were potentially over 50 km away.
Real life air combat requires a good pilot to always consider his advantages and disadvantages. Everything from Fuel status to flare/chaff count matters, number and type of A2A missiles available and when to use which is not a straight forward answer. Also one needs to consider other threats in the area, while we know about 24 aircraft, do we know which SAMs were active, how many AA guns and MANPAD crews where laying in wait across the LOC to get a kill?
