09/05/2025
An important post......
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How many Rafales has India lost? Even if no one else in the world knows, Martin-Baker definitely does.
So, who is Martin-Baker?
When a fighter jet crashes, you’ll often see the pilot ejecting out in a rocket-powered seat. That seat is called an ejection seat. Martin-Baker is the world’s largest manufacturer of these ejection seats. Except for Russian and Chinese jets, nearly every fighter aircraft—whether American, French, British, F-15, F-16, F/A-18, Typhoon, Gripen, or otherwise—uses ejection seats made by Martin-Baker.
They’ve been in this business for nearly 90 years.
Naturally, the Rafale’s ejection seats are also made by Martin-Baker.
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Now Martin-Baker has a peculiar habit. Every time a Western fighter jet crashes somewhere in the world, they post an update on Instagram:
And that’s exactly where we can find a clue about how many Rafales may have been lost—possibly to Pakistan.
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For instance, on April 16, Martin-Baker posted that a Mirage 5 had crashed, and the total lives saved was 7,784.
But twenty days later, today, that number has increased to 7,788.
This means that in the past 20 days, there have been four ejection incidents involving jets equipped with Martin-Baker seats.
With some digging, we find that one of these was a U.S. Navy F/A-18 Super Hornet, which crashed into the ocean after launching off an aircraft carrier.
So that leaves three other ejections.
Today, news surfaced that one of those three was a Mirage 2000 that got shot down by the Pakistan Air Force last night. Images of its wreckage have gone viral.
Now we're left with two unaccounted ejections.
Where did these two go?
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Well, those two are likely Indian Rafales, whose details Martin-Baker did not officially disclose—but whose existence was indirectly leaked because of the numbers.
You can even see the reflection of this in the comments under the "7788" post. Pakistanis are trolling hard.
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Oh wait—a quick edit:
Martin-Baker only updates the "Total lives saved" counter when the pilot survives. If a pilot dies, the count doesn’t increase.
So if we saw four lives added, that means four successful ejections. That makes three separate incidents (one being the F/A-18, another the Mirage 2000), which means there could still be two Rafale ejections—both pilots survived, but the incidents weren’t reported.
Makes sense now?
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Feeling intrigued? Then share this.
~ Shafin Ibrahim
