Bhutan: Dangerous liaison

plawolf said:

Nothing but your typical Indian bluster and wishful thinking.

Chinese jets do not need to carry anything like a full weapons load for air dominance missions in the boarder areas.

For deep strike missions against targets deep in India, that would indeed be a problem, but not for air superiority over the boarder regions.

And even for strike missions, PLAAF jets could always take off with the desired weapons load and minimal fuel and top up from a tanker before heading into the combat zones.

Besides, Indian air bases within operating range of the boarder will get saturate attacked with cruise and maybe even ballistic missiles during the opening stages of any war. And any IAF planes coming close to the boarder will have to run the gauntlet of multiple layers of PLA SAMs and AAA.

In the future, if China really wanted to fight India, it can easily adapt the EMAL technology it is developing for its carriers for use on high altitude runways as a means of boosting the take-off load of its warplanes.

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Multiple likes

Great suggestion with the EMALS

Calm down, everyone. It's getting more & more irrelevant to the title: Bhutan & liaison.

B.I.B. said:

The sooner the PLAAF station some J-20's in the region the better

xclusive: Why Indian Air Force May Best Chinese Jets In An Air Battle Over Tibet

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I decreased the fond size above to make it a little less fanatic...

This article is simply wishful thinking on the Indian part. Assuming everything mentioned in the article is true, the PLA knows these as well. Then it is impossible for the PLA to do any of the things described in the article. Why? No sane person would use their weakness to confront someone's strength. Usain Bolt would not start running marathons, knowing that his strength is short distance.

The PLAAF knows this too. The PLAAF was not formed yesterday and most of their pilots did not learn how to fly a plane an hour ago. We know how well-trained their pilots can be (just look at how that J-15 pilot landed his plane with one of the engine on fire). If taking off planes at high altitude bases involves such obvious disadvantages, the PLAAF would have known these shortcoming long ago. Most likely, they have formulated ways to circumvent such issues. What are the chances that the PLAAF knows the issue, but simply sits around and twirling their thumbs?

If they can't directly solve the issue, they can do it other ways. The PLA's strength is missiles, lots of them. At the beginning of any conflict, the PLA will launch missiles to level IAF bases, supply routes, weapons and ammo depots, etc. Majority of IAF planes won't even have a chance to take off.

Even if the Indians launch a successful surprise attack (highly unlikely but let's give them that for now), the PLA will launch missiles to attach IAF bases while using their G2A missiles to fend off IAF fighters. Even if the initial attack causes some damage to Chinese bases, these IAF fighters won't have any base to go back to. They can't even find places to land their planes any more. This is of course assuming that none of the PLAAF fighters even takes off. Taking in account of Chinese missiles, air defense, AF fighters, etc, IAF fighters won't have any chance whatsoever even IF they manage to catch Chinese in a surprise.

But but isn't the airfield in Tibet longer by 30% on average 4000 m or more vs standard 3000 m on lower attitude. Doesn't that extra length provide more speed and therefore more lift ?
But for air superiority role they didn't need that much of weight

And in real war they will saturated the Indian air base with crater and sub munition bomblet from missile preventing it to take off. And onslaught by next waver of ground attack jet
India doesn't have missile defense as far as I know they have short or medium range anti aircraft missile

Plus the ground attacker can take of from Kashgar, Khotan and Golmud airfield to the north no that far of and with long range J11 A&B they should have no problem reaching all the Indian airfield close to the border

No serious military strategist thinks IAF can best PLAAF in any way. They're technology is all a mix of foreign 90s tech. PLAAF can build more and buy more if need be. PLAAF also outnumber IAF something like 5 to 1. On top of that, Chinese fighter and AWACs technology is far superior. The best thing India has at the moment in Su-30MKI and those can be matched by J-16s and Su-35s. Both those planes are actually better and will be more well supported. We won't even mention the hundreds more J-10s, J-11s, superior SAM and AA networks, drones, wider range and superior missiles, and J-20s. India's masses of 60s and 70s era fighters are matched and exceeded by superior numbers of Chinese equivalents. Chinese airbases in that region outnumber India's around 10 to 1.

Indian wishful thinking and boasting MUST be met with the equivalent from China. We ought to be as arrogant and aggressive in return. Passive nations and peoples are devoured by aggressive ones.

Hendrik_2000 said:

But but isn't the airfield in Tibet longer by 30% on average 4000 m or more vs standard 3000 m on lower attitude. Doesn't that extra length provide more speed and therefore more lift ?
But for air superiority role they didn't need that much of weight

And in real war they will saturated the Indian air base with crater and sub munition bomblet from missile preventing it to take off. And onslaught by next waver of ground attack jet
India doesn't have missile defense as far as I know they have short or medium range anti aircraft missile

Plus the ground attacker can take of from Kashgar, Khotan and Golmud airfield to the north no that far of and with long range J11 A&B they should have no problem reaching all the Indian airfield close to the border

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China will knock out just about all Indian airbases and important strategic sites and missile sites with the far greater number and greater range of ballistic missiles (conventional warheads) and cruise missiles. Indians only have Brahmos as a working effective option but they don't have that many and most important Chinese targets are several times the range of Brahmos. Their Nirbhay is a hidden failure just like LCA and Arjun (stuck in mud 70T tank). China could win a air war without many losses if they bring in J-20s in significant numbers.

Many of the sentiments expressed in this thread are exceedingly foolish and, if put into practice, would ultimately be highly damaging to China's long-term strategic interests.

To create a real containment network of China akin to that of NATO+Japan/RoK against the USSR in the Cold War would be a herculean task requiring the surmounting of various geographical, cultural-historical, economic and political challenges. Nonetheless, if the more bellicose posters here had their way, such a China-containment axis would likely be in place within a decade.

Indeed it would seem to be a universal rule that the most bellicose and aggressively nationalistic elements in any nation would lead their nations over a cliff. One can only hope that the CCP can continue to control such sentiments in China, as it has done to date, such that they remain confined to internet message boards and have no purchase in the real world.

Is that so? I would suggest the opposite is true. Nice try though.

Hendrik_2000 said:

But but isn't the airfield in Tibet longer by 30% on average 4000 m or more vs standard 3000 m on lower attitude. Doesn't that extra length provide more speed and therefore more lift ?

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Quite right. You design your airfield to be fit for purpose. At lower air density you get lower thrust thus lower acceleration and your take off speed is higher. So lengthening the runway compared with those of lower altitude solves the problem.
In other words the Indian article is fake news.

ougoah said:

No serious military strategist thinks IAF can best PLAAF in any way. They're technology is all a mix of foreign 90s tech. PLAAF can build more and buy more if need be. PLAAF also outnumber IAF something like 5 to 1. On top of that, Chinese fighter and AWACs technology is far superior. The best thing India has at the moment in Su-30MKI and those can be matched by J-16s and Su-35s. Both those planes are actually better and will be more well supported. We won't even mention the hundreds more J-10s, J-11s, superior SAM and AA networks, drones, wider range and superior missiles, and J-20s. India's masses of 60s and 70s era fighters are matched and exceeded by superior numbers of Chinese equivalents. Chinese airbases in that region outnumber India's around 10 to 1.

Indian wishful thinking and boasting MUST be met with the equivalent from China. We ought to be as arrogant and aggressive in return. Passive nations and peoples are devoured by aggressive ones.

Click to expand...

The reason that we're not as aggressive in return is that India sees China as its end-all-be-all target. If India could best China, they could all die happy, because in reality, India is not qualified to even be China's opponent; it is only good enough to be the henchman of China's opponent. So for them to be considered a foe to China is their honor and they give it everything they've got. But China is not so aggressive to India because it doesn't see India as a worthy opponent and feels that if it went all in against India, it's like getting super aggressive beating up a woman. China wants to just hold her hands so she stop slapping and tell her to get her boyfriend to come fight.