Ladakh Flash Point

Status
Not open for further replies.

plawolf

Lieutenant General
J-20 poorly piloted????????
Are you thinking entering J-20 cockpit like entering elementary class?
Please argue in more logic way

I have given up trying to point out the innumerable logical fallacies and silly assumptions he makes.

In a J20 vs IAF Rafale scenario, unless it happens in 3-5 years time, it will be the Rafale that will be ‘poorly piloted’ owing to the fact that those planes are only just being delivered, and it will take a minimum of a couple of years flying with a new fighter type before you can be considered fully proficient on it. Years that J20 pilots already have clocked in J20s.

But all this Rafale vs J20 talk is just more Indian nonsense along exactly the same idiotic lines of thinking as the claimed PLA casualties from the clash - India must always trump China.

The Rafale is only being compared to the J20 because it’s the newest and bestest fighter India has, and only Indians and those stupid enough to take their nonsense seriously makes that comparison. Before that Indian fanboys were making exactly the same silly arguments trying to claim MKIs could stand a chance against J20s, which is where the ‘unskilled J20 pilot’ nonsense truly comes from.

When Indian (and western for that matter) fanboys knows they loose out on raw measurable, tangible factors, they always turn to soft intangibles as a means to try to counter. Since it’s hard to quantify things like pilot skill, or combat experience, or whatever other random intangibles they decide to drag into the debate, a simple and clear cut comparison of actual figures and statistics turns into one of clashing sentiment and ‘feelings’, so they turn an obvious loss into an inconclusive mess, which they then consider an absolute win.

Chinese tend not to try to argue with facts, and instead focus their energies on changing the facts to their favour.
 

Brumby

Major
My point of contention was the part which I highlighted in red. The point you made requires context, otherwise it would just confuse people. I provided said context using Shukla's June 20 article, which sheds light on the PLA's gameplan.
I think we are talking about two different things. I was simply drawing a picture of the disengagement demarcation point. Whether the result is part of the PLA's game plan is really irrelevant. It isn't about which side came up better off.

This is a bad tactical move for you Brumby. Since I respect your knowledgeable contributions, I will politely advise you against trying to take the 'moral high ground' here. I assume you're into "democracy", so follow your own principles and go take a vote in Kashmir. Go ask Kashmiris if they think Kashmir is India's property.

I'm not the one who needs to make up his mind here. You either stick to a moral position and tell India to get the hell out of Kashmir and stop oppressing its people (who hate India and don't want to be part of it) OR you take the realpolitik position and support India based on pure national security interests. What you can't do is take a moral high ground AND support India. That makes no logical sense. You're talking about a literal Nazi-inspired lunatic regime, in the form of Modi and the RSS, which is holding territory which belongs to Pakistan.

Frankly, I am agnostic on the overall situation with Kashmir because I don't understand the history nor the complexities inherent in that region. I am merely commenting on a map that you shared with conflicts and the boundaries associated with those conflicts. That map might as well be "X" or Pakistan and my comments would be the same. It is problematic when one party infringe on another that crosses boundaries.

I will give you the last word.
 

Brumby

Major
The question is less whether the Rafale does well--I'd consider the Rafale doing well as shooting down some J-20s before getting obliterated--but rather whether or not the Indians are emboldened by the Rafale.

As for general Rafale vs J-20; there's a lot of wild-cards there. The J-20 could be poorly piloted, i.e, they behave overly aggressively and ignore the fact that the Rafale has IRST (i.e, do not go supersonic) and that the Meteor can be data-linked. The J-20, likewise, could be a less capable system than we expect, or the Rafale more capable (the J-20 wants to kill the Rafale BVR since WVR it'll likely be outmatched with its current engines).

And yeah, minus the Rafale, the entire InAF is fodder for a combination of J-10s, J-11s, PL-10s, and PL-15s, provided the Chinese 4th gens have AESA.

You have to remember, that the PLAAF vs the InAF in the area is bases vs technology; the InAF can bring almost all their force to bear vs China, while China has very few military airbases in the area with full stocks of munitions, spares, and so on.

It's literally the reverse of the typical PLAAF set-up where the PLAAF has to consider opponent qualitative advantages except in rare cases (Su-30MKKs vs F-15Js for instance, there's no BVR superiority and the Su-30MKKs perform better WVR). The only thing for the InAF that could possibly even the scales would be the Rafale+Meteor combo, and the loss of a 5th generation aircraft vs a 4.5++ generation aircraft would be quite a blow to Chinese prestige and credibility.

I don't understand why you are so fixated on Rafale vs J-20. It ain't happening. China is not going to deploy J-20 to the Indian border because there are not enough on the eastern side and neither is the Rafale combat ready with the IAF. If your assumptions about the J-20 is correct, then the J-20 will have the first look advantage. The leading ECM provider in Europe is the Swedish - not the French. The Rafale's IRST is only good up to 50 kms.

I expect any conflict will be between SU-30MKI vs J-11 in counter air and Mirage vs J-10 in CAS and strike. I suspect interdiction will be Jaguar vs J-16/JH-7. I don't know what assets will conduct SEAD. Probably Mirage vs. J-10.

It will be force on force and not individual actions. The problems for the IAF are (i) SA is weak due to poor data links between a bunch of different assets; (ii) inadequate support assets; and (iii) generally lacking SDRs for communications . That said, there are a lot of unknowns because execution of integrated wholesale air operations are unproven on both sides in a live situation. It boils down to tactics and training.
 
Last edited:

zgx09t

Junior Member
Registered Member
Yeah, I changed my mind on the strategic calculus.

Strategic calculus?
It's more like a shitty version of GRRM's Westerosi plots and battle plans.
Everyone here kinda expects you are just about to bring in fire breathing dragons and giants any moment now.

It's quite likely that the world could enter a prolonged recession, a form of stagflation, or hyperinflation in the next few years based on the impact of coronavirus, deglobalization, and coronavirus stimulus.

Stagflation, or hyperinflation?
Have you ever checked 5s30s, 10s30s? Flatter or steeper?
Let us hear more of your wide ranging, always flawlessly disjointed, random pointless brain droppings.
 

Inst

Captain
I don't understand why you are so fixated on Rafale vs J-20. It ain't happening. China is not going to deploy J-20 to the Indian border because there are not enough on the eastern side and neither is the Rafale combat ready with the IAF. If your assumptions about the J-20 is correct, then the J-20 will have the first look advantage. The leading ECM provider in Europe is the Swedish - not the French. The Rafale's IRST is only good up to 50 kms.

I expect any conflict will be between SU-30MKI vs J-11 in counter air and Mirage vs J-10 in CAS and strike. I suspect interdiction will be Jaguar vs J-16/JH-7. I don't know what assets will conduct SEAD. Probably Mirage vs. J-10.

It will be force on force and not individual actions. The problems for the IAF are (i) SA is weak due to poor data links between a bunch of different assets; (ii) inadequate support assets; and (iii) generally lacking SDRs for communications . That said, there are a lot of unknowns because execution of integrated wholesale air operations are unproven on both sides in a live situation. It boils down to tactics and training.

Rafale IRST claims 100 km range, but I assume that's in an ideal case with a hot target. For instance, the F-35's EODAS claims to be able to detect ballistic missile launches out at least hundreds of nautical miles, but ballistic missiles are very hot.

As to @zgx09t ,

I mean, the three views of China possible are, that China is doomed to failure (panda sluggers), that China will always succeed (Chinese triumphalists), or that China has many choices and some of these choices are good choices and other choices are bad choices (a belief in human agency).

You guys seem to be addicted to view #2, just as there's many people in the West who are addicted to view #1. I'm trying to propose view #3, that anything can happen and the situation is constantly shifting.

For instance, did anyone expect that coronavirus would have spiked out of China, causing economic damage to China and getting the West to take a strong Sinophobic stance? Did anyone expect that the West would have bungled coronavirus as badly as it did, causing thousands of deaths and crashing economies because of arrant incompetence?

===

The fact of the matter is, China is vulnerable. There are strategic vulnerabilities in China, such as the labor force decline, the fact that China isn't comprehensively at the leading edge of technology, that it seems to have switched to an increasingly investment-intensive economic model at the expense of TFP, that China is being denied access to Western export markets at the same time its low-cost labor advantage is vanishing, etc.

The traditional Chinese strength, rapid economic improvement, has been fading since the glory days of 2007, when GDP growth was double digits. It's unlikely right now that China can ever retain the same rate of growth due to the increasing level of development in China.

Likewise, as China's economic growth portends that the Chinese will become a greater economic power, in nominal terms, than the United States, implies considerable friction between China and the United States and as we see now, anti-Chinese sentiment in the United States, which it seeks to spread to Europe and the rest of the world as well, is a major factor and it is not impossible that the United States could successfully engineer regime change in China due to sociopolitical collapse.

This is why a dollar crash as a result of the second phase of coronavirus impacts (when the stimulus needs to be withdrawn, but isn't) is beneficial to China, and Stephen Roach at Yale / ex-Morgan Stanley has a reasonable hypothesis on why such a thing would happen:

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!
 

Nobonita Barua

Senior Member
Registered Member
"Scared China retreated. Sattelite imagery shows total withdrawal. Huge win for ind...umm...hold on...we are getting a breaking news....traitor china has back stabbed us again...they are reluctant to retreat from a b c points........."

 

Inst

Captain
also, @Brumby ; the local forum-goers are confident that the PLAGF / PLAAF knows what they're doing. Once we go onto actual capabilities, you have massive ambiguity; the Indian military is known to be corrupt, but the Chinese military is known to be corrupt and out of practice. We know that the InAF trains assiduously, crashing many planes, but we don't know whether they train in the best manner. We know that the PLAAF has recently upgraded their training significantly, a far cry from the EP-3 incident in 2000 / 2001 where a lack of pilot training caused a pilot to veer into the American spy plane, but we don't know whether it's affirmatively good enough.

Hard capabilities, though, more Indian aircraft, better Chinese planes and missiles.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Top