Ladakh Flash Point

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ougoah

Brigadier
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Let's not forget for every MKI, there are at least 3 Chinese flankers. There are more J-16 and J-11B than there are Su-30MKI and Su-30. There are more J-10 than there are Mirage 2000 + Mig-29. J-10A is about the same modernity and capability as the best IAF Mirage and Mig-29. J-10C will be shooting them down with PL-15 without even being noticed by their 1980s radars. There are many times more J-20 than there are Rafales. PLAAF has many times more missiles and China manufactures all the above whereas Indian imports them for corruption money prices.

Then factor in superior detection. Superior situational awareness through recon ELINT, SIGINT, satellites, and drones. Superior AWACS/AEWC and far more numerous types of AWACS and AEWC aircraft. Superior EW. Vastly superior air defences. This is all air related - China's weaker part and India's stronger.

It's not a fight. It's an exercise in shooting Indian targets and the Indian leaders know this, which is why they've disappeared like a fart in a hurricane and insist on talking now. Should have talked with mutual respect before continuously performing petty salami slicing for the last 5 decades. The CCP chooses a time to not ignore an issue when it has 100% confidence it can deal with every possibility and every outcome. Both sides are confident China will come out on top of any military engagement which is why the western border is settled in China's favour with Modi the halfman telling the entire Indian nation that no intrusions have taken place.
 

Kancil

New Member
Registered Member
Has anyone read this report? It basically argues why India still has an edge over China (unless China has enough missiles to annihilate India bases during first strike)

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Why conventional wisdom giving China the military edge over India may not be true
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Analysis by
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, CNN

Updated 11:23 PM ET, Wed June 17, 2020

Hong Kong (CNN)India and China went to war in 1962 over the
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where at least
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Monday night in a bloody confrontation between the two sides.
A little under six decades ago, one month of combat resulted in a Chinese military victory, with Beijing declaring a cease-fire after securing de facto control of Aksai Chin, an area claimed by both countries. The month-long battle claimed the lives of around 700 Chinese troops and approximately double that on the Indian side.
But the militaries that face off in the Himalayas today are far different from those that fought 58 years ago.
Conventional wisdom has it that China holds a significant military advantage over India, but recent studies from
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and the
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suggest India maintains an edge in high-altitude mountainous environments, such as the one where the 2020 face-off is taking place.



India has about 270 fighters and 68 ground-attack aircraft it could bring to bear in combat with China, according to a study published in March by the Belfer Center.
New Delhi also maintains a string of small air bases near the Chinese border from which it can stage and supply those aircraft, the Belfer study, authored by Frank O'Donnell and Alexander Bollfrass, claimed.
China, by contrast, has 157 fighters and a small fleet of ground-attack drones in the region, the Belfer study said. The People's Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF) uses eight bases in the region, but most of those are civilian airfields at problematic elevations, the study suggests.
"The high altitude of Chinese air bases in Tibet and Xinjiang, plus the generally difficult geographic and weather conditions of the region, means that Chinese fighters are limited to carrying around half their design payload and fuel," the study claims.
Aerial refueling could give the Chinese planes more payload and combat time, but the PLAAF doesn't have enough aerial tankers to get the job done, the study suggests.
The Belfor study also gives the Indian Air Force (IAF), with its Mirage 2000 and Sukhoi Su-30 jets, a qualitative edge in the region, where China fields J-10, J-11 and Su-27 fighters.
The Indian Mirage 2000 and Su-30 jets are all-weather, multi-role aircraft -- while of the Chinese jets, only the J-10 has those abilities.
Meanwhile, India has built up its bases in the region with China in mind, according to an October 2019 report from the Center for a New American Security.
"To weather a potential People's Liberation Army (PLA) attack, India has placed greater emphasis on infrastructure hardening; base resiliency; redundant command, control, and communications systems; and improved air defense," the report claims.
The Belfer study points out that China, facing perceived threats from the United States on its eastern and southern flanks, has strengthened its bases there to the neglect of the Himalayas, leaving at least four PLA airbases vulnerable.
"Indian destruction or temporary incapacitation of some of the four above air bases would further exacerbate these PLAAF operational inflexibilities and weaknesses," it claims.
The Belfer report gives the edge to India's air force in one other area -- experience.
"
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give the current IAF a level of institutional experience in actual networked combat," it says.
Lacking such experience, Chinese pilots may have difficulty thinking for themselves in a dynamic aerial battlefield, according to the Belfer report.
"Recent PLAAF exercises with unscripted scenarios have found that pilots are excessively reliant upon ground control for tactical direction," it says. "This suggests that PLAAF combat proficiency may be significantly weaker than often estimated."
Ground forces
While India has the experience in the air, the CNAS report says it is also hardened on the ground, fighting in places like Kashmir and in skirmishes along its border with Pakistan.

"India is by far the more experienced and battle-hardened party, having fought a series of limited and low-intensity conflicts in its recent past," the CNAS report says. "The PLA, on the other hand, has not experienced the crucible of combat since its conflict with Vietnam in 1979."
That month-long border war, launched by China in response to Vietnam's military intervention in Cambodia, is largely considered a defeat for China. The PLA had trouble making gains against Vietnamese troops that were smaller in number but vastly more experienced after fighting US forces during the Vietnam War.
Yet while there may be a big gap in experience in the Himalayas today, there is reportedly parity in the numbers of ground troops. Belfer estimates there are about 225,000 Indian ground forces in the region, as well as 200,000 to 230,000 Chinese.

The numbers may be misleading, however. Counted among those PLA forces are units assigned to keep down any chance of insurrection in Xinjiang or Tibet, or deal with any potential conflict along China's border with Russia.
Moving them to the Indian front in the event of large-scale hostilities presents a logistical problem, as Indian airstrikes could target high-speed rail lines on the Tibetan plateau or choke points in the mountainous terrain closer to the border.
"By contrast, Indian forces are already largely in position," the report says.

However, the CNAS report adds that those Indian forces operate in rough terrain in steep valleys and can't be easily moved to plug breaches that any Chinese incursion might make. In short, the Indian troops too could be vulnerable to Chinese artillery and missile attacks on choke points in the mountains.
Those attacks could come by Chinese artillery or missiles stationed on the Tibetan plateau, which in some cases look right down on Indian border posts, the CNAS report says.
But the question is whether, in the event of large-scale conflict, China has enough missiles to take out all the targets it would need to hit in India.
The Belfer study cites estimates of a former Indian Air Force officer, who predicts China would need 220 ballistic missiles to knock out one Indian airfield for a day. With only 1,000 to 1,200 missiles available for the task, China would quickly run out of the means to shut down India's airfields, it says.
One area where China may be gaining advantage is technology and new weapons. With a larger defense budget and rapidly modernizing military, Beijing can't be counted out to close any gaps in its forces.
"China's economy is five times the size of India's and Beijing's defense spending far outstrips New Delhi's defense budget by a factor of four to one," said Nishank Motwani, international adviser at the National Center for Dialogue and Progress in Afghanistan. "The power differential between China and India is in Beijing's favor and this asymmetry is only widening."
Chinese state media has recently been heavy on articles and videos of new weaponry being deployed to its Tibetan region for exercises, including the Type 15 light tank and the new 155-millimeter vehicle-mounted howitzer. Both were introduced to the Chinese public at last year's much-hyped National Day military parade in Beijing.
"The weapons were specifically designed with advantages for plateau regions and can play important roles in safeguarding border areas," military
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.
The Chinese outlet on Tuesday --- after the clash with Indian troops the night before -- mentioned the new weapons in
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in the mountainous region.
"These kinds of drills demonstrated the PLA's capability to win a regional, high-elevation conflict in its early stages by decisively eradicating the hostile headquarters and commanders, a PLA veteran who was once deployed in Tibet and asked not to be named told the Global Times," the report said.
"The high altitude of Chinese air bases in Tibet and Xinjiang, plus the generally difficult geographic and weather conditions of the region, means that Chinese fighters are limited to carrying around half their design payload and fuel," the study claims. Can this limitation be remedied by installing catapult launching system on the runways to increase the aircrafts' take off momentum?
 

Bright Sword

Junior Member
Registered Member
Absolutely no contest ! Just remember that you are facing the leader of a nation who believes Pakistani air defense radars don't work in cloud and rain, There is also a defense minister who trusts in putting lemons and chillies on Rafale aircraft to make them invulnerable.
The odd aspect of these delusions is that no Indian Air Force officer chose ( or dared) to correct the Indian Prime Minister about how radars work. There is neither any comment on the efficacy of chillies and lemons being applied to Rafale aircraft.
Just as the senior air force commanders were overridden to execute a botched strike on Pakistan a similar mistake against China is likely to happen with far more unfortunate results.
There are astrologers advising the leaders there. Sometime back in history the leader of a nation renowned for its scientific and technological achievements did just that when assessing the course to war.
As Mr. Spock would say :
"Illogical"

To ward off the threat of a miscalculation and descent into war, one front that China should open effectively is the information and media war.
By participating in online and mass media debates, seminars, podcasts whatever. Taking on the self styled experts and giving the genuinely patriotic persons on the opposite side a case to avert disaster helps immensely. If the masses are made aware of the looming disaster then there is some possibility of restraint.
By comparison the era from 1945-1949 in the Cold War is often termed the "Age of Nuclear Innocence ".
Nuclear weapons were viewed as another piece of ordinance. It could , would and had been used to gain advantage in a war. The USA had the weapon and no one else. So the USA threatened nuclear attacks on the Soviet Union multiple times, ousting them from supporting revolutions in Greece and Iran for example or executing the Berlin airlift. Long range B-24 Liberator heavily armed reconnaissance aircraft routinely penetrated the Pacific coastline of the Soviet Union tangling with Yak-9 fighters and sometimes even shooting them down. It was believed mistakenly that the Soviet Union had no capability of developing nuclear weapons and had no capability react to any military strikes on it. The secretive nature of the then Soviet Union gave rise to this dangerous delusion. The Soviet Union never admitted that it was building or testing nuclear weapons. The first confirmation of the Soviet nuclear test ironically came from the USA when high altitude balloons and aircraft detected radio active dust in the jet streams coming westward from the Soviet Union.
The media hype in the West was that a nuclear war was winnable. In fact declassified archive documents ( 1947) now reveal plans for a depopulation nuclear strike on the Soviet Union.

Much later under different times the Soviet Union realized that they must wage a media war as well and some secrecy must be compromised to achieve a level of sanity. When another media hype was whipped up after deployment of SS-20 missiles in Europe ( possibly with neutron warheads) peace groups on both sides agreed to screen the film "The Day After ". The mass screening of the movie was an unprecedented media event spurring an anti war movement on both sides.
But the belligerents in the Cold War were rational logical nations which had witnessed and suffered in two World Wars. The Cold War was essentially an ideological conflict ( and even that between two secular ideologies. ) . It was not a territorial or religious conflict. The culture of the Warsaw Pact and Nato countries was a common European culture.,
With India, China and Pakistan the situation is way different,
Today there is no anti war movement in India. The All India Peace and Solidarity Organization, the only anti-war group is defunct.
There is a religious element in India's hostility to Pakistan is well known and now the same factor is being touted vis-a-vis China ( Mount Kailash and Mansarovar).
 

Sardaukar20

Captain
Registered Member
Let's not forget for every MKI, there are at least 3 Chinese flankers. There are more J-16 and J-11B than there are Su-30MKI and Su-30. There are more J-10 than there are Mirage 2000 + Mig-29. J-10A is about the same modernity and capability as the best IAF Mirage and Mig-29. J-10C will be shooting them down with PL-15 without even being noticed by their 1980s radars. There are many times more J-20 than there are Rafales. PLAAF has many times more missiles and China manufactures all the above whereas Indian imports them for corruption money prices.

Then factor in superior detection. Superior situational awareness through recon ELINT, SIGINT, satellites, and drones. Superior AWACS/AEWC and far more numerous types of AWACS and AEWC aircraft. Superior EW. Vastly superior air defences. This is all air related - China's weaker part and India's stronger.

It's not a fight. It's an exercise in shooting Indian targets and the Indian leaders know this, which is why they've disappeared like a fart in a hurricane and insist on talking now. Should have talked with mutual respect before continuously performing petty salami slicing for the last 5 decades. The CCP chooses a time to not ignore an issue when it has 100% confidence it can deal with every possibility and every outcome. Both sides are confident China will come out on top of any military engagement which is why the western border is settled in China's favour with Modi the halfman telling the entire Indian nation that no intrusions have taken place.
If the Indian leadership doesn't want war for real. Then they must change their ridiculous disengagement negotiations. The way their top military brass and Ministry of Foreign Affairs are negotiating is basically asking for China to surrender. They are demanding that PLA troops withdraw, but IA army troops can stay at occupied Chinese territories, and even move around where ever the hell they want. Oh and by the way, IA soldiers are authorized to shoot PLA troops who come too close. All that PLA military superiority bearing down on them, and they still want to bully China on the negotiating table. Its a recipe for war.

There are some small areas (heights as the IA are so fond of) on Chinese territory where IA troops are still occupying. China wants them to vacate those places, but India is asking for China to surrender. You can see where this is going. That is why I think the Indian leadership are still asking for a war.
 
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Bright Sword

Junior Member
Registered Member
I was talking about the daily shelling along the LOC and the Kargil war
I believe this thread is about the LAC and the India China standoff.
What happens on the LOC or what happened at Kargil is marginally relevant. If the purpose of striking Pakistan is to impress China then the purpose is futile.
 

Sardaukar20

Captain
Registered Member
"The high altitude of Chinese air bases in Tibet and Xinjiang, plus the generally difficult geographic and weather conditions of the region, means that Chinese fighters are limited to carrying around half their design payload and fuel," the study claims. Can this limitation be remedied by installing catapult launching system on the runways to increase the aircrafts' take off momentum?
I think the Chinese have already solved the high altitude problem by building longer runways. That has even been noted by an American defence analyst on the Indian media.
 

Bright Sword

Junior Member
Registered Member
I think the Chinese have already solved the high altitude problem by building longer runways. That has even been noted by an American defence analyst on the Indian media.
There may also be other technologies such as jettison enabled rockets assisting take off ( a vintage technology but may still be in use).


Don't know if oxygen infusion would help though this would use a large quantity of oxygen and the oxygen tanks would take up weight and space and would have to able to be jettisoned.
 

vincent

Grumpy Old Man
Staff member
Moderator - World Affairs
I believe this thread is about the LAC and the India China standoff.
What happens on the LOC or what happened at Kargil is marginally relevant. If the purpose of striking Pakistan is to impress China then the purpose is futile.
you are missing my point. What I was saying is that India thinks it can do the same with China
 

Bright Sword

Junior Member
Registered Member
you are missing my point. What I was saying is that India thinks it can do the same with China

Agree entirely. India thinks it can do the same to China as with Pakistan and the results are likely to be even more unfortunate.
It is likely to happen though. War hysteria is at a fever pitch in India. See my post above about some way to avoid the conflict.
Public Opinion against a conflict is a very potent deterrence.[/QUOTE]
 
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