Indian Military News, Reports, Data, etc.

ZeEa5KPul said:

Well, it starts with steamrollers flattening a region near a coastline. Then the area is paved, foundations for buildings are dug, cement is poured, etc. I'm not familiar with construction, but that's a rough idea.

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Sarcasm noted. To get to some base - the fleet has to get there somehow. In addition - country in question has to agree to participate in a war for your sake.
Pakistan may potentially agree (or may not - depends) - but it's behind the whole subcontinent; Myanmar... for them it's a nice prospect of a land war with India - war I don't see them having any interest in. And to get there you have to force Andaman islands anyway.

Last but not the least - key existing facilities of both countries are very handily within reach from Indian airbases. Not exactly the brightest idea coming there before IAF is neutralized.

ZeEa5KPul said:

The last horse finally crosses the finish line. If a blockade is imposed, a blockade is smashed and territory taken. And not just a few islands.

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The whole point is that taking Andaman islands puts you into IJN position before Midway, only much worse in every conceivable way.
I.e. trying to take them is both unavoidable and hard. Attacking them outright is probably outright dumb (they're literally militarized with "come bite me" in mind).

BTW we all know the Indians are only ever going to talk about blocking Malacca strait. Because in reality, it would not be able to execute this militarily or diplomatically. Even ignoring diplomatic and political agreements which are simply not in the interest of anyone apart from India, it still has no military means of defending against a Chinese response.

In this scenario it is India shooting first and China can do as it pleases with India. A couple of AShBM would be enough without even sending tonnage over that direction.

Gloire_bb said:

The whole point is that taking Andaman islands puts you into IJN position before Midway, only much worse in every conceivable way.

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Yeah, but actually no. There's no resemblance whatsoever. If anything the PLAN is in the position of the USN in this scenario.

Gloire_bb said:

I.e. trying to take them is both unavoidable and hard. Attacking them outright is probably outright dumb (they're literally militarized with "come bite me" in mind).

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Nah, whatever's defending those islands won't even have time to finish a prayer. The PLA could crush them with the flick of a wrist.

Gloire_bb said:

Myanmar... for them it's a nice prospect of a land war with India - war I don't see them having any interest in.

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I do. In an alliance with China, I see them very much having an interest in expanding their territory into land India is squatting on.

You seem to think India has this in the bag... so let them try something if it's so easy. China isn't responding to their threats, so let's see India escalate.

ougoah said:

Not at all. It was a single point of comparison to show where India's navy capability actually stands.

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It is actually a very important point.
Surface warships are in a very special position since the beginning of the missile age, and counting them for metrics of obvious superiority has to be done with a lot of care. 055s are impressive, but they are in no way battleships. Even Kirovs weren't.

To put it very bluntly - while the Chinese ship printer is impressive, to make its new navy really work, China needs 003s. And even then IN stands a fighting chance, due to being on the defensive and being designed for precisely this sort of fight.

ougoah said:

Again the point was to say India has no long range weapons they can use from the coast.

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Su-30MKIs. MPAs. Brahmos batteries from Andamans.

ougoah said:

You're missing the point. India has no ability to protect itself from even Chinese land based attacks on Indian ships in the Indian Ocean.

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Targeting data in the Indian Ocean will come from?
PLA can engage Island airbases themselves - they don't move, but... IRBMs aren't sausages, you won't silence airbases this way.

ougoah said:

I would really honestly love it if the Indians actually tried what you're suggesting. They won't try because it doesn't work. There are no chokepoints they can expect to exploit with 6 modern warships and nothing of substance behind it.

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What matters here is a fully developed Island position at the gate of a long, narrow, and often very shallow passage - passage which simply can't be forced unseen. Position consisting of a whole bunch of islands with a double-digit number of airbases, all of them within reinforcement range of India itself.
As a nasty bonus - there is always perspective of 1(2?) CSGs with pretty beefy salvo somewhere nearby. To be frank - it's worse than Midway situation. And neglecting it is an outright self harm..

ZeEa5KPul said:

Yeah, but actually no. There's no resemblance whatsoever. If anything the PLAN is in the position of the USN in this scenario.

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Okay, point noted. Interesting. Please explain similarities in position between PLAN and USN.
It would be much better if you can draw them on a map.

ZeEa5KPul said:

I do. In an alliance with China, I see them very much having an interest in expanding their territory into land India is squatting on.

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Myanmar isn't in alliance with China. Neither current nor the previous government.
And to be frank - even assuming they for some reason will do it - I don't see them having any chances in a land conflict with India anyways - disparity of forces is much worse than even in Russia/Ukraine pair.
India is not in their weight class, and there are nowhere near enough transport links b/n Myanmar and China for PLA to somehow bail them out.

ZeEa5KPul said:

Yeah, but actually no. There's no resemblance whatsoever. If anything the PLAN is in the position of the USN in this scenario.

Nah, whatever's defending those islands won't even have time to finish a prayer. The PLA could crush them with the flick of a wrist.

I do. In an alliance with China, I see them very much having an interest in expanding their territory into land India is squatting on.

You seem to think India has this in the bag... so let them try something if it's so easy. China isn't responding to their threats, so let's see India escalate.

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If only they'd actually try wage such a war and find out just how much lower their real world performance is compared to RSS brags and Hindutva chest thumping. It would be a worse show than T-90 Bishmas in Tank Biathlon.

Indians basically make careers out of disparaging and criticising others for the most ridiculous and untrue things they themselves either are happy to lie about or actually that misinformed on. They also happen to talk themselves up to comedic levels despite measurably being much worse than the ones they laugh at.

For example saying the HQ-9 is a cheap Chinese copy of S-300 and inferior to it. Yet the facts are the HQ-9 totally redesigned the S-300's entire system and beat the S-300 in Turkish trials. So the Chinese managed to copy a first tier SAM system and made it better... all measurable and proven to be. Yet the Indians during this time only managed to copy the Soviet 2K12 Kub system with near minimal upgrades until after using them for over a decade. So they took longer to copy a third rate long obsolete SAM system with minimal ability to improve and modernise it.

They always underestimate China at every single turn. China's everything is supposedly far worse than India's yet it is China's 30 year old ships receiving MLU and running smoothly. Chinese ships running global paths without having to be sent back to base numerous times like the Type 45 from the Brits. It is China's Lunar rovers than landed perfectly and operated despite them calling one a total failure even though it suffered a minor system malfunction for a while and then functioned perfectly after that with subsequent rovers outperforming design goals. India's crash they called a 99% success.

It is China that produced its own reverse engineered Soviet cruise missiles by the 1980s and India's copy has a longer string of failed tests than successful ones. When their 1500km+ missile test failed at a range of around 150km (their claim lol) they still called it a success! At first they reported it a partial success (typical) and now it is only claimed as a successful test of their indigenous manik engine even though the engine failed at 150km of its 1500km+ test course.

If I were a non-involved, objective person, I would expect Indian real world performance to be much worse than even the West claims of India and I would expect China's to be far above what China admits to (in terms of successes). One brags on heat and reports on things that have barely gotten off CAD while the other shows intelligence and cunning.

Gloire_bb said:

It is actually a very important point.
Surface warships are in a very special position since the beginning of the missile age, and counting them for metrics of obvious superiority has to be done with a lot of care. 055s are impressive, but they are in no way battleships. Even Kirovs weren't.

To put it very bluntly - while the Chinese ship printer is impressive, to make its new navy really work, China needs 003s. And even then IN stands a fighting chance, due to being on the defensive and being designed for precisely this sort of fight.

Su-30MKIs. MPAs. Brahmos batteries from Andamans.

Targeting data in the Indian Ocean will come from?
PLA can engage Island airbases themselves - they don't move, but... IRBMs aren't sausages, you won't silence airbases this way.

What matters here is a fully developed Island position at the gate of a long, narrow, and often very shallow passage - passage which simply can't be forced unseen. Position consisting of a whole bunch of islands with a double-digit number of airbases, all of them within reinforcement range of India itself.
As a nasty bonus - there is always perspective of 1(2?) CSGs with pretty beefy salvo somewhere nearby. To be frank - it's worse than Midway situation. And neglecting it is an outright self harm..

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Yeah look this is a very pointless debate.

Facts are India has 6 modern ships and its navy isn't impressive by any measure. It's production capability and quality is even lower than "not impressive".

India has no ability to defend against AShBM and HGVs and has no ability to project force in contention even as near to them as Malacca Strait.

India will not block Malacca Strait because it can't and as much as they brag and talk about it, they won't do it because again, they don't have the ability to and no ability to defend from what would come if they stupidly somehow did think they could (possible with barely literate "cow piss cures covid" Modi and intellectuals of that caliber in India).

And that's the end of. We could compare known and disclosed Chinese systems with Indian ones. Even comparing them with proposed Indian ones results in Chinese systems being superior and more numerous now. It is basically akin to comparing Chinese military from the 1990s to US military today and fighting over a piece of territory in between the two.

We could then do mental gymnastics and talk about how it's possible without 003, PLAN isn't good enough to challenge IN in Indian Ocean and that sort of stuff but I'd rather refrain because you've made up your position and mind. India's abilities are clear enough and they are rather pathetic. Brahmos is barely better (probably not) than something like YJ-12 and the Chinese can build YJ-12 at a rate I'm sure would be several hundred times faster than India could Brahmos if they wanted to but they don't need to because they have much better stuff and thousands of lesser equipment albeit effective enough against IN. If Brahmos was so good China would have bought Onyx and yet even back in the 2000s China knows it has AShBM and HGV tech in testing and FAR improved Kh-31 already coming to service soon not to mention improved and domesticised Klub which could work with Chinese CEC along with the rest - YJ-62, YJ-83, KD-88 and everything in between.

If we simply perform a quick comparison of all modern Indian ships, weapons, and supporting assets, against Chinese ones in service, the difference is about 10 to 20 times greater, more modern, often more advanced force for China with much better production capacity and experience also without the need of importing any piece of foreign component which India absolutely does for its arsenal.

I mean China practises anti-shipping and interception with far superior weapons. Has Indian interception and AD ever performed and been tested numerous times against various HGVs and MaRVs? I doubt they'd ever tried against even Klub missiles since they have so few to waste on tests. They wouldn't know the behaviour of YJ-12 either.

I would think practising against Brahmos level of performance is a given. China's performed interception against YJ-12, YJ-18, CJ-10 at least. It's also very likely practised interception against MaRVs and HGVs. I don't think Brahmos poses too much challenge particularly when China has close relations with its developer, Russia who also offered the Brahmos equivalent (with export range restrictions not that that matters in reality and for these purposes) to China in the past.

Brahmos is more a nuisance and requiring interception than something like SCALP which poses a greater threat to Chinese military since it is probably unfamiliar with it, certainly much more so than Brahmos or weapons of that ilk.

Anybody know how the Barak 8 compares to other missiles like the HQ-9/ERAM/S350?

ougoah said:

Facts are India has 6 modern ships and its navy isn't impressive by any measure. It's production capability and quality is even lower than "not impressive".

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Your point of reference of "modern warship" is apparently SAM VLS.
This isn't a measure of a modern warship, or of a fighting capability of a navy.

Not only better rate of fire for SAMs isn't a "dreadnought moment" for surface warships, but surface warships themselves also aren't dreadnoughts.

Fighting capability of the Indian navy is better measured in its ability to form survivable CSGs and SSGs, and their integral salvo capacity. Both capacities are actually reasonable - especially in a given region. For at least some years to come, they even have a clear fighting chance w/o Andamans or other land support.

The main player in this battle (if we're forcing Andamans) is actually IAF - and it will be really hard to outshoot them. By default, getting into a shooting contest against a land-based air force for the navy is a losing option, for a very dumb reason (AF can reload and come again. And again). To put it bluntly - don't do it: there are other ways for a navy to win against the shore, and this isn't one of them.

ougoah said:

India has no ability to defend against AShBM and HGVs and has no ability to project force in contention even as near to them as Malacca Strait.

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They have the ability to project force to Malacca strait. It doesn't even require navy (which was used as an argument in their budget wars). Point of the navy is that it works elsewhere, and makes engaging Andamans very difficult (threat of a sneaky massive strike out of nowhere - Midway case).

AShBMs and HGVs, until they'll appear on intermediate platforms with a reasonable degree of access to the Indian Ocean basin, are not overly relevant in this scenario. Their targeting chain is simply too weak here.

ougoah said:

If we simply perform a quick comparison of all modern Indian ships and Chinese ones in service, the difference is about 10 to 20 times greater, more modern, often more advanced force for China with much better production capacity and experience also without the need of importing any piece of foreign component which India absolutely does for its arsenal.

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This is precisely the point where I think you are wrong.
Chinese ships are in a fight around the corner("wall" of land mass+neutral airspaces), where your mainland-based support assets are limited, you have to come to your opponent, you have to come from a few predetermined directions and almost 100% preemptively spotted, and the opponent is specifically geared for exactly this fight.
This has two implications. First of all, until reasonably recently PLAN was gearing up for such a fight itself - in fact, you can even mimic Indian CSGs with older Chinese units. But the situation changed - and PLAN is now shifting away from this Sovietsalvo model: for new conditions and missions - it's defective. But, first of all, PLAN hasn't fully shifted yet - and the most crucial element of the new way isn't truly ready just yet.

Second is a simpler one: if some doctrine is now defective for China, it doesn't mean it's defective for others - quite the contrary, actually. The more PLAN superiority is obvious, the more others will try to shoot above their weight(fight asymmetrically). Vietnam tries it, ROC does it, even Japan does it... So does India, which was building exactly this type of navy (Gorshkov navy-2MKI ) for half a century, and this model still works.