Ladakh Flash Point

Figaro said:

I think corruption within the PLA has been mitigated by a significant extent, ever since the expulsion of Gu Junshan. You have to remember, endemic corruption was the problem standing in the way of the PLA 2016 reforms and the transitioning the PLA from a primarily ground force to one with much more naval and air power. Ever since the PLA anti-corruption drive started, things have moved along much much quicker, especially in terms of operations. The ability of the PLA to undergo the 2016 reforms (including the painful 300k troop cuts) and shifting of much assets towards the air force and navy shows you the corruption has drastically subsided. As for the Indian military, I'm not sure what levels of corruption they are suffering.

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The issue I'm bringing up, is that we don't know. We have no idea exactly how successful Xi's anti-corruption campaign has been in getting the PLA to work. Besides the fact that the PLA has a deterrence force posture, we also have to note that the PLA has traditionally been where Chinese elites have parked their kids, usually in a non-combat role.

In any case, the Indians seem intent on a border force build-up, the Chinese seem intent on matching them, and while the Chinese have the politeness of not shouting random bullshit on public media channels, the Indians don't and seem incredibly hostile.

Here's to hoping that we can get a peaceful resolution of this madness.

Inst said:

... The Rafale is known to be an 11G fighter ...

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Fighters are restricted to 9 G turns due to limitation of human pilots. They will pass out if the turns exceed 9 G.

Inst said:

The issue I'm bringing up, is that we don't know. We have no idea exactly how successful Xi's anti-corruption campaign has been in getting the PLA to work.

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Actually we do know how successful Xi's anti corruption drive has been. Do you not remember the sweeping 2015 Chinese military reforms? The establishment of a joint command, reorganizing the military commands into theaters, the creation of two new departments (i.e. rocket force and strategic support force), the cutting of 300,000 soldiers in the army ... all of these positive organizational changes would not have happened without the anti-corruption drive. These reforms are the most sweeping in the PLA since its inception and would not have happened if a lot of corruption was still present as it was previously blocked by the two former corrupt CMC vice chairmen. Of course, this is not to say there is no corruption in the PLA anymore ... but compared to levels a decade ago, it is a huge leap.

Inst said:

India spends roughly 2.4% of its GDP on defense spending, while China has traditionally spent around 2% of its GDP on defense spending. That's a difference in priority.

But I need to highlight that simply because a military is inferior, it doesn't mean that they can't hurt you. The Vietnamese, for instance, bled the Americans out in the 60s and early 70s. The Japanese military and industrial base was vastly superior to China's during the Second Sino-Vietnamese War, but the Chinese were successful because the US intervened and the Chinese locked down IJA troops.

A grueling blood vs blood fight vs the Indians would not be in China's strategic favor, even if it won. The best strategic scenario for China would be for India to drop its antagonism toward China, hopefully joining BRI, and not waste time on the Sino-Indian frontier.

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Unless China intends on a full scale invasion of India and occupying its territory afterwards, I highly doubt it needs to worry about this.

Brumby said:

... Additionally, the J-20 by design to my knowledge does not come with IR suppression features and in particular its engines. The Rafale operating at a lower altitude in a look up mode through its IRST will be in a better vintage point to locate and track the J-20 against a cooler background sky at higher altitude. The MICA IR carried by the Rafale and Mirage 2000 with its dual band IR seeker would be ideal for such an engagement as it is jam resistant. Whether using such tactics will be sufficient is obviously an unknown. ...

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This was the scenario played out in the COPE 2004 air exercise contested between Indian Air Force and USAF. The Indians won at least 90% of the mock air battles against the USAF by employing the tactics as described above. It was a clever tactic devised by the Indians. The Indians turned off their radars and relied soley on the IRST to track the Americans. They flied low to the ground down deep into the valleys, where radars become ineffective due to radar clutter and false reflections. Hidden by radar clutters the Indians would flied undetected (with their own radars turned off) and sneak up behind the Americans and scored a mock kill. It was a brilliant display of tactics. But there's one problem. By using this tactics in air exercise, the Indians exposed this tactic to the whole world. Something like this should have been kept a secret, but obviously they made a big mistake of not doing so. Now potential enemies are made aware of this tactic and countermeasures will be developed to mitigate this tactic. It also was a big selling point for using IRST. A good example is the J-10A does not have IRST, but the upgrades J-10B and J-10C both have IRST.

Inst said:

The issue I'm bringing up, is that we don't know. We have no idea exactly how successful Xi's anti-corruption campaign has been in getting the PLA to work. ...

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Xi Jin Ping is the first President to actually made a real effort to clean up corruptions. He said "If you want to become rich, don't work in the government". Besides arresting thousands of corrupt officials inside China, he was able to convince the many who fled China to return by reducing the punishment from death by execution to serving 8 years (max) in prison. Many did returned because of the lesser punishment. It's these kind of actions that gave Xi JP an 88% approval rating.

coolieno99 said:

This was the scenario played out in the COPE 2004 air exercise contested between Indian Air Force and USAF. The Indians won at least 90% of the mock air battles against the USAF by employing the tactics as described above. It was a clever tactic devised by the Indians. The Indians turned off their radars and relied soley on the IRST to track the Americans. They flied low to the ground down deep into the valleys, where radars become ineffective due to radar clutter and false reflections. Hidden by radar clutters the Indians would flied undetected (with their own radars turned off) and sneak up behind the Americans and scored a mock kill. It was a brilliant display of tactics. But there's one problem. By using this tactics in air exercise, the Indians exposed this tactic to the whole world. Something like this should have been kept a secret, but obviously they made a big mistake of not doing so. Now potential enemies are made aware of this tactic and countermeasures will be developed to mitigate this tactic. It also was a big selling point for using IRST. A good example is the J-10A does not have IRST, but the upgrades J-10B and J-10C both have IRST.

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Except the USAF did not employ any frontline fighters with IRST as standard at that time, so they would have been unfamiliar with its capabilities and limitations; while the PLAAF has IRST as standard on most of its principle frontline combat aircraft, so the PLAAF would be much more familiar with fighting both with and against IRST than the Americans.

There is also the advancement of technology, with AESA being far more effective at filtering out ground clutter.

To be honest, I don’t think the Indians gave away any special secrets during those exercises as that’s a basic tactic of using IRST that any Air Force who had them would have and the PLAAF would have tested and trained those very same tactics to death, and would have developed effective counters to boot.

It was just a learning opportunity for the Americans who didn’t have much experience against IRST, which is the whole point behind red flag.

The whole Rafale against J20 debate is just bunk in any case. The PLAAF has its own Rafale equivalent in the form of the J10C. If the J10C/Rafale had a chance against the J20, the PLAAF would not be nearly as enthusiastic about the J20 as it is.

As the saying goes, everyone thinks they can take on 5th gens with legacy fighters until they get 5th gens themselves.

Is there a possibility of a legacy fighter scoring a kill against a 5th gen? Of course, but the likelihood is remote, and the numbers of enemy 5th gens can you realistically expect to shoot down in such fringe encounters are not going to matter in any meaningful way. To be honest, it’s more likely that the enemy would loose more 5th gens to accidents during a war than to such fringe encounters.

Inst said:

The Rafale is known to be an 11G fighter, meaning you'd need 55G to knock it out from Mach 5 when it's running at Mach 1. That means J-20 missiles would need to retain enough energy that they could conduct 55G or so maneuverability vs the Rafale from long-range; in an ideal circumstance, the J-20 would function undetected until it can put the Rafale into its effective range, then ripple fire PL-15s. That might put it into the IRST range of the Rafale.

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The probability of miss distance in missile interception is very complex driven by a lot of variables and is not as simple as a "g" turn conversation. There are principally three types of missile guidance laws which in turn determine their algorithm rules and the conditions of interception. It is far too complex to have any meaningful conversation here.

coolieno99 said:

This was the scenario played out in the COPE 2004 air exercise contested between Indian Air Force and USAF. The Indians won at least 90% of the mock air battles against the USAF by employing the tactics as described above. It was a clever tactic devised by the Indians. The Indians turned off their radars and relied soley on the IRST to track the Americans. They flied low to the ground down deep into the valleys, where radars become ineffective due to radar clutter and false reflections. Hidden by radar clutters the Indians would flied undetected (with their own radars turned off) and sneak up behind the Americans and scored a mock kill. It was a brilliant display of tactics. But there's one problem. By using this tactics in air exercise, the Indians exposed this tactic to the whole world. Something like this should have been kept a secret, but obviously they made a big mistake of not doing so. Now potential enemies are made aware of this tactic and countermeasures will be developed to mitigate this tactic. It also was a big selling point for using IRST. A good example is the J-10A does not have IRST, but the upgrades J-10B and J-10C both have IRST.

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The event at COPE 2004 is well documented but to my knowledge has nothing to do with the tactics I was referring to nor the use of IRST by the Indians being fundamental to their success in the application of tactics. The US was limited by the ROEs as explained in the following AWST article.




On the subject of IRST, the technology level adopted by the Russians at that time was way behind the West. MIG-29 with OLS-29 are uncooled non imaging sensors and are regarded as practically useless when inspected post Soviet collapse. Even OLS-35 in the SU-35 to my knowledge are just cooled non imaging sensors. They are still at least one generation behind the scanning arrays used in FSO/Rafale. The FSO in the Rafale is in turn considered obsolete by Western standard because there are already at least three successive generations of staring arrays adopted since.

coolieno99 said:

This was the scenario played out in the COPE 2004 air exercise contested between Indian Air Force and USAF. The Indians won at least 90% of the mock air battles against the USAF by employing the tactics as described above.

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There are two sides to that story. The Indians bragged a lot about Cope India 2004, when they used their best pilots and favorable ROEs, against inexperienced USAF drivers. For one thing, the fact that the IAF publicized the results is considered unprofessional behavior (you don't publicly brag about the results of friendly exercises.) Secondly, the IAF never told anyone what happened after Cope India.

Not long after, the IAF (with their MKI Flankers) came to the US for Red Flag, and all that bragging went out the window. The IAF basically surrendered (i.e. stopped 1v1 engagements because they kept losing.) On top of that embarrassment, they shot down a lot of friendly aircraft during Red Flag. Of course, the USAF leaked these results because the IAF broke the warrior code first, by bragging about Cope India.

Here's a leaked briefing of what happened at Red Flag and Cope India, by a USAF Colonel:

Part 1:

Part 2:

Mohsin77 said:

There are two sides to that story. The Indians bragged a lot about Cope India 2004, when they used their best pilots and favorable ROEs, against inexperienced USAF drivers. For one thing, the fact that the IAF publicized the results is considered unprofessional behavior (you don't publicly brag about the results of friendly exercises.) Secondly, the IAF never told anyone what happened after Cope India.

Not long after, the IAF (with their MKI Flankers) came to the US for Red Flag, and all that bragging went out the window. The IAF basically surrendered (i.e. stopped 1v1 engagements because they kept losing.) On top of that embarrassment, they shot down a lot of friendly aircraft during Red Flag. Of course, the USAF leaked these results because the IAF broke the warrior code first, by bragging about Cope India.

Here's a leaked briefing of what happened at Red Flag and Cope India, by a USAF Colonel:

Part 1:

Part 2:

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They also bragged a lot about MKIs killing Typhoons 0 to 12.

siegecrossbow said:

They also bragged a lot about MKIs killing Typhoons 0 to 12.

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They did, but those claims were (politely) rejected by the RAF:


In any case, since 2019, all the IAF's bragging rights have 'crashed and burned,' quite literally.