Ladakh Flash Point

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Inst

Captain
About the only chance the Rafale pilot would have is from overwhelming numbers or if the J-20 pilot makes huge mistakes.

Idk how many Rafale India will buy but if its 10x more than there are J-20 then they would be a serious threat. IRST as proven by Chinese and American exercises with 4/4.5 gen vs 5 gen doesn't solve everything, even if they can get close enough, the 5th gen aircraft could also avoid missiles or jam them. At that range, the 4.5gen aircraft is much more vulnerable as well, having marginally worse maneuverability, EW suite and much larger RCS.

In theory if a J-20 pilot let's himself be rushed by half a dozen IRST planes then they could be taken down. But there seems to be no reason for PLAAF to ever commit J-20s in such a way.

I should highlight the Chinese AEW&C superiority. Counterstealth AEW&C have relative difficulty in detecting stealth aircraft, but when they struggle vs 5th gens, they're pretty much overkill vs 4th gens. Low-band radar isn't completely proof against stealth and relies on brute-forcing the last mile, and this brute force becomes murder vs 4th gens.

So the J-20 can always see the Rafale first, and likely be able to track it via EODAS / IRST without emitting at all.

The only real contest is between Meteor + 11G emergency agility vs PL-15s. Right now, the Meteors are very jammable, so if there's J-20s behind the front-line J-20s the J-20s can always flee with the J-20s behind the front line using jamming to cover their escape. But the Europeans are planning to outfit an AESA seeker on the Meteor by starting around 2022, implying that the jamming capability of J-20 AESAs will be much degraded.

As for Rafale numbers:

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36 is likely, but with increased Sino-Indian tensions the Indians might eventually opt for the more capable Rafale over the LCA.
 

Ash the rational

New Member
Registered Member
Most of Indians dont even care about border clashes and those who care means the one who have access to Television and Internet only knows about those clashes.
In future also China will snatch more land from India.
So what can India do now.
Actually nothing China will only have ambition to capture only Ladakh and Arunanchal Pradesh and these places are not populated at all .Only problem will be if china tries to capture Uttarakhand as it mainland of India and borders China too.
So does that mean India should Vietnameae itself.
Nope.Most of Indians have thier fair deal of problem .What should be done is just providing resistance and postpone the conflicts.And in that mean time Govt should uplift poor and empower people.
So only way to deal with china is to provide resistance in silence without making noise .
Force them to talk and make them talk more and more .So that they get bored of India and instead focus on Taiwan,Hongkong,etc.
India should play Low key and shouldnt come in notice of any big country.And keep on developing economy and uplift masses from poverty.


Now talking about Kashmir.I visited kashmir and even interacted with locals.They definetly dont like Indian troop presence BUT AT THE SAME TIME THEY DONT LIKE PAKISTANI TROOP PRESENCE TOO.
They carve for Independent state totally non attached either to India or Pakistan.They are already tired of petty fight between india and pakistan.
And this will never happen as nor will India and nor will pakistan will listen to this voice.
So what is the solution?
Just make Loc as international border and dont puke each other nose in internal matters.
Same apply to border of ladakh .But that wont happen too .Because China can force things and wont let demarcation line or international border to come in action.

This whole comment is only my personal opinion .I am not speaking for all indians or govt.
 

Inst

Captain
TIME THEY DONT LIKE PAKISTANI TROOP PRESENCE TOO.
They carve for Independent state totally non attached either to India or Pakistan.They are already tired of petty fight between india and pakistan.
And this will never happen as nor will India and nor will pakistan will listen to this voice.
So what is the solution?
Just make Loc as international border and dont puke each other nose in internal matters.
Same apply to border of ladakh .But that wont happen too .Because China can force things and wont let demarcation line or international border to come in action.

I'm glad that your viewpoint seems so reasonable, but I'm familiar with contacts in Indian government telling me that, India has a controlled media regime; it's not necessarily that the cops will break down your door for dissenting, but that the democratic mob will demand your blood.

As I've stated a dozen times, this entire Sino-Indian border dispute is a waste of time and India is better off focusing on its nuclear arsenal to deter China. Kashmir, likewise, is only holdable via a campaign of ethnic cleansing.
 

plawolf

Lieutenant General
Most of Indians dont even care about border clashes and those who care means the one who have access to Television and Internet only knows about those clashes.
In future also China will snatch more land from India.
So what can India do now.
Actually nothing China will only have ambition to capture only Ladakh and Arunanchal Pradesh and these places are not populated at all .Only problem will be if china tries to capture Uttarakhand as it mainland of India and borders China too.

China has never had territorial ambitions on India, unlike India. All the areas in dispute now were captured by the PLA in 1962, who then unilaterally stopped their offensive and pulled back to pre-hostility positions once they deemed a sufficient lesson had been taught.

China doesn’t care about the land, as it holds no real tactical or strategic worth beyond hedging against possible attack from India. This was and always have been a matter of principle for China, in that China will never accept a boarder imposed upon it by a foreign power under the threat of military force.

The Indian claim is based on an arbitrary line the British drew up on a map. That is not something China accepted at the time when it was at its lowest and Britain at its apex in terms of power, so who does India think it is to try to impose that on China now?

China has been more than reasonable in its land board dispute resolutions with all its land neighbours except for India, usually ceding far more than what it got back. Contrast that with India who had land disputes with pretty much every one of its neighbours, as well as a proven track record or territorial expansionism and one can easily see who is the only causing the problems.

Quite frankly, despite Indian hostility, it would not even be on China’s radar if India just had the good sense to stop actively provoking China.

If India adopted a common sense approach, it could easily reach an agreement with China to avoid conflict. Either both sides could avoid patrolling disputed territory, or they can set up schemes where both sides patrolled at different time’s to maintain their respective claims while also avoiding needless conflict.

The root cause of the problem is that India is too obsessed with China, and its politicians are too keen to try to score domestic political points by poking China in the eyes. That is the real reason why India keeps making these petty and pointless provocations against China.

Force them to talk and make them talk more and more .So that they get bored of India and instead focus on Taiwan,Hongkong,etc.

India cannot force China to do anything it does not want to. But in this respect, it does not need to force China to do anything. All it needs to do is stop its own provocations and China will go back to not giving a crap about India, as was its position in the first place.


Just make Loc as international border and dont puke each other nose in internal matters.
Same apply to border of ladakh .But that wont happen too .Because China can force things and wont let demarcation line or international border to come in action.

Again, India doesn’t matter to China. So long as India stops its pointless provocations, China would love nothing else than to leave the boarder dispute on the back burner indefinitely.

The primary reason China is no longer interested in actually permanently resolving the boarder dispute peacefully, as it had been trying to do ever since the birth of both nations, is because it recognises the deep root and pervasive hostility India and most Indians have for China.

To be frank, so long as India maintains that toxic position towards China, it is putting itself in existential danger.

India is not a priority for China now because of its weakness and ineptitude, but it will become a priority threat as soon as it gets its act together and looks like it might start to realise some of its full potential. Thus China is keeping the boarder dispute as a pretext for military action in case that starts to happen.

India and China need not be enemies, indeed, there is no reason other than hubris and envy that they are today. But if India does not stop treating China as its mortal enemy, it risks making its worst nightmares a reality.
 

Inst

Captain
I think Rafale should be compared with J-10C and not with J-20, Coz J-20 is more than half a generation ahead of Rafale so no point of comparing them much better to do it with J-10C.

The Rafale, for its generation, has two weaknesses. First, its AESA is extremely small for its size (medium-weight F-18A equivalent), arguably smaller than the J-10C and F-16V's AESA. Second, it has a poor max speed; it's designed as a dedicated dogfighter and it shows, which is also why the Indians picked it up.

On the other hand, it has pronounced strengths in terms of maneuverability; the only 4.5th gen to score any kind of kill on the F-22 is the Rafale. The Rafale, likewise, has an extremely advanced ECM package that can potentially reduce the detection range of any of its opponents. It is very optimized for ground-attack as well, and has similar missile payloads as the Eurofighter.

===

Comparing a J-10C with a PL-15 to a Rafale, I'd rather give the odds to the Rafale. The J-10C could attrition the Rafale; as in, 3 J-10Cs go down for 2 Rafales, and given the Indian force availability it's not completely unviable, but China would have to spend way more to offset the Rafale force-on-force than to attempt to do a clean obliteration with J-20s.

====

As for the Sino-Indian dispute, remember that China solved the vast majority of its territorial disputes in the 90s and 2000s. It's not true to say that the Chinese have no territorial ambitions versus India; the Chinese have a preferred boundary that goes deeper than India's preferred boundary, but in general the Chinese keep disputes open if they deem a country a regional threat (Diaoyutai-Senkakus is so that the Chinese can provoke the Japanese any time they want).

The major problem with India vs China is that Modi is trying to hedge the Chinese vs the Americans, and the Chinese don't want to deal with a two-front war as much as the Indians would rather not deal with both the Pakistanis and Chinese at the same time. The point the Chinese are trying to make clear with Modi is that India has to choose--either call off an alignment with the United States (and the Chinese are beginning to attack dollar supremacy, which could seriously wound the American economy) and accept that India's defense vs China is off its nuclear arsenal and hopefully trade links, or deal with a massive Chinese threat on the Sino-Indian border.
 

ougoah

Brigadier
Registered Member
Problem is, for the InAF, the J-11s have superior missile load-outs to the Su-30 MKIs, with both the PL-10s and PL-15s superior to the loadout on the Su-30 MKIs. The InAF could eventually import current or next-gen Russian AAMs that negate this advantage, but that'd take time.

I continue to think J-20 deployment to the Sino-Indian frontier is necessary, for the simple reason that the Chinese only have their qualitative advantage to protect them against Rafales. While the J-20 has strong advantages (stealth, jamming, better AEW&C support) over Rafales, when you convert it to J-11Bs vs Rafale, the advantage disappears. The Rafales are more maneuverable than the J-11Bs, the Rafales have more sophisticated, and likely par radar compared to the J-11Bs, and the Meteor vs PL-15 fight is a toss-up.

Yes, of course, the majority of the battle will be between Su-30s and J-11s, simply because both sides will have so many of them. But the decisive factor will be the J-20 vs the Rafale because J-11s vs Rafale isn't in the Chinese'' favor, and once the Rafales are taken down, either via anti-air base missile or J-20, the J-11s are now free to slaughter the Su-30MKIs.

Only some J-11B has been upgraded to AESA with PL-10 and PL-15 integrated. This is a new development according to leaks and photos. So no, J-11s do not have superiority over MKIs at all on paper unless all of those J-11B have been upgraded.

PLAAF legacy J-11s are probably going to be used radar off, datalink steered towards IAF fighters and use terrain to hide where possible and IRST to get the fighters into closer ranged turning fights or BVR with greater missile energy. This way the A and B's older Cassegrain and slotted arrays and older missiles can have a better chance at defeating MKIs.

IAF barely has a few Rafales to begin training and developing tactics with. They're not going to be risked against PLAAF so soon. There's no need to J-20 to make an appearance. J-10A, J-11A, and J-11B are decent enough for MKIs and this is the best the IAF can throw. J-10B/C can be used for BVR and these will have advantages over Mirage 2000s, Mig-29s, and Su-30s - much better RCS, PL-15 capable, PESA and AESA radars. PLAAF should have equal if not better AEW&C and AWACS support. J-10C BVR fighting against IAF may as well be J-20. They won't be able to BVR attack J-10C successfully anyway. MICA and R-77 with Mirage 2000 and MKI radars don't come close to PL-15 with AESA.
 

ougoah

Brigadier
Registered Member
Most of Indians dont even care about border clashes and those who care means the one who have access to Television and Internet only knows about those clashes.
In future also China will snatch more land from India.
So what can India do now.
Actually nothing China will only have ambition to capture only Ladakh and Arunanchal Pradesh and these places are not populated at all .Only problem will be if china tries to capture Uttarakhand as it mainland of India and borders China too.
So does that mean India should Vietnameae itself.
Nope.Most of Indians have thier fair deal of problem .What should be done is just providing resistance and postpone the conflicts.And in that mean time Govt should uplift poor and empower people.
So only way to deal with china is to provide resistance in silence without making noise .
Force them to talk and make them talk more and more .So that they get bored of India and instead focus on Taiwan,Hongkong,etc.
India should play Low key and shouldnt come in notice of any big country.And keep on developing economy and uplift masses from poverty.


Now talking about Kashmir.I visited kashmir and even interacted with locals.They definetly dont like Indian troop presence BUT AT THE SAME TIME THEY DONT LIKE PAKISTANI TROOP PRESENCE TOO.
They carve for Independent state totally non attached either to India or Pakistan.They are already tired of petty fight between india and pakistan.
And this will never happen as nor will India and nor will pakistan will listen to this voice.
So what is the solution?
Just make Loc as international border and dont puke each other nose in internal matters.
Same apply to border of ladakh .But that wont happen too .Because China can force things and wont let demarcation line or international border to come in action.

This whole comment is only my personal opinion .I am not speaking for all indians or govt.

India hasn't wanted to postpone conflicts. It also hasn't made any effort to settle them with China or resolve them in any other way. Since the first border war over half a century ago, India has decided to believe the war was all China's fault, not Nehru's or the British for demarcating borderlines for two countries they have no real business demarcating. Bharat was the old name for the "nation" of India. Between the Mughal princely states and British India, the borders between China and India were always opaque. The resolution of the 1962 war should have pushed Indian leaders towards some settlement with China but they refused and decided China is mortal enemy no1 or no2. And history now takes us here.

China has expressed willingness to settle in the past and to be honest China's claims in Ladakh are reasonable when you compare them to India's. I'm going to assume 2020 claims are still the same as 1959 claims. India however, wants a greater chunk of the poorly defined no mans land. Over at Arunachal Pradesh, the British McMahon lines are not agreed to by China because why would China agree to British demarcated border lines which favour India and stretch into what China considers Chinese land. This whole dispute could have been resolved back in the 1950s/60s if India agreed to the offer of exchange, AP for Ladakh. Instead history takes us here.

India's "Forward Policy" of the past and their "Salami Slicing" policy towards the later half of the 20th century were aggressive. Today, India's movements in Kashmir, abolishing of article 370, pre PLA troop buildup at Galway river and Pangong lake finger 4, are also aggressive. The shock we have is how India can seem to portray itself as victim since 1959. Since both sides have been guilty of aggression and antagonism now, moving on means carrying on from where history has taken us. Why would the CCP give concessions to India? India's historically been the initiator when it comes to these disputes.

Back in 2017, Bhutan and China were in bilateral talks. China ceded some land to Bhutan in exchange for rights to some other stretch where the Doklam roads were being built. Rather than allow for bilateral agreements to take place, India felt the need to step in and disrupt China there. Perhaps this is due to the long history of mutual antagonism but India is clearly also keen to look out for itself and disrupt China where it can. There is no solution to this problem anymore since the last time there was an opportunity for peaceful solution was back in the late 1950s before the first border war. It's frankly pathetic reading how many Indian online commentators simultaneously wish to hold China as accountable as only aggressive party while also slandering it and talking as if it is both evil and incompetent at the same time. There's no point talking to Indian chauvinists about this and like the chauvinists, there's little to gain by talking to Indian leaders unless it's discussing how they are going to settle this in China's favour. There's never been a moment in this border dispute's history where the situation favoured India. If the 1950s India (which was China's level) had more support from the Soviets and Americans, and the Indians couldn't resolve this or win a war then, India should realise peaceful resolution now is going to be even more in China's favour.
 

ougoah

Brigadier
Registered Member
China has never had territorial ambitions on India, unlike India. All the areas in dispute now were captured by the PLA in 1962, who then unilaterally stopped their offensive and pulled back to pre-hostility positions once they deemed a sufficient lesson had been taught.

China doesn’t care about the land, as it holds no real tactical or strategic worth beyond hedging against possible attack from India. This was and always have been a matter of principle for China, in that China will never accept a boarder imposed upon it by a foreign power under the threat of military force.

The Indian claim is based on an arbitrary line the British drew up on a map. That is not something China accepted at the time when it was at its lowest and Britain at its apex in terms of power, so who does India think it is to try to impose that on China now?

China has been more than reasonable in its land board dispute resolutions with all its land neighbours except for India, usually ceding far more than what it got back. Contrast that with India who had land disputes with pretty much every one of its neighbours, as well as a proven track record or territorial expansionism and one can easily see who is the only causing the problems.

Quite frankly, despite Indian hostility, it would not even be on China’s radar if India just had the good sense to stop actively provoking China.

If India adopted a common sense approach, it could easily reach an agreement with China to avoid conflict. Either both sides could avoid patrolling disputed territory, or they can set up schemes where both sides patrolled at different time’s to maintain their respective claims while also avoiding needless conflict.

The root cause of the problem is that India is too obsessed with China, and its politicians are too keen to try to score domestic political points by poking China in the eyes. That is the real reason why India keeps making these petty and pointless provocations against China.



India cannot force China to do anything it does not want to. But in this respect, it does not need to force China to do anything. All it needs to do is stop its own provocations and China will go back to not giving a crap about India, as was its position in the first place.




Again, India doesn’t matter to China. So long as India stops its pointless provocations, China would love nothing else than to leave the boarder dispute on the back burner indefinitely.

The primary reason China is no longer interested in actually permanently resolving the boarder dispute peacefully, as it had been trying to do ever since the birth of both nations, is because it recognises the deep root and pervasive hostility India and most Indians have for China.

To be frank, so long as India maintains that toxic position towards China, it is putting itself in existential danger.

India is not a priority for China now because of its weakness and ineptitude, but it will become a priority threat as soon as it gets its act together and looks like it might start to realise some of its full potential. Thus China is keeping the boarder dispute as a pretext for military action in case that starts to happen.

India and China need not be enemies, indeed, there is no reason other than hubris and envy that they are today. But if India does not stop treating China as its mortal enemy, it risks making its worst nightmares a reality.

There is a deep and unconquerable divide between the two sides in how we perceive history and the present situation. While this doesn't apply to all people from the two countries and certainly not true for their politics, the Indian nationalists simplify the matter into China is an evil communist country and has always been attacking neighbours. Well China's settled all land disputes except with India and ceded land in order to settle them. Why hasn't this happened with India? Surely if China ceded land to India in Ladakh and AP, the problem would disappear. Well no because the war taught China what Chinese nationalists think - Indians desire a weak China with the CCP gone and a return to the era where China could be easily colonised. Indians feel superior and are exceedingly entitled to greater status and economic power. China is embarrassing them by developing and amassing wealth. So it's all stolen, cheated, copied, and won by hook and crook to them.

Considering how things actually are, I'd say the Chinese nationalists have a more grounded and accurate read of the reality. Indian and Chinese leaders however aren't playing things this way at all. Indian leaders are all about how they can use the situation and manipulate Indian sentiments to get more votes. CCP leaders don't need votes, God knows what they think... probably just how to enrich themselves and their families further.

So again, there's no hope for peace between the two and that boats sailed with the end of the 1970s. Relations normalised somewhat between 1967 and 2013 but that was also an era of rushing development on both sides of the Himalayas. I'm confident both sides realised then that whoever develops faster and greater ends up having more leverage when it comes to border disputes. Therefore when it comes to India, China also doesn't play nice because India's never played nicely. Therefore no ceding territory or settling in India's favour.
 

ougoah

Brigadier
Registered Member
The Rafale, for its generation, has two weaknesses. First, its AESA is extremely small for its size (medium-weight F-18A equivalent), arguably smaller than the J-10C and F-16V's AESA. Second, it has a poor max speed; it's designed as a dedicated dogfighter and it shows, which is also why the Indians picked it up.

AESA size isn't always proportional to performance. However it would also be unfair (Indian or western fanboying) to suggest Chinese AESA needs to be larger and more powerful to have similar performance to a western one. The opposite may even be true, who knows. Pakistan seems to be more than happy with the small AESAs developed for the JF-17 and have compared them to the Italian AESA offering. Anyway the RBE2 AESA is a 2012 piece of technology and France's first airborne fighter AESA.

Rafale's not designed as a dedicated dogfighter. It's a cropped delta canard, close coupled for apparently decent to good supersonic agility. That sounds like good BVR fighter to me. This design supposedly also gives fighters good AOA and nose authority. Public domain stats suggest excellent STR and ITR. Has high T/W and pretty low wing loading. So basically a great balance and good performance throughout. Carrier capable means great lower speed handling and Mirage's emphasis on high speed high altitude performance probably carries over too. There's a reason why so many 4.5 gen fighters use the delta canard configuration. It's an excellent all rounder.

Indians don't want a dedicated dogfighter in the MRCA. No airforce is stupid enough to want dedicated dogfighters in this era. If you can't do everything well, it should at least excel in BVR first. The Rafale would be a waste to expose to dogfighting where pilot skill and increasingly more luck is introduced. Even pilot eyesight and neck strength plays as much into dogfighting outcomes as high tech gizmos.

Comparing a J-10C with a PL-15 to a Rafale, I'd rather give the odds to the Rafale. The J-10C could attrition the Rafale; as in, 3 J-10Cs go down for 2 Rafales, and given the Indian force availability it's not completely unviable, but China would have to spend way more to offset the Rafale force-on-force than to attempt to do a clean obliteration with J-20s.

lol well another idiot could compare an upgraded J-7 with the Rafale and give the odds to the J-7 because ... well you haven't given a reason so why not.
 
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