plawolf
Lieutenant General
Good and interesting analysis, but I think he is being a little overly pessimistic of India’s chances.
That is not because the PLA lacks the capabilities he described, but because much of those capabilities are not meant for India.
The PLA knows first hand how much of an impact a big psychological shock can have in revolutionising the institutional thinking of a major military. After all, they themselves experience it first hand when seeing western military capabilities unleashed during the first Gulf War.
It does not want to give the Americans a similar rude awakening to potentially spur on a massive US military modernisation programme similar to the one the PLA is only just finishing.
As such, I think if there is a broader shooting war, the PLA will limit its next generation and non-conventional assets to only limited and hidden testing operations rather than have them become the central core around which PLA combat doctrine would have originally intended.
The key operational objectives for those systems and assets would not be to win the war as they are intended to do, but rather merely to test and validate capabilities and tactics while remaining undetected. That will inevitably means very limited and niche roles to ensure opsec.
The bulk of the fighting would instead fall to more conventional systems and assets. But even there, Chinese advantage is pretty dominant, which is a key reason as to why the PLA can afford to not use its newest and most powerful toys and still win comfortably.
The Indian leadership would have to be totally delusional from drinking its own Kool Aid fake news to want to actually get into a shooting war with China.
