Ladakh Flash Point

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AssassinsMace

Lieutenant General
Being an economic competitor to the US is not a crime. To blockade China over that would be an act of war. The US would need help to form an economic blockade meaning every country around China would lose their biggest customer. Don't forget the developing the world that has China as their customer to buy their raw materials. So who's going to help again? In order for it to work every country would have to help the US. Again as I've always pointed out... the US would have to literally pay all these countries what they would lose from China being their customer and that would bankrupt the US.
 

Jono

Junior Member
Registered Member
the problem with the Indian Modi government is that it has whipped up the population's nationalistic frenzy.
The Indian masses and media are thirsting for Chinese blood, at whatever costs.
Modi finds himself caught in a web of his own making, and cannot back out of the hole his government/military has dug for itself.
I wish India can calm down, for the sake of peace between the two neighbours, but present situation looks gloomy.
But if a war has to happen, then I think Beijing should make it a quick and decisive one, and goes for these objectives, if possible ( of course it is a wish list only ) :
1) occupy Jammu and Kashmir, then hand over western part of this province ( west of Leh ) to Pakistan, while retaining the eastern half.
2) on the Eastern front, occupy or at least allow independence to the Indian north-east provinces , aka Tibet South.
3) if Indian navy attempts to blockade the Malacca Strait, then destroy the Indian fleet without mercy and occupy the Nicobar Islands too.
4) lessen the number of front line Indian soldiers killed or maimed at the minimum, treat the POW kindly.

take the possible Sino-India war as a training ground for China's armed forces and equippments.
 

tch1972

Junior Member
I don't think blocking ship at straits of Malacca is that easy for such action not only affect China but also all countries in the region. Why should regional countries support India if her action affect their interests?
 

Jono

Junior Member
Registered Member
I don't think blocking ship at straits of Malacca is that easy for such action not only affect China but also all countries in the region. Why should regional countries support India if her action affect their interests?
the problem is that the Indian masses and media are in a frenzy for actions against China.
The Indian government and military are under strong irresistible pressure to take irrational actions, likely against their good judgement.
so they might go for the blockade, with or without regional support.
 

Mohican Master

New Member
Registered Member
Besides the collapsing

In regard to Forbes, India blockading China is not a good idea. India depends on China for Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients (API) and chemical fertilizers. If API imports were blocked, then India's pharmaceutical industry would just collapsed altogether. Similiar situation with chemical fertilizers. Without it, its agricultural production will be severely depressed. Despite all the calls for boycotts against China, imports from China has been INCREASING .
Look again. Imports from China decreased in last quarter.
 

ougoah

Brigadier
Registered Member
That is for name only.
In reality there are no limits on Indian Brahmos.
This has been admitted even by Indian officials

Yes MCTR is non binding and even if it were a binding agreement, can't count on Brahmos being limited to 300km which it almost certainly is not. In fact Brahmos is the only credible offensive missile capability in Indian arsenal at the moment. Until India inducts Nirbhay in large numbers, air launched Brahmos is of the greatest threat to PLA positions and infrastructure.

Whether or not PLA air defence and EW can deal with Brahmos is unknown but there are a lot of things designed and fielded to do just that. Mach 3 to Mach 4 isn't difficult at all, particularly when some of those air defense systems are designed to intercept maneuvering MIRVs. interception of these things are mostly a matter of range and speed, most of the time they are just not in position to intercept fast moving targets where speed and range are a part of the same calculus. Air defence systems positioned next to the targets they're defending gives them a much greater interception probability which would be the case for Brahmos attacks. Brahmos is also a large missile, not all that fast (mach 3 isn't fast anymore), not stealthy in the slightest, and does not have unpredictable flight profiles - non terrain hugging and does not avoid radar or circle around targets like many modern cruise missiles are capable of. In fact IAF SCALP missiles will be a far more troublesome thing but they are still being inducted and trained on.

I'm sure PLA would have had plenty of practice against intercepting YJ-91 and YJ-12 missiles which are mach 3 to mach 4.5 missiles and do terminal phase maneuvering where they use the trajectory that continues to adjust interceptor missile interception calculations to continue dragging the missile around for optimal effectiveness. Hard to explain without visually showing the maths involved but think atmospheric pressure variation, KE-PE tradeoffs, and missile interception point calculations constantly being changed by maneuvering missile. The maneuvering missile trade a tiny bit of that mach 4 energy to reduce the energy of the interceptor and its range very dramatically.

YJ-91 is much smaller than Brahmos so harder to intercept and if they can intercept that with close to 100% reliability, they can almost definitely intercept Brahmos which has 1990s based flight control software. Maybe they've upgraded it but is unlikely to be much better than YJ-12 or YJ-91. Those old Moskits were too easy to defeat even back in the 2000s for PLAN. They realised the USN will have no issue whatsoever.

PLA have probably also done a lot of practice against CX-1 (even weaker missile than the above) and HD-1. Both of those were built for a random few export customers but are basically mock missiles for interception practice.

While India has Brahmos as its current top end offensive non-ballistic missile, PLA has YJ-91, YJ-12 (anti-surface sub-variants are basically confirmed in Chinese literature), DF-100, rocket boosted HGVs, and air launched ballistic missiles. Not that it needs to use any of those with such artillery advantage.

Meanwhile there is little indication Nirbhay is satisfactory or anywhere near approved for induction. Russia isn't trusting enough to sell India even watered down versions of its Zircon anti-surface missiles since India showed off the Akula interior to the American visitors. Also it's too strategic a Russian weapon to sell to India given India's flirting with the US. So Brahmos II is even further away than Nirbhay. SCALP will take a few more months at least before sufficient operational training and tactics developed and enough are delivered from France.
 
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ougoah

Brigadier
Registered Member
BTW India has no credible air defence that can intercept PLA cruise missiles or any of the dozens of offensive weapons they can throw at Indian positions which are designed with Japanese and American level EW, AD, and early warning in mind. Akash is the latest and greatest with the highest number of missiles available (however only 3000 missiles across the country according to Wiki). Akash is a very low energy and relatively short ranged at 40km max slant range. Mach 2 to mach 3 top speed although the ramjet power means it sustains this speed after rocket boost. It is unfortunately a copy of the very ancient Soviet Klub series SAM and only updates are the truck and radars. Why India went all in with a 40km ranged mach 2-3 SAM is difficult to understand. The S-300 was available then but I guess India wanted to domestically build a system and the S-300 was more difficult to reverse engineer.

S-400 deliveries have not been made to India yet. So there is basically no blocking PLA missiles or bombs. Akash will require a lot of magically fast reloading to be even noticeably effective at doing anything. Meanwhile PLA will have a genuinely layered AD; HQ-26 and HQ-29 for BMD, HQ-9B and HQ-22 for long range and super high altitudes, HQ-16B and HQ-16C for up to 70km slant range multipurpose interception, HQ-7 and HQ-17 for shorter ranged point defence, and LD-2000 for short range CIWS.

PLA has much more and vastly superior weapons to throw, much more and vastly superior defence, better early warning, better radar systems, better electronic warfare, better jamming, better cyberwarfare. More soldiers, more armour, much more artillery with vastly superior range and type variations. Has all the raw materials and factories to produce as much as they please at an impressive rate. India has more airfields in the vicinity and closer support routes but their capital and many population centres are also far closer as well as a offset to the closer support routes. Although I really doubt the PLA will do anything to Indian cities even if the LAC goes kinetic and PLA exploits advantages. India needs to buy material and weapons which may have very slow delivery rates if they're ever delivered at all.
 
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Sardaukar20

Captain
Registered Member
Yes MCTR is non binding and even if it were a binding agreement, can't count on Brahmos being limited to 300km which it almost certainly is not. In fact Brahmos is the only credible offensive missile capability in Indian arsenal at the moment. Until India inducts Nirbhay in large numbers, air launched Brahmos is of the greatest threat to PLA positions and infrastructure.

Whether or not PLA air defence and EW can deal with Brahmos is unknown but there are a lot of things designed and fielded to do just that. Mach 3 to Mach 4 isn't difficult at all, particularly when some of those air defense systems are designed to intercept maneuvering MIRVs. interception of these things are mostly a matter of range and speed, most of the time they are just not in position to intercept fast moving targets where speed and range are a part of the same calculus. Air defence systems positioned next to the targets they're defending gives them a much greater interception probability which would be the case for Brahmos attacks. Brahmos is also a large missile, not all that fast (mach 3 isn't fast anymore), not stealthy in the slightest, and does not have unpredictable flight profiles - non terrain hugging and does not avoid radar or circle around targets like many modern cruise missiles are capable of. In fact IAF SCALP missiles will be a far more troublesome thing but they are still being inducted and trained on.

I'm sure PLA would have had plenty of practice against intercepting YJ-91 and YJ-12 missiles which are mach 3 to mach 4.5 missiles and do terminal phase maneuvering where they use the trajectory that continues to adjust interceptor missile interception calculations to continue dragging the missile around for optimal effectiveness. Hard to explain without visually showing the maths involved but think atmospheric pressure variation, KE-PE tradeoffs, and missile interception point calculations constantly being changed by maneuvering missile. The maneuvering missile trade a tiny bit of that mach 4 energy to reduce the energy of the interceptor and its range very dramatically.

YJ-91 is much smaller than Brahmos so harder to intercept and if they can intercept that with close to 100% reliability, they can almost definitely intercept Brahmos which has 1990s based flight control software. Maybe they've upgraded it but is unlikely to be much better than YJ-12 or YJ-91. Those old Moskits were too easy to defeat even back in the 2000s for PLAN. They realised the USN will have no issue whatsoever.

PLA have probably also done a lot of practice against CX-1 (even weaker missile than the above) and HD-1. Both of those were built for a random few export customers but are basically mock missiles for interception practice.

While India has Brahmos as its current top end offensive non-ballistic missile, PLA has YJ-91, YJ-12 (anti-surface sub-variants are basically confirmed in Chinese literature), DF-100, rocket boosted HGVs, and air launched ballistic missiles. Not that it needs to use any of those with such artillery advantage.

Meanwhile there is little indication Nirbhay is satisfactory or anywhere near approved for induction. Russia isn't trusting enough to sell India even watered down versions of its Zircon anti-surface missiles since India showed off the Akula interior to the American visitors. Also it's too strategic a Russian weapon to sell to India given India's flirting with the US. So Brahmos II is even further away than Nirbhay. SCALP will take a few more months at least before sufficient operational training and tactics developed and enough are delivered from France.
As I have mentioned before. The Brahmos is quite overrated for use as a land attack weapon against the PLA. The closest example of using a Brahmos-type missile for land strikes is the P-800 Oniks in the Bastion coastal defence system used by Russia in 2016 in Syria. That is Syria, a country with relatively flat terrain. The Russians boast about this strike only once. After that, they went back to using their much more celebrated Kalibr sub-sonic cruise missiles for the land attack role. This is kind of a hint of how even the Russians don't really fancy using Mach 3.0 AshM for land attacks.

The Brahmos, despite all the improvements is still a Mach 3.0 AshM. It is designed to fly over open terrain like seas. I am very doubtful, that it can fly around the mountains of Kashmir at Mach 3.0. So it would most likely go for a lofted trajectory, like a pseudo balistic missile. This gives Chinese missile defense systems an easier job of spotting and intercept these missiles.

Also the Brahmos has a 200kg Amour-Piercing Warhead. Note that not all 200kg is HE, there is a good chance that 150kg is for the heavy metal penetrator. Against enemy ship, this missile is truly devastating. Against large areas like land bases, this kind of warhead is very limited. Maybe a more HE dedicated 200kg warhead could be fitted and give it respectable impact performance. But it still compares poorly against Kalibr and the CJ series cruise missiles. The CJ-10 subsonic cruise missiles could carry a 500kg warhead. And I'm speculating here that in an anti-air base mission, cluster sub-munitions could be fitted for bombing vast areas of soft targets.

India has done multiple successful trials of the Nirhbay missile. So there is a good chance they could fast track the missile for deployment in an event of war with China. The missiles may be overrated after all. But it is still important that China prepare too for those missiles to be used against them at some point.
 
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