I did point out in an earlier post that I expect the PLA to battle test as much of their new capabilities as possible if there is an actual hot war.
However, I think it will do so in a very passive (as in passive detection methods) and secretive way, so we are unlikely to get any actual information on any of it happening in none kinetic fields like EW and jamming etc.
But cyberspace might be an area deemed off limits, because there are no geographical boarders.
There is a good chance Indian systems would already be riddled with American and western spyware, as we have a well established pattern of such behaviour from the Americans. Even if Indian systems were relatively clean to start with, as soon as the shooting starts you can bet spyware from all major powers would be rushing in to get first hand intel on Chinese capabilities.
As such, there is a good chance any cyberwarfare assets and capabilities deployed against India would be detected by hostile powers.
Indeed, there might be a multi-party free for all within the Indian network without the Indians even being aware of it.
But the point being that it will be much harder to conduct live tests against the Indians in the cyber realm than other fields given the nature of the internet.
What more, there isn’t really much need to wait until there is a war to test out cyberwarfare capabilities. That can be done pretty much any time anyone wants. But all of this is just conjecture, and there will be no way for anyone to prove any of it, so it would make for a rather fruitless discussion subject.
