Addressing the Elephant in the Room : Deterrence, Asymmetry , MAD and Chokepoint.
Evening everyone , i actually would have posted it sooner, but had some events to attend in the morning , i'm sober enough to collect my thoughts to post.
ADRESSING THE CHINESE ELEPHANT.
As things are. with it's industrial capacity and economic might. any conventional war with china is tough climb for India.
i want to preface this by stating that i'm of the opinion that a Indo China war in the next decade is UNLIKELY.
borrowing a quote , " Predicting the future is like betting against God " , so we have to be ready for any scenario that is thrown at us.
let's not kid our selves around, there are no participation trophies here, no award for just having the will to try when the leadership , babudom and even the ministry is so incompetent that it took their shit being pushed in to actually act on something.
its inspiring but , for the next decade or so , we are locked into mediocrity with no options.
here's a timeline of facts.
= Zorawar was Shunned into years of redevelopment and re trials
= GE engine supply has not stabilized for the F404IN20 , which is also a variant specific to the tejas.
= GE F414-HAL deal has hit cost negotiations
= AMCA timeline will stretch into the mid 2030s
= NO engine partner has been decided for the GTRE engine of AMCA
= MTAs aren't finalized
= CATS FF pushed to next year.
= TEJAS MK2 FF pushed to next year
= TEJAS MK1a induction pushed to sept.
= NO orders for major 1500 artillery gun requirement s , FRACTIONAL order for 300+ VAJRA and 309 ATAGS.
= NO Orders on WHAPS.
= NO updates on IMRH, TEDBF , HJT 36 , HLFT 42.
= NO orders for any major warships to sustain the capabilities of our docks.
= been 1200+ days since the last combat capable aircraft was inducted in IAF.
well you get the point.
your opponent is a 4.8x stronger economy , and more than that is numerically much much superior. you can argue on technology but their installed INDUSTRIAL CAPACITY dwarfs you.
so what are your options ?
MAD Doctrine
this is what protects you for now. till date. no major large scale war has occurred between 2 confirmed nuclear powers. that ain't a proxy war.
this doctrine will hold. but what will you do if china occupies a small piece of land ? you won't nuke them in return. or trigger the MAD doctrine.
what else option you have ?
CHOKEPOINTS
as per the current capability. i am of the opinion thar Indian Navy can successfully choke mellaca strait. yes. we have Brahmos ER and yes our ships are modern .
but what we don't have are any modern jets on our aircraft carriers. with both effectively operating Lemon jets in the form of Mig29k
and their submarine fleet is not one to underestimate.
im sure this will result in a large scale naval conflict. which i have no opinions for.
Asymmetry
Drones. Swarms , Strike packages, undercover assets, Regime Change, anything which bleeds more of their capacity and less of our rupees.
we are catching up but china already has a deep deep paw in all of the above matters. a lot of chinese tech is not publicly displayed. but ones like the drone / missile cannisters are disguised in Shipping containers can tell you a lot about how much they have invested in their doctrine. such containers can be put onto any random cargo ship heading for any major port from any of the chinese ports [ which are a lot ]. the threat is too much from these weapons.
lastly
Deterrence.
this is what came into my mind when i thought of writing this post. we MUST make sure that in any conventional war scenario , we hurt China so much that they don't even thing of invading,
Using conventional/ asymmetric capability to target their Economic centers, factories , defense industrial complexes, logistics , Fuel storages etc.
most importantly, the basis of this post.
DESTROY 3 GORGES DAM. how can it be done ? from AP , it's about 1500KM away.
we have already demonstrated our insane accuracy with the Brahmos and SCALP strikes during OP sindoor.
but this is a high target. deep inside china with multiple systems defending it thoroughly , the damn itself cannot be taken down by a single strike.
here is my opinion. make a LARGE version of the DRDO Ghatak. and make it capable enough to carry a hypersonic missile. a strike package of them should be enough.
rest. ICBMs , SUBSONIC Cruise missiles with long ass range. etc can also be good deterrence.
the end product is this. it's not that we have to do it. they should know that we are capable of doing it and we have a few loose screws with no screw driver in sight.