People's Liberation Army Air Force : News & Discussions
- Thread starter Aashish
- Start date
They are doing really impressive work.
HAL guys are busy in making brochures, ppts.
Clearest look yet at the new KJ-3000 AEW&C, the platform aircraft is a Xian Y-20
There you go. KJ-3000 has a range of 1000 kms against non stealth aircrafts. No clue how genuine it is but we ought to treat it as such .
If the Chinese are preparing to go up against the US which they are , it stands to reason whatever their preparations will be of an order bigger & better than what they would manage if they were benchmarking their strengths solely against India.
Which is to say these capabilities thus built which if deployed against India will be of an order of magnitude much bigger & better than anything we've factored in our preparations & we aren't even doing the basics & if we are we're certainly going about it in our own style at our own sweet time.
Thus China acquires a double edge in their prospective operations against India - the fact that their arms are geared to take on the US & the fact that we haven't done much to take them on . That's also a double whammy for us.
Why wouldn't the Chinese be confident they can prevail over us in a swift sharp war ?! This is for the benefit of newbies here who either think the Chinese won't go up against us or if they do they're going to get it good.
We haven't been able to decide a platform for our AWACs. And IAF the main stakeholder who oftens cry we are losing squadron strength itself is delaying negotiations with Airbus. So you can guess how nonchalant our mindset have been even though a sword is hanging over our head. It's not just MoD but both HAL & IAF who are themselves responsible for this mess.
Anyways is that an official brochure? Because I don't really trust Chinese OSINT claims, they often over exaggerate. I couldn't find any thing about the radar at all in any reputable sources. But yeah regardless of what could be the range, they are rapidly building their strength to go against US and thus they will have an edge over us as well. And that should be concerning for our policymakers.
Last edited:
He forgot to list H20 stealth bomber.
It's not an edge they have over us it's a mountain. How to get over this mountain remains to be seen.
It is a tragedy that everything has been left to HAL and MoD. India could have worked on steadily moving R&D and Production to Indian Manufacturers whether via JVs or through PPP. The govt. is still complacent and working at its own leisurely speed. PSUs around the world are not exactly known for their speed and nimbleness much less in a complicated place like India where there are N number of additional intricacies are involved. IAF itself cannot avoid some blame.
It's very much possible. What we lack is ambition and intent. We are just not in a serious mood for now to confront China. Most of our strategy is still centred around Pakistan ngl. But that's partially because of the constant engagement by Pakistan with us. Unless some kind of small scale kargil like war happens with China, I don't see Indian adminstration going aggresive on this. Though, I am sure we can fill a lot of that gap in next 10-15 years.
Last edited:
It's not really just a fault of PSUs. Our own private industry didn't came to participate when the MoD kept floating tender for a private lead in AMCA programme. Even for that RTA-90, there have been barely any interests from our own private players. It's because of the nature of the business, it's very risky. And they certainly didn't had enough capabilities or infrastructure. It takes time to develop those. Even if our private sector has capabilities unless they are provided a safety net they won't participate. PPP is easier said than done in India. It will takes it time but I think private players are slowly moving towards aerospace. TASL, L&T, etc can make jet as long as government will provide them with order. I'm optimistic on this because I see our industry going on right direction.
China has a sense of urgency, they are a serious and determined country. India is not a serious country at all. But when you look at the strategic situation of both, you realize why.
China is surrounded by:
1.) Japan, very advanced country with a strong military, huge US presence.
2.) Korea, also very advanced with a strong military, huge US presence.
3.) Taiwan, very advanced country with formidable military capability.
4.) Phillipines, neither advanced nor strong, but has a substantial US presence,
5.) The largest, most effective, most experienced, most technologically advanced fighting force in human hisotry: the US Military
All 5 of the above are within 1,000 km of China and they are enemies of China. Meanwhile, India is surrounded by:
1.) A failed state with nukes, whose army indulges more in buying properties and running pizza chains rather than fighting.
2.) An emerging superpower far stronger than itself but which sends soldiers armed with weapons from 1500s due to some border agreement.
3.) Tiny, weak, volatile hellholes who can literally pose a greater threat to themselves rather than to India.
Maybe if India and US were rivals to the extent US had a nuclear CBG parked in Bay of Bengal, you would see AMCA, Super Sukhoi, hypersonic weapons etc earlier.
Yeah, point number 2 didn’t quite carry enough weight to really make us take things that seriously. I sometimes wonder if, post-Galwan, someone advised our leadership that the real fight moving forward wouldn’t be a conventional war, but an economic one. It’s highly speculative, of course, but looking at how things have unfolded, it does seem like they’re working with that assumption, that a conventional conflict isn’t likely anytime soon, and the real battleground will be the economy. That’s probably why we’ve seen them more active on that front lately (PLI, KABIL, NCMM, Deep ocean research, etc), though how effective those efforts are is a different matter altogether, one I’d rather not get into here.
This is actually evidence that all older AWACS are limited by its platform. The lack of access to western civil aircraft or a proper transporter like Il-76 was the reason.