China/India — PLAAF Against India — Attrition Through Tibet?

As per one report Chi­na had deployed 5,00,000 sol­diers on the Tibetan Plateau. Half of them were based on Sino-Indi­an bor­der. Four addi­tion­al Chi­nese Armies, each 60,000 strong were based in neigh­bour­ing Sinkiang and Cheng­du mil­i­tary dis­trict able to sup­port oper­a­tions against India by flank­ing attacks or pro­vid­ing fol­low on re-enforcements.

PLAAF will have mod­ern air­craft for both air defence and long range strike and Army sup­port. It will have around 9 AWACS / AEW&C, Air Refu­ellers, sur­veil­lance and Elec­tron­ic war­fare air­craft in sup­port. Space imagery will present good intel­li­gence on our tar­get sys­tems. The fight­ers will have mod­ern air to air mis­siles includ­ing beyond visu­al range active missiles

In 90s anoth­er report esti­mat­ed PLA field­ing 12–14 divi­sions in TAR, which could go up to 20 divi­sions. Now the like­ly max­i­mum could be around 30 divi­sions. If true this is real­ly a large force. It would be a daunt­ing chal­lenge for the Indi­an Army.

PLAAF is replac­ing its obso­lete com­bat air­craft fleet and weapon­ry with cur­rent 4th gen­er­a­tion fight­ers and mod­ern weapon­ry. In Tibet area its air­fields lie with­in 300 to 1,000 km from IAF bases. Most of the air­fields are at high ele­va­tion between 3,500 to 4,300 meters above sea lev­el. The table below gives details of these airfields.

There are a total of 14 air­fields of con­cern. How­ev­er increas­ing air refu­elling capa­bil­i­ty in future will increase their num­bers. PLAAF can deploy around 16 squadrons in these air­fields. They would deploy the best units here, unless our diplo­ma­cy can ensure simul­ta­ne­ous threats to Chi­na at oth­er fronts.

Out of 1,600 plus com­bat air­craft, around 400 air­craft are 4th gen­er­a­tion. Its old bombers car­ry­ing long range cruise mis­sile will be still effec­tive. Ground launched cruise mis­siles (GLCM) and TBMs will add to the strike pow­er. The table on the next page gives details. 

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Thus it is evi­dent that PLAAF will have mod­ern air­craft for both air defence and long range strike and Army sup­port. It will have around 9 AWACS / AEW&C, Air Refu­ellers, sur­veil­lance and Elec­tron­ic war­fare air­craft in sup­port. Space imagery will present good intel­li­gence on our tar­get sys­tems. The fight­ers will have mod­ern air to air mis­siles includ­ing beyond visu­al range active mis­siles. Strike air­craft will have PGMs. H‑6 will car­ry air launched cruise mis­sile of 1,400 km plus range. The high alti­tude of TAR will reduce bomb load to around one third that of sea lev­el. But today’s PGMs have reduced the required bomb load for tar­get destruc­tion sig­nif­i­cant­ly. Air refu­elling and high per­for­mance of Su-27, Su-30, and J‑10 will off­set alti­tude dis­ad­van­tage to quite an extent. TBMs and GLCMs will not be affect­ed much.

The tar­gets on Chi­nese side, destruc­tion of which could cause pain, are locat­ed far away from the bor­der. The heart­land of Chi­na, East and South-east Chi­na starts at an aver­age dis­tance of 1,000–1,500 km from our air­fields. The heart­land is around 2,500–3,000 km. They are far too dis­tant for air pow­er to destroy as it exists today in the IAF

Chi­nese air­fields and oth­er logis­tics relat­ed areas will have pletho­ra of man­u­al and auto­mat­ic anti-air­craft artillery. In addi­tion there will be MAN­PADs, close and medi­um range SAMs. Radar cov­er will be exten­sive at medi­um and high altitude.

Impli­ca­tion for India

Time­ly intel­li­gence input on Chi­nese build-up and its war inten­tion will be cru­cial for Indi­an time­ly response. First India will need to ensure that Pak­istan and Bangladesh fronts remain dor­mant. Use of diplo­mat­ic means, deter­rence means etc. will be required. This alone will per­mit India to max­imise its Army and Air Force for Chi­nese fronts. Army’s mobil­i­sa­tion would be crit­i­cal if the need to defend at the bor­der itself is a must. It is instruc­tive to see an outsider’s view of our mobil­i­sa­tion. Edward Luce, with respect to our mobil­i­sa­tion con­se­quent to attack on our par­lia­ment stat­ed, “ … watch­ing India’s rust­ing mil­i­tary hard­ware chug past us remind­ed me of what I had read about the prepa­ra­tions for the First World War: mobil­i­sa­tion had fol­lowed the dic­tates of Euro­pean rail­way timeta­bles. Now India’s mobil­i­sa­tion, which was lat­er dubbed ‘coer­cive diplo­ma­cy’ was occur­ring at the state­ly pace of the Indi­an Railways.” 

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China’s aim would be to put India in a sec­ondary sta­tus. A mil­i­tary defeat along with eco­nom­ic and indus­tri­al dis­rup­tion would be the obvi­ous aim. Large scale ter­ri­to­r­i­al occu­pa­tion most unlike­ly. To make mil­i­tary defeat con­vinc­ing cut­ting off north-east India at Chumbi Val­ley-Sil­lig­uri cor­ri­dor would be ide­al. North-east India could be restored to India after impos­ing humil­i­at­ing terms in Ladakh region. In worst case Chi­na may not revert Arunachal

IAF down to 30 com­bat Squadrons is stretched on two fronts. Cater­ing for even bare min­i­mum air defence on west­ern bor­ders, IAF will be bare­ly able to match PLAAF. An enhanced IAF on the oth­er hand with inher­ent faster mobil­i­sa­tion and deploy­ment with­out the accli­ma­ti­sa­tion need, offers the best hope of con­cen­trat­ing offen­sive pow­er at places of our choos­ing. In future the gap between IAF and PLAAF will increase fur­ther unless urgent steps are ini­ti­at­ed at once. IAFs SAMs are way too old. New ones are nowhere on the hori­zon in required num­bers. Though we do have lim­it­ed air refu­elling capa­bil­i­ty and few AWACS, it is woe­ful­ly inadequate.

Our air­bas­es and Army for­ma­tions along with impor­tant areas will require sound air defence along the 4,000 km plus bor­der. Chi­nese could also ingress from the Myan­mar, Nepal and Bhutan bor­der. The Himalayan moun­tains severe­ly lim­it the detec­tion by ground based radars. This makes avail­able warn­ing time total­ly inad­e­quate for reac­tion by air­craft based on ground alert. Air­borne air defence 24 hours a day would require phe­nom­e­nal resources. Nobody can afford it. This makes AWACS essen­tial for survival.

Dur­ing Gulf war-91, MNF employed 3 AWACS simul­ta­ne­ous­ly on a 1,000 km front. To keep 3 AWACS always air­borne they need­ed to do 3 trips each of 9–10 hours. To fly 9 sor­ties each day MNF deployed 14 AWACS and 3 Nim­rods. Thus to cater for our 4,000 km front we would need 56 AWACS. This would also cov­er the bor­der at Myan­mar, Bhutan and Nepal. On the face of it this may seem too cost­ly, but prop­er analy­sis would show it not to be so. Because with AWACS giv­ing us a warn­ing peri­od of about min­i­mum 30 min­utes we will be able to scram­ble fight­ers from ground alert. This would also dras­ti­cal­ly reduce the required num­bers of air defence fight­ers, the pilots and oth­er sup­port staff and equip­ment. PLAAF will be denied air dom­i­nance, rather this is the only way for IAF to gain and main­tain con­trol of air. Con­trol of the air is the fun­da­men­tal require­ment to defeat Chi­nese mis­ad­ven­ture. In addi­tion the AWACS cov­er in TAR will pro­vide immense safe­ty to our strike air­craft from PLAAF fight­ers, keep­ing attri­tion with­in accept­able lim­it. If we do not keep attri­tion under con­trol then again we would lose the war. Remem­ber slaugh­ter of Air Forces fly­ing with­out AWACS cov­er in recent times.

As per one report Chi­na had deployed 5,00,000 sol­diers on the Tibetan Plateau. Half of them were based on Sino-Indi­an bor­der. Four addi­tion­al Chi­nese Armies, each 60,000 strong were based in neigh­bour­ing Sinkiang and Cheng­du mil­i­tary dis­trict able to sup­port oper­a­tions against India by flank­ing attacks or pro­vid­ing fol­low on re-enforcements

For tar­gets fur­ther inside, we need to employ our longer range SSMs and TBMs in con­ven­tion­al mode. If we want to use strike air­craft for deep­er tar­gets, then we would need to pro­vide air defence escorts, as Amer­i­cans learnt dur­ing World War II after suf­fer­ing 18–25 per cent attri­tion in Europe. They had to sus­pend the bomb­ing cam­paign for 6 months till long range escorts were pro­duced by Amer­i­can indus­try. In any case in our sce­nario worth­while tar­gets lie beyond 1,000 km. We need to con­cen­trate on inter­dict­ing sup­plies at rear and sup­port of Army in bat­tle area. These should be the tar­get selec­tion in a war of lim­it­ed objectives.

Chi­nese avi­a­tion indus­try and PLAAF are mod­ernising at an increas­ing­ly rapid rate. Their doc­trine has acquired the offen­sive dynamism learn­ing from US expe­ri­ence. Their train­ing, which was below par in the past, is improv­ing no doubt with also help from PAF. There­fore, there is lit­tle time for us to lose. 

About the Author
Air Vice Mar­shal A K Tiwary (retd) — The writer com­mand­ed a MiG-29 Squadron in late 80s. His var­i­ous com­mand and staff appoint­ments like Chief Oper­a­tions Offi­cer at a major Wing, oper­a­tional plan­ning at Com­mand lev­el, Direc­tor Con­cept Stud­ies at Air HQ, Com­mand of a major fly­ing base, Head of the Train­ing Team (Air) at Defence Ser­vice Staff Col­lege and Senior Direct­ing Staff (Air) at Nation­al Defence Col­lege have con­ferred a rich prac­ti­cal expe­ri­ence. The air staff course at DSSC Welling­ton (TN), Com­mand and Air War Course at the Air Uni­ver­si­ty, Maxwell Air­base, Mont­gomery (USA), all induct­ed and accel­er­at­ed his inter­est in air war stud­ies. After pre­ma­ture retire­ment he now flies as Com­man­der on Boe­ing 737–800 NG. 

Note by the Author:
It is not a tar­get rich area for air strikes. The road-rail net­work is far more exten­sive in Tibet com­pared to Indi­an side. Gen­er­al­ly Chi­nese mil­i­tary posts look down at Indi­an posts locat­ed at low­er alti­tudes. The Indi­an side is marked by steep climb towards the bor­der and prone to fre­quent land­slides. The logis­tics build-up and / or troop’s relo­ca­tion from one area to anoth­er is high­ly time con­sum­ing and sea­son­al due to cli­mat­ic com­pul­sions. The bor­der is 4,000 km plus 

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