Hmm, they looked at Russian -Ukraine war and thought that it's gonna be same for us.
Do geniuses at IAF think our war with China gonna be some fist fighting where we take turns at each other? It's gonna be fast, precise and decided in days.
The only way for it to be over in days is if India capitulates quickly.
Already addressed this in previous posts on this same thread, go through them.
TLDR: Neither of us right now has the sheer technological or quantitative advantage (in terms of forward-deployed capabilities) needed to crush the other decisively & quickly. So if a war starts & China is unable to finish it quickly in its favour, they will have 2 options: either accept the stalemate with India (which carries with it the stigma of accepting India as a peer/equal of China, which PRC is adamant that we're not) OR take the war deep, which they would then be guaranteed to win as they're an industrialized power and we're not (yet).
Ukraine survived till date not because of its indigenous weapoms, its because they sourced weapons from outside.
During a long lasting war with china or against china pak coalition or China Russia coalition our production plants for weapons will be destroyed easily, we need external supplies to fight war then. So instead of purchasing only desi weapons we need to diversity weapoms to NATO countries.
For example Ukraine needs to send people to get trained in F16 when there was an offer of F16 from west. Had Ukraine operates F16 prior to the war, their pilots would have acquainted with F16 already and they could have simply borrow F16 from west directly fly that holly sh!t to Russia to destroy them.
Ukraine had little to no good air platforms before the war (save for the handful of old Flankers, Fencers etc.) They're air force was nearly dysfunctional.
We have a good number of airframes already. As long as we disperse during the build-up to active hostilities (which Ukraine also did, but it didn't matter cuz they had so few), they would last for at least a few months of intense sortie rate, which Ukraine could never put up. Our LCAs, M2Ks & Rafales would last much, much longer unfortunately we only have ~120 of them right now.
Support from US can be a nice to have, but cannot be counted upon (as Ukraine too is finding out now). So buying F16s just for the hope that they might be resupplied during a war would be quite foolish. Trump would choose a more favourable trade deal with China over resupplying India any day of the week. Not to mention, we can never build up a sufficiently large fleet that way.
Yeah, it's fine to get payloads from abroad in order to resupply faster in case our factories get bombed (and we're already doing that, most of our artillery & ammo is NATO-standard + we're procuring Javelin) cuz payloads are something that's gonna be constantly in rotation. They are like fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) during a war.
But platforms cannot be treated that way, not modern ones. We're not in WW2 or even early Cold War were building & supplying airframes was quick, cheap & simple. Modern 4.5 gens are extremely sophisticated & expensive. They're not easy to replace, or easy to produce rapidly.
The only realistic option is to build out sufficiently large numbers of aircraft designed with long-lasting engines & airframes, PRIOR to the war.
