Line of Actual Control (LAC) : India & Tibet Border Updates
- Thread starter Shashank
- Start date
You do resupply your troops, dont you? So you can resupply then with AA ammo as well.
A single MQ-9 costs 15 million. Even if I spend 1 million in AA ammo and old vintage guns to shoot down this plane, I am still golden.
AA guns also have radars.
Not really. If I shoot down enough drones, it will make such a warfare economically not worthwhile for adversary. BTW, payload capacity of a single drone is less, rather very less. 2-3 hellfire missiles or 2 500 pound bombs. Compare this to a bomber. A single drone is like a mosquito. It only makes sense if most of your drone make it back after a raid or a number of drones actually reach the target. If 6-7 out of 10 drones are shot down, then at even 10 million per drone (for instance for reaper drones) it is 60 million dollars gone. I doubt any millitary can keep taking such damage. BTW, at that kind of exchange, it becomes more expensive than sending a modern(ish) fighter-bomber.
Cheaper drones have even more limitation. Drones are essentially arial battle of yesterday (slow moving, limited manuverablity, high response time). Its the scale which makes them lethal. Put it against them by an effective AA of yesterday, and they are no longer viable.
Thats why they are called bullies, they try to bluff their way out. They are simply using the tactics they use on other smaller powers which cannot fight for more than a week, India can do substantial damage to them hence they are just barking all the time. I think their fear is more of economic where they fear sea lanes might be blocked rather than military. Militarily CCP wouldnt care who dies they can simply hide their causalities.
We should not officially declare it, instead we should start printing maps showing tibet and slowly change them. Chinese think they can play western mind game where they want to instill the idea tibet is chinese territory from ages. That is the reason why they go after ppl who even slightly question the territorial integrity. We need to build the counter narrative instead of doing official dancing. Propagating tibetan culture is one soft way of doing great damage.
exactly we are just giving away too much. Quid pro quo is what we should follow.
If they consider taiwan as renegade province we should apply the same logic against pakistan ask them to stop recognizing pakistan. It might sound farfetched but if you dont play the game then no point in blaming some one else.
if you are spread out too much to counter the drones so is your supply line. supplying them is going to be tough and if it is hit by drones then gud luck with it.
radars & vintage guns , you see they are not vintage enuf... your beaming radars will be first to go if they fire an anti-radiation missile. It simply screams hit me and also gives out location.
Thats the good reason to use drones, cheap ones not costly predators. They will not only be a big nuisance value but also effectively overwhelm the opposition. Even sending unarmed drones is good enuf to trigger fire from the ground. Chinese have good manufacturing base and they will have no problem manufacturing it cheap. Its better to lose 60% of drone in first of wave of attack and effectively disorient the enemy. They will simply do what missiles did in gulf war.
Radar with AA guns have a vintage of WW2. SCR-584 radar - Wikipedia
A HARM costs USD 280K+
A AGM-88-E cost USD 800K+
In comparison, the old radar and guns are a third in cost. Even less. Modern weapons are not cheap.
Cheap ones are even easier to hit because they don't fly high enough, they are slower and they carry minuscule and very rudimentary ordinances. You need a different kind of AA, the older kind. Not the missile based AA which is great for chasing down a maneuvering fighter or even a cruise missile.
Its even cheaper to make Ammos for those old gun and to maintain them. Their technology is very easy to replicate. Here India can out scale China. Simply because the things that it is working with are easier and cost lesser.
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They can overwhelm, hell anything can overwhelm but they will suffer more damage.
Am I the only one who thinks drone swarms as a real thing are years away.
Drones are not agile. It will be a turkey shoot. For drones to deploy a meaningful weapon, their size has to increase (unless you are going kamikaze)
If you make them big, the propulsion system costs go up more if you armor them. Making them in numbers to go on one way missions isnt a great idea.
Lastly having a computer controlled super agile drone is possible. But when you send 500 in a swarm, the effort to keep them agile increases greatly. Enough to overwhelm ground controllers and prohibitively costly to put such AI Onboard.
Drones are not agile. It will be a turkey shoot. For drones to deploy a meaningful weapon, their size has to increase (unless you are going kamikaze)
If you make them big, the propulsion system costs go up more if you armor them. Making them in numbers to go on one way missions isnt a great idea.
Lastly having a computer controlled super agile drone is possible. But when you send 500 in a swarm, the effort to keep them agile increases greatly. Enough to overwhelm ground controllers and prohibitively costly to put such AI Onboard.
Right from controlling to reporting a info , am I the only one to feel the significant improvement in our psyops . Looks like Feb 27 did taught us some good lessons on Infowar/Psyops .
The short term plan, there really is nothing.
The mid term plan, there's CIWS based on the AK-630 and there's DEW.
Against MALE and HALE, we need adequate modern SAMs, like SPYDER and Barak equivalent or better. Against small drones, right now, all we have is AAA.
The army has upgraded Shilkas and L70s while the air force has upgraded L70s, but requires replacement.
We will also need helicopters with AAMs.
Remember, sometimes back I said that India signed stupid treaties with these Chinese folks. We agreed on LAC without ever defining that LAC itself. Naturally, it makes it possible for Chinese to push the idea of LAC agreed based on any arbitrary definition.
Now why did this happen. This is because our diplomats and bureaucrats are stupid or they just don't care or both. The nuts and bolts of a treaty are worked out by these folks. The risks etc are highlighted by these folks. What politicians do is this : "I want a treaty to be signed with China during my visit or During the visit of Ding Dong Dee.". What is the language of the treaty, what is to be covered or not and how to negotiated is the duty of these morons called Diplomats and Bureaucrats. Somehow, someone in PMO/MEA/MoD dropped the ball in 80s or 90s and we are stuck with a treaty with "agreed to respect LAC" while LAC was NOT EVEN defined before. Heck Nehru disagreed with the term LAC in his time.
You don't simply do what your opponent is doing, you do what you need to do and what counter's opponent's moves. Opponent plays WingLoong (5 KM ceiling, 1000 KG payload ie weapons and sensors or WingLoong II 8 KM ceiling and similar payload as the earlier one) with pathetic speed and manuverablity, you deploy its counter ie AA guns which are cheaper. Now to support troops on ground with these platforms, you can do something else. May be more planes in ground support role. May be drones.
That's going to get very, very expensive, since AAMs are very, very expensive.
What we need is extremely cheap ways to bring down drones. The cheapest would be DEWs, while the next most cheap would be SAMs like the Iron Dome.
The Israeli Iron Beam has already been deployed as of this year, so it would make sense to introduce it alongside our SPYDERs for now. Preferably it is integrated with MRSAM and Akash as well. This would allow the protection of air bases and C&C nodes.
The army has planned for next gen tank APS with DEW to be integrated with some anti-PGM and anti-drone capability as a last line of defence for the FRCV. Similarly, the FRCV's main IFV will likely come with a sufficiently large cannon that can provide CIWS capability at longer ranges than the APS. Above that would be SPAD-GMS+DEW providing air defence at short range, all of it operating under the SRSAM/QRSAM and MRSAM. This will give the army a 5-tier air defence system. Right now we only have a 2-tier system and it's largely obsolete. And the two new tiers are specifically needed to counter small drones at extremely low altitudes, apart from helicopters, ATGMs etc.
Our lack of sufficient modern air defences is the reason why I've been saying that our best case for a war with China is 2023 and beyond. The IAF's air defence modernistion is still incomplete. Right now, we have made other areas vulnerable in the process of fortifying Ladakh.
