What do you think the different nuclear doctrins are that India and Britain need to adopt?

I can’t speak for the Brits, but they do not face a nuclear armed neighbor who views them as an existential threat. I think that that alone would frame their threat perception, and hence their nuclear doctrine, very differently.

So you would distribute your nuclear weapons and aircraft over the whole country? how many nuclear warheads would you keep apart dotted around everywhere? With the full confidence that they can be kept secure?

There is a difference between peace-time deployment and war-time posture. (And what about the cruise missiles for your long-range bomber force?)

As for the initial part of your post, Really depends on who is in power and who is facing you. Some people would take the view that if a nuclear weapon is used in war then its a case of the gloves being off. If a foe is willing to use nuclear weapons on your army to reduce your fighting skills there is nothing to say that he would not use nuclear weapons on your civilian centres further down the line.

The following is my opinion.
1) It has always been Pakistan’s strategy to hold on for long enough to get world powers to step in and diffuse an Indo-Pak conflict, rather than try to go for an out and out win.
2) It is my view that Pakistan would find it difficult do assert conventional superiority to counter Cold Start (i.e., shallow but quick thrusts).
3) Thus, Pakistan’s best strategy is to deter the thrusts asymmetrically, but not go directly to nuking a city. The “perfect” solution is a battlefield nuke. It will slow down offensive operations considerably and definitely get world leaders involved immediately. In contrast, nuking an Indian city would (a) forfeit any sympathy from the world community and (b) GUARANTEE a disproportionate response – there is no force on earth that can prevent India from retaliating on a massive scale

It would be a foolish general who would at that point turn the other cheek.

It would be an even more foolish general who didn’t allow himself graduated options between conventional weapons and ICBMs nuking population centers.

Getting back to the original point, for the air based detterent to be usefull and not a lame duck India needs to buy/make some long range bombers with cruise missiles with long range. fighters droping dumb bombs will not make anyone have sleepless nights.

A Sukhoi with a long range cruise missiles has quite significant range. If you want to hit something further than that (i.e., deep into China), your long ranged bomber will have to spend an enormous amount of time unescorted in very hostile IADS. So unless you are recommending buying B-2 at $1B/pop, the chances of a successful long range bomber strike in the Indian context are between slim and nothing.

Jonesy,

How do you see the role of the Indian IAC carriers?

As I see it, they appear to be some flavor of strike carrier and will probably rely on screens of P-17 and P-15A/B ships for AAW. Still, lacking dedicated IFR assets they seem like they might have a harder time assembling biggish strike packages in the air if too far away from the enemy coast. Also, lacking Hawkeye like AEW would have a harder time providing fleet defence if brought too close to the enemy coast, not to mention the issues that this will pose to the screens.

Being a n00b, I’m having a hard time wrapping my head around it. I’m clearly missing the big picture on Indian carrier doctrine and strategy. (Or is it as simple as relying on buddy refueling the MiG-29K and NLCAs?)

Phil, any more info on this ? I mean, in general what I’ve seen is that the back seaters are also pilots, not the half-wing that indicates navigators..so what does the back-seater do if he’s a navigator ? Or let me re-phrase the question- what is the Su-30MKI back-seater’s role ? And is the same role performed by pilots and navigators when they sit in the back-seat ? Since they may not fly the plane, isn’t their role that of a WSO invariably ?

Kramer, as nubrawarriors said, there isn’t that much known about this.

However, I seem to recall that the IAF views the back seater as the aircraft/mission commander, whereas the front seater was responsible for driving. So that would mean some combination of planning, weapons programming, co-ordination with other elements, etc. In practice, there is likely to be lots of overlap.

We can only guess.

Maskirovka,

You make some excellent points. You’ve convinced me that the IAF should dump the LCA and instead choose the MiG-21 Bison.

1) After all, who wants to rely on local manufacture and parts supply, when you can rely on foreign supply chains?
2) As you’ve pointed out, India can modify the MiG-21 locally. I’m sure they won’t have this modification and upgrade capability with LCA. In contrast, India will be able to indefinitely extend the total technical life of the Bison airframes much more economically.
3) By looking at existing LCA performance, we know for sure that Tejas Mk2 will also not have the performance of a MiG-21 Bison. I’m sure you’ve studied Tejas’s ITR, STR, Ps curves thoroughly.
4) The final nail in the coffin is that LCA has not been tested with all the weapons it will eventually carry and it is almost time for IOC.

At least the senior IAF Staff are on the same page as us. Hopefully they understand the folly of trying to develop your own fighter instead of using tried and tested designs from 1960s.

It’s armored glass. The Mi-28N and Apache cockpit glass have similar capability.

Ow.. what a little cutie! Looks way better than the single seater IMHO. Almost like a Mini-Rafale.. Must admit Im starting to fall for Tejas. Would be interesting to se what it can do on the world market in the future.

I agree — there’s a baby-elephant like cuteness aesthetic that it has. 🙂

USSR evaluation of captured F-5E

Cool — a MiG-28!! 😉

The cockpit cavity greatly increases the RCS. Also, since regular plexiglass is transparent to both radar and visible frequencies, the radar bounces off the pilots helmet, ejection seat, avionics displays, etc resulting in a large RCS.

The gold foil makes the plexiglass reflect radar away and also makes it behave like it is electrically continuous with the aircraft skin and lets the residual radar energy propagate through the aircraft reducing RCS.