"Don't look to India to counter China at least in the air." Topic

The US has strengthened it's friendship with India partially to act as a counter to China.

But India's military and especially it's airforces are in deep poo:

1. Long delayed equirement for nearly 200 light helicopters has just been cancelled.

2. The entire ASW helo fleet is obsolete and generally non-operational and ships often deploy without helos. Replacement process is mired in bureuacracy.

3. MRCA contract for 126 new Rafale fighters is stalled. Allocated budget looks like not even covered half of that number.

4. LCA Tejas service entry constantly being delayed. By 2020 only 40 interim limited capability Mk I's expected to be in service.

5. Su-30 deliveries are behind schedule because of incompetence of main contractor, Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL).

5. Because of 3.,4. and 5. , India's fighter fleet is shrinking. The most numerous fighter is still the MiG-21 in it's M, MF, bis and Bison variants. They're expected to serve to 2022 at least! The rest of the older virtually obsolete fleet includes 80 MiG-27 (phased out by 2020) and 140 Jaguars.

6. Only successful fighter projects are upgrade of 49 Mirage 2000 and 62 MiG-29s as well as acquisition of 46 carrier capable MiG-29K fighters.

7. Carrier fleet renewal and expansion is heavily delayed. "New" Russian built carrier has only entered service now after constant delays and indigenous one is years behind schedule.

8. Training fleet is in dire straights with HPT32 grounded and Kiran jet trainer insufficient. Heavily delayed projects to replace with BAe Hawk and PC-7 are only now starting to come to fruition.

9. HS748 transport replacement – stalled.

10. Some limited acquisitions of US transports have been successful – 10 C-17s and 13 C-130s (includes a replacement for a crashed example). However ageing An-32 and HS748 will continue to provide core tactical service.

11. Maritime patrol – a success story with acquisition of 8 P-8I Poseidons and upgrades of 5 Il-38 and 8 Tu-142s in interim.

12. AWACS slow introduction of 5 A50 and 3 EMB145.

13. Future fighter programs are either being cutback (PAKFA down to 144 airframes from 200) and AMCA being delayed.

Basically India's air power capability is not growing and there are serious concerns about it's ability to be able to counter both Pakistan and China.

The biggest issues are mindnumbing bureaucratic, idiotic indigenous content requirements, extremecorruption and budgetary issues.

The Pakistani air force is in a similar issue so the status quo is maintained there.

But the Chinese Air Forces are in ascendancy with numerous new jet fighters (J-10/-11/-16) introduced every year to replace older ones and 2 5th generation stealth fighters (J-20/-35) in the pipeline.

Don't look to the Pacific for counters either:

– Taiwanese Air Force is reaching a death spiral with no new aircraft entering service and at least 70 and possibly as many as 130 fighters out of 400 being withdrawn by 2020 without replacement.

- South Korea – F-4 and F-5 approaching end of lives by 2020 but not enough funding is available to replace all of them with F-35 (40 airframes ordered) or F/A-50 (60 currently ordered) and KFX years behind schedule. Indeed under current forecast, ROKAF shrinks by 100-140 tactical aircraft by 2020.

- Japan – Only 38 F-35s to be ordered. F-3 is years away from service and F-15 upgrade has been slow and a number of earlier F-15s are running out of service life.

So in other words…their air force is going through the same crap as a lot of our companies here when dealing with their call center "specialists?"…..

Did anyone really expect India to counter China?

No, not that I'm aware of.

Did anyone really expect India to counter China?

It's part of the overall US strategy to counter China. US even opened up assistance for Indian nuclear program as part of it.

Indians didn't really want to play ball explicitly:

ndtv.com/article/india/india-turns-down-us-plans-to-counter-china-228104

idsa.in/idsacomments/IndiaandUSRebalancingStrategyforAsiaPacific_asahgal_090712

But they tacitly are playing the game:

1. Indian land and air strategy is based on being able to fight Pakistan whilst deterring or even fighting China (a two front strategy).

2. India has been moving influence into South China Sea and conducting naval exercises with countries with issues with China such as Vietnam.

India is also expanding defense ties with Vietnam and Malaysia. Obviously this helps contain Chinese in South China Sea.

3. Basis of Indian naval strategy is control of Indian Ocean including Malacca Straits and Strait of Hormuz.

Some of the discussions here have focused on containing China's ability to project power into the region. This includes the so-called String of Pearls which is a number of Chinese friendly countries in the region where China has been expanding maritime capabilities such as ports.

However the Indians are struggling to put their money where their mouth is.

I didn't mention their naval capabilities which are a mixed bag. Their carrier aviation is so minimal but existant and is slowly expanding. Their surface force isn't the most modern but it's capable enough but it's lacking in integral helicopter capability. Their submarine force is in need of massive modernisation.

India is a bit of a joke. The French won a much publicized and hard fought fighter competition for a contract by beating competitors like the Typhoon, Gripen and Super Hornet and now the Indians "don't have the funds" for them.

Well, at least the French weren't the only ones burned. The Gripen 'won' a contract with the Swiss but the Swedes were left holding the bag too.

Goes to show that today's fiscal climate isn't conducive to expensive fighter purchases.

That does sound bad, though to be fair, they do have an operational carrier, with flyable aircraft for it, unlike many, so…..

A lot of other countries are in the same boat, or much worse off.

I am a bit surprised to read about all the delays, given how well off I presumed India to be financially, given all their expanding business markets there.

India is suffering hiccups with their economy. It's been growing very slowly (about 4.5% for last couple of years). That's slow for an emerging economy and especially compared to say China (7.7% in a "slow" year). Take away population growth and India has a net growth rate of mere 3.0% on a very low base)

This is partially due to the same problem afflicting military procurement – bureaucracy and corruption.

India's bureaucracy would scare the Byzantines. For example trade between various Indian states requires customs checks and expensive internal customs tariffs.

The Indians might be touted as a future superpower but they have so many structural issues compared to China or Brazil – insane bureaucracy, high illiteracy, cultural and linguistic differences (resulting in numerous simmering independence movements), religious strife and far less central control (which assisted East Asians countries with government directed market development).

It's why export based manufacturing never took off in India like it did in Asia and Latin America. Basically Indian conditions above but coupled with a massive University system meant that development opportunities were in white collar "back office" work. You don't have to deal with bureaucracy, poor road/rail infrastructure, illiterate populations, separatists etc when you're exporting phone calls and software.

However this type of development doesn't affect most Indians who aren't University educated unlike in China/Asia where export production means opportunities for common people.

The Chinese were also largely homogenous (mainly Han), reasonably educated (90% literacy thanks to communist education system) and far easily controlled by central government (just like in South Korea, Japan, Singapore and Taiwan – other success stories).

Large populations don't necessarily equal wealth if the right social, economic and political conditions aren't there.

And yet another Indian helicopter replacement program is cancelled:

defense-aerospace.com/articles-view/release/3/158060/india-scraps-third-helicopter-tender.html

Rafale contract seems to be dead in the water too with rumblings now coming of maybe looking at Eurofighters.

And now the PC-7 trainer program has been stalled:

business-standard.com/article/economy-policy/purchase-of-trainer-aircraft-deferred-future-in-limbo-114112900736_1.html

The only good news has been tentative approval of purchase of S-70B Seahawks and CH-47s as well as confirmed sale of a small number of AGM-84 Harpoon AShMs.

I say tentative for helo purchases because Indian bureaucracy tends to throw spanners in the work even for straightforward things like PC-7 purchase listed above.

online.wsj.com/articles/defense-deals-likely-on-agenda-as-indias-modi-visits-u-s-1411726479

The Indian military's biggest threats are not Pakistan or China. They are the Indian government and it's beyond useless bureaucracy that makes the USSR look like the epitome of efficiency.