Recently, Indian Defense Minister Manmohan Singh falsely called southern Tibet an "inalienable part" of India and blamed China's activities for such activities as the reason for the deterioration of relations between the two countries. Even claiming that India has the ability to respond appropriately if someone tries to damage India's honor is nothing short of an insult and threat to China.
Not only that, Modi said in a recent speech that India will not only replace China, but also become a so-called "industrial center". However, India has not even solved the most basic land problem, so what qualifications does it have to talk about the so-called manufacturing center and industrial center? To this day, India's core industries are still in the hands of foreign capital.
Lieutenant Colonel Sandeep Dhawan, who served in the Indian Navy for 21 years, published an article entitled "China's Military Reunification is India's Opportunity," pointing out that India's chances for permanent peace are to recover Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (POK), then Aksai Chin, and even the whole of Tibet, and finally to swallow Xinjiang and divide it.
The Indian Army's Central Command issued an order to plan to form a new force in the Barreli area, and the scale of this force is not small at the army level, and the designated number is the 18th Army. According to Indian media reports, the 18th Army will be responsible for an area of about 500 kilometers in the middle of the Sino-Indian border.
There are already 200,000 Indian soldiers on the Sino-Indian border, and with the reorganized 18th Army, the number of Indian soldiers on the Sino-Indian border will reach as many as 300,000. At present, India has about 1.4 million active-duty soldiers, including the army, navy and air force, which means that nearly one-fifth of India's military strength is used to deal with China, which shows India's ambitions.
China has fewer troops deployed on the Sino-Indian border than India, and until the 2017 military reform, the PLA had been working with four group armies from the Chengdu and Lanzhou Military Regions, plus the Xinjiang and Tibet Military Regions, to deal with threats on the western border. The PLA's ground forces on the western border can commit at least 200,000 troops and 2,000 tanks.
And after the military reform, the PLA has been reintegrated, and the number of group armies has decreased, so which side will have an advantage?
In fact, the PLA's truly most threatening weapon on the Sino-Indian border is long-range rocket artillery, and both sides have significantly increased their firepower along the border since the outbreak of the border clashes in 2020. For the first time, China has brought long-range rocket artillery to the Tibetan Plateau.
The traditional tactics of using rocket artillery often require the entire battalion or even the entire regiment to fire at a small area in order to make up for the lack of accuracy with its numbers, and at the same time to give full play to the advantages of high rate of fire and strong firepower. The disadvantages of this method are that the cost is too high, it is difficult to organize and carry out the battle, the launch characteristics are large, and it is easy to be discovered and attacked by the enemy.
So later scientists combined the guidance system with rocket artillery and invented long-range rocket artillery, and in this regard, China can be said to be leading the world, and Chinese rocket artillery can reach a staggering distance of 600 kilometers. Far ahead of other countries, China has also earned the title of the king of rocket artillery.
It should be pointed out that rocket artillery cannot be intercepted, and the United States has put forward the so-called C-RAM concept, which is to intercept the opponent's rockets, artillery shells, and mortar shells to protect the security of overseas camps. However, the use scenario of C-RAM is the kind of sporadic artillery bombardment on the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan, and if the other side launches a large-scale salvo, the United States will not be able to stop it at all in the face of the artillery offensive of washing the ground.
On the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau is the PHL-191 box-type long-range rocket launcher, which is the leader in China's rocket artillery equipment, is considered the world's strongest rocket artillery, PHL-191 box-type long-range rocket launcher also adopts a modular design, a PHL191 has two launch box placements, the farthest strike distance can be about 600 kilometers, PHL191 can achieve 10 300mm rocket artillery assembly, far more than the six 227mm rocket launchers of the Seahorse. In addition, the PHL191 launcher can be equipped with 8 370mm rocket launchers, 2 610mm rocket launchers, and 2 750mm rocket launchers when the two launchers are combined. Different types of launch boxes can be mixed, and flexible firepower configuration can be realized according to different combat missions. As a result, when performing long-range and deep target strikes, it has the striking range and accuracy of tactical ballistic missiles.
Indian media "Eurasian Times" has reported that China's long-range rocket artillery. With a range of up to 500 kilometers, it can reach deep into the Indian hinterland from a high altitude and pose a considerable threat to high-value targets, while India's air defense system is difficult to defend against rocket artillery strikes.
It is also because it is equipped with hundreds of long-range rocket artillery that a powerful fire suppression has been formed. This enables the PLA to show strong combat effectiveness with its artillery strike system in the face of any invading enemy.
And not only that, J-20 fighters have been stationed on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, and judging from the number of pilots in front of the fighters, this time it should be a standard J-20 fighter group stationed on the plateau, with 12 J-20 fighters. It is worth noting that a standard hangar also appeared behind the J-20 fighter fuselage, which shows that this J-20 fighter group is going to be stationed at the plateau airfield for a long time.
Not only that, J-11 and J-16 heavy fighters, Air Police-500 early warning aircraft, and a number of Attack-2, Wuzhen-7, and Wuzhen-10 UAVs are stationed on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau.
For a long time, due to geographical reasons (high mountains and rugged terrain), the Indian Air Force has significantly better military deployment in the Sino-Indian border area than the PLA Air Force. India has built more than a dozen military airfields on the southern side of Tibet, while the number of airfields deployed on the mainland is only three, and with the arrival of advanced Chinese fighters such as the J-20 on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, the Indian Air Force's advantage has also been broken. You must know that under the radar detection and locking of the Air Police 500, with the stealth advantage of the J-20, it is difficult for the Indian Air Force to gain air supremacy in the hands of the PLA.