During the two sessions in March this year, the deputy commander of the Chinese People's Liberation Army Air Force responded to a reporter's question about "when the H-20 will be announced to the public", saying that "soon, you are waiting, you are proud," and "there are no technical bottlenecks, all problems have been solved." These few short sentences have attracted widespread attention at home and abroad, and this is the first time that the Chinese Air Force has officially revealed the progress of the development of the H-20 stealth bomber. Needless to say, the Americans are taking this news very seriously, and another country that is very worried about this news is India. Recently, former Indian Air Force Chief of Staff Anil Chopra wrote in the EurAsia Times that China's H-20 stealth bombers can easily penetrate the Himalayan border, and he expressed concern about whether India will be able to counter the H-20.
Chopra's view is clearly different from that of the incomparably confident Indian netizens on the Internet, who either believe that the H-20 is not stealthy at all and can be easily detected by Indian radar, or that the Indian Air Force can intercept the H-20 using Rafale fighter jets. Chopra pointed out that although the Rafale, Su-30MKI, and MiG-29 fighters of the Indian Air Force can carry cruise missiles for long-distance ground attacks, many Indians think that bombers are useless at all, but the three major powers of China, the United States, and Russia are all developing strategic bombers, and only China, the United States, and Russia have bombers in the world, which shows that bombers still have their advantages and are a symbol of superpowers, and India should also have them in the long run. India introduced British "Canberra" bombers in the fifties of the last century, and all of them were retired in 2007. At present, the United States has the largest bomber fleet in the world, and the B-52 bomber will be in service until the middle of this century, and the B-1B and B-2 bombers may all be retired around 2036 and will be replaced by the B-21 bomber under development; Russia currently has three types of bombers, Tu-95, Tu-22M and Tu-160M, and the number will remain stable or slowly increase, and the future PAK-DA stealth bomber project may be delayed; China currently only has H-6 bombers, but the range is too short to carry out intercontinental bombing missions, and only the H-20 may be comparable to the B-2.
Chopra believes that in addition to being able to carry out nuclear attack missions as a "three-in-one" nuclear deterrent, China's H-20 bombers can also carry out conventional attacks on ground targets, and if they carry anti-ship missiles, they can also pose a major threat to enemy ships, especially Indian Navy ships in the Indian Ocean, and may also become a laser weapon platform to carry out rich combat missions in the future. Chopra's speculation about the H-20's performance comes entirely from the network and doesn't have to be taken seriously. However, he also admitted that India actually does not have a good defense against the H-20, so he advocated that India "take offense as defense": Once India is threatened by the H-20 bomber, it can use Su-30MKI fighters carrying air-launched "BrahMos" anti-ship missiles and Rafale fighters carrying SCALP cruise missiles to block the Strait of Malacca from bases in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, and even reach the South China Sea after air refueling to carry out a "neck-pinching" operation against China.
But to Chopra's dismay, the Indian Air Force is grossly underfunded and shows no signs of abating even in the foreseeable future. The Indian parliament approved the Indian Air Force to equip 42 fighter squadrons, each with 18-20 fighters, but the Indian Air Force currently has only 31 squadrons, and the number is growing slowly, far less than the speed at which China is making advanced fighter jets. The immediate priority of the Indian Air Force is to provide adequate funding for the fifth-generation fighter project.
Chopra's views are much more objective than those on the Internet, but his analysis of the strategic dimension is still wishful thinking. In fact, it is enough for the mainland to use H-6 bombers against India, because it takes about 2,500 kilometers to reach any point of Indian territory from the Tibetan border of the mainland, which is completely within the combat radius of the H-6; Nearly half of India's population and more than sixty percent of its economy are concentrated in the Gangetic Plain in the north, and the farthest distance from the mainland-Tibet border to the entire Ganges Plain is only seven or eight hundred kilometers, and even the combat radius of the J-10 fighter can cover it; What is more, the nearest distance between the urban area of New Delhi, the capital of India, is just over 300 kilometers from the mainland's Tibetan border, and our army can completely cover New Delhi by firing long-range rocket artillery on the Tibetan border. Indians' fear that China will use the H-20 against it is purely unfounded: can you use a knife to kill chickens?