Newbie Corner & Military Miscellaneous

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brar
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Re: Newbie Corner & Military Miscellaneous

Post by brar »

Yup it's used for Camouflage and it's called Mitznefet. It's basically designed to break up the outline of the helmet.
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Re: Newbie Corner & Military Miscellaneous

Post by CalvinH »

OK thanks. What does the following mean/achieves?
brar wrote: It's basically designed to break up the outline of the helmet.
brar
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Re: Newbie Corner & Military Miscellaneous

Post by brar »

let me see if I can explain properly:

It is designed to disrupt the shadows of the helmet during combat. It basically does the same job as any other camouflage but it just looks different. In the the wilderness any combatant will most likely look for a helmet shape to identify the target. If you remember world war 2 the Allies would ID the Germans from there helmets. Now the Palestinians and Hamas started using that technique so the IDF forces adapted the Mitznefet.

Militaries around the world use the camouflage technique a lot nowadays. Even our forces use this technique in Rajasthan.
sum
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Re: Newbie Corner & Military Miscellaneous

Post by sum »

Militaries around the world use the camouflage technique a lot nowadays. Even our forces use this technique in Rajasthan.
Please do post a pic of our forces having such a scheme!!!
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Re: Newbie Corner & Military Miscellaneous

Post by Lalmohan »

shameekg wrote:A question for all. If you have seen the various IAF bases, most have a single runway as opposed to two that most other countries seem to have. Some bases close to the border have this too. Any particular reason for this?
most military and civil airfields the world over only have one runway, sometimes they have 2 crossing runways - usually of different lengths, in case the wind is coming from right angles. most dual parallel runways tend to be in major civil airports - one tends to be for takeoff, one for landing

a purely military airfield has little or no use for two parallel runways
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Re: Newbie Corner & Military Miscellaneous

Post by vivek_ahuja »

Lalmohan wrote:a purely military airfield has little or no use for two parallel runways
Then what about battle damage?

Airfields in China, for example (Info based on internet images) have two runways in many cases or extremely long ones in case they have only one (Of course they also have a bunch of others that have only one sufficient length runway). The idea is that if one suffers damage during wartime, fighters at the airbase have another stretch to take off from. This makes the enemy's job of airbase denial that much more difficult. Having sufficient length single runways to me sounds more of avoiding cost of construction and maintenance rather than battle prowess. But then again, that's just me perhaps.

-Vivek
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Re: Newbie Corner & Military Miscellaneous

Post by Hiten »

Were the Su-30 MKIs involved in a DACT engagemet with the Typhoons durign their excercise?

Did not find any link to show that they did

If yes, can anybod please provide the link, preferably a non-forum link

Thanks
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Re: Newbie Corner & Military Miscellaneous

Post by Shameek »

vivek_ahuja wrote:
Then what about battle damage?
That was my point too. One would think a forward air base would take battle damage into consideration. One bomb/missile on target can put the runway out of business for a critical amount of time.
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Re: Newbie Corner & Military Miscellaneous

Post by Rahul M »

the criss crossed runways like the one at lohegaon are even more susceptible IMHO.
one good hit at the junction and both runways are out of use.
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Re: Newbie Corner & Military Miscellaneous

Post by HariC »

most of the airfields that have criss crossing runways essentially operates only one of them. The second cross runway is non-functional. or in disuse

the criss-crossing runways are a legacy of the british - most of these airfields have been expanded from World war two era airfields.

in an emergency situation - aircraft will land on the taxi track or divert to an alternate airfield. it requires great coordination for them to knock out all the airfields at the same time.
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Re: Newbie Corner & Military Miscellaneous

Post by HariC »

another thing i discovered is that these runways are really wide - a skilled pilot can use just half the width of the runway . you would need two bombs / direct hits or a bomb that smacks right down in the center (width wise) to make a runway unoperable. reaquires a skilled paki :P to do that.
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Re: Newbie Corner & Military Miscellaneous

Post by Lalmohan »

a well aimed 1000lb'er or a cluster munition would shut down all your runways quite easily. the key is not to let the field be struck and if it is, to clear it quickly

the runways in china (i.e. Tibet) are extra long because of the very high altitude they are at and the inability of aircraft to generate sufficient thrust in those conditions to make normal take offs, particularly if carrying warloads
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Re: Newbie Corner & Military Miscellaneous

Post by HariC »

a well aimed 1000lb'er or a cluster munition would shut down all your runways quite easily. the key is not to let the field be struck and if it is, to clear it quickly
Lalmullah, dropping a well aimed 1000lber would need it to be a PGM. and to use a PGM, you need to have superiority of the skies - which I very much doubt the pakis will have over airfields deep in india. on the other hand if they resort to low level bombing, dropping a 1000lber on the dot is very difficult.

runways will be shut down - there is no doubt about it. but question is - how long will it be shut down? 2 hrs? 4 hrs? 8 hrs?. can the enemy maintain the pressure constantly to shut it down beyond 8 hours? during the time a runway is down, the airfield will get support from nearby airfields. in a cluster of three to four airfields, imagine how much air effort the pakis will need to supress all the airfields.

plus you have the dozens of civil airfields which can be used for fighters in a crunch. enough to give headches to any planner.
Lalmohan
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Re: Newbie Corner & Military Miscellaneous

Post by Lalmohan »

HariC, you are quite right in that the pakis cannot really sustain the ops to shut down our airfields. Nor do they have strategic bombers to do the job... the interested reader is urged to search for Blackbuck Missions on google :)
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Re: Newbie Corner & Military Miscellaneous

Post by vivek_ahuja »

HariC and Lalmohan sirs,

Just so I understand what you are saying: the single length runways are fine in India on the assumed basis that the Pakis or Chinese etc will not be able to deliver a knockout blow (or maintain pressure on a damaged airbase) to an airfield as a further assumption of assured Indian superiority of the skies?

I don't know about others, but I would rather have the additional redundant infrastructure and be on the safe side than be told the above statement and skirt on the edge.

But that's just me, I guess. :)

On a sidenote:
the runways in china (i.e. Tibet) are extra long because of the very high altitude they are at and the inability of aircraft to generate sufficient thrust in those conditions to make normal take offs, particularly if carrying warloads
Yes sir, I am aware of that, and I didn't mean those airbases. I guess I should have pointed that out in my post.

-Vivek
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Re: Newbie Corner & Military Miscellaneous

Post by Rahul M »

I was more concerned about chinese missile attacks, especially in the NE.
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Re: Newbie Corner & Military Miscellaneous

Post by vivek_ahuja »

Rahul M wrote:I was more concerned about chinese missile attacks, especially in the NE.
Yeah. That's a sector whose vulnerability can give shivers to anyone analyzing a worst case scenario. Airbase infrastructure redundancy is the least we can for the NE sector!

-Vivek
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Re: Newbie Corner & Military Miscellaneous

Post by Shameek »

I agree that Pakistan cannot probably keep our runways shut down for long. But even one lucky strike could put a squadron out for a few hours. And that might prove critical.
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Re: Newbie Corner & Military Miscellaneous

Post by HariC »

Rahul M wrote:I was more concerned about chinese missile attacks, especially in the NE.
I remember having a similar conversation some months back. Assuming it will be a conventional war (if it is nuke then airfields are the least of our worries)

what missiles will they use? how accurate are these? how many are needed to keep an airfield like guwhati down for 24 hours. ? multiply that by the number of major airfields (chabua, jorhat, tezpur, dinjan, kumbhirgram, hasimara, bagdogra, panagarh, kalaikunda, dum dum, imphal, kohima, agartala (I am not going into Bihar or UP)... phew). add to that the radar, SAM, army targets they need to neutralise - now how many missiles / regiments do they need?.

IAF airfields have runway recovery teams available - to quickly patch in holes, clear UXBs, clear mines etc. how badly does a runway need to be hit to neutralise the team's effort?

it would make sense to do an 'exercise' where we take real world figures of the chinese missile holdings,, their accuracy, the targets that they have, and calculate how much effort is needed to totally knock out all the airfields - that is somethign the US could do with its overwhelming ECMs and carrier fleets. But can the Chinese do the same?
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Re: Newbie Corner & Military Miscellaneous

Post by HariC »

I don't know about others, but I would rather have the additional redundant infrastructure and be on the safe side than be told the above statement and skirt on the edge.
There are 200+ airfields all over India (Military , Civil, Disused) - and it is fair to expect that some of these form the redundancy that we are demanding.

The following are the number of airfields in India in usage (Military + Civil = 110~) along with runway length in feet (ordered descending)
Delhi Indira Gandhi Intl 12500
Chennai Chennai Intl 12000
Srinagar Srinagar Ab 12000
Calcutta Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose Int 11900
Mumbai Chhatrapati Shivaji Intl 11400
Goa Dabolim Navy 11200
Cochin Cochin Intl 11100
Trivandrum Trivandrum 11100
Arkonam Arkonam 11000
Bangalore Bangalore 10800
Nagpur Nagpur 10500
Ozar Ozar 9800
Jodhpur Jodhpur AB 9500
Amritsar Amritsar 9100
Pathankot Pathankot AB 9100
Agra Agra Ab 9000
Ahmedabad Ahmedabad 9000
Baghdogra Baghdogra AB 9000
Bareilly Bareilly AB 9000
Chandigarh Chandigarh Ab 9000
Gorakhpur Gorakhpur Ab 9000
Guwahati Guwahati 9000
Hyderabad Hyderabad 9000
Imphal Tulihal 9000
Jorhat Jorhat AB 9000
Kanpur Chakeri AB 9000
Gwalior Maharajpur Ab 8900
Ranchi Ranchi 8900
Pune Pune Ab 8300
Bhuj Bhuj 8200
Dundigul Dundigul Iaf Academy 8200
Jamnagar Jamnagar AB 8200
Vadodara Vadodara 8100
Allahabad Allahabad 7600
Calicut Karipur 7600
Aurangabad Aurangabad 7500
Car Nicobar Car Nicobar Ab 7500
Coimbatore Coimbatore 7500
Indore Indore 7500
Jaipur Jaipur 7500
Tirupati Tirupati 7500
Udaipur Udaipur 7400
Bhubaneswar Bhubaneswar 7300
Dimapur Dimapur Ab 7300
Prasanthinilayam Sri Sathya Sai 7300
Chakulia Chakulia 7200
Lucknow Lucknow 7200
Varanasi Varanasi 7200
Panagarh Panagarh 7100
Patna Patna 6900
Bhopal Bhopal 6700
Yelahanka Yelahanka Ab 6700
Jabalpur Jabalpur 6500
Raipur Raipur 6400
Bhavnagar Bhavnagar 6300
Jammu Jammu 6100
Jharsuguda Jharsuguda 6100
Tanjore Tanjore 6100
Tiruchirappalli Tiruchirappalli 6100
Agartala Agartala 6000
Cochin Cochin 6000
Dibrugarh Dibrugarh 6000
Khajuraho Khajuraho 6000
Rupsi Rupsi 6000
Salem Salem 6000
Shillong Barapani 6000
Vishakhapatnam Vishakhapatnam 6000
Bilaspur Bilaspur 5900
Madurai Madurai 5900
Tambaram Tambaram 5900
Silchar Silchar 5800
Port Blair Port Blair 5700
Rajahmundry Rajahmundry 5700
Satna Satna 5700
Vijayawada Vijayawada 5700
Warangal Warangal 5700
North Lakhimpur Lilabari 5400
Rajkot Rajkot 5400
Mangalore Mangalore 5300
Jogbani Jogbani 5000
Kandla Gandhidham 5000
Panna Panna 5000
Ludhiana Ludhiana 4800
Belgaum Belgaum 4700
Gaya Gaya 4500
Kamalpur Kamalpur 4500
Keshod Junagadh 4500
Porbandar Porbandar 4500
Delhi Safdarjung 4400
Kolhapur Kolhapur 4400
Mysore Mysore 4400
Jhansi Jhansi 4200
Sholapur Sholapur 4200
Aizwal Turial 4100
Nanded Nanded 4100
Akola Akola 4000
Muzaffarpur Muzaffarpur 4000
Pondicherry Pondicherry 4000
Rourkela Rourkela 4000
Agatti Agatti 3900
Dehradun Dehradun 3700
Mumbai Juhu 3700
Malda Malda 3600
Pantnagar Nainital 3600
Ratnagiri Ratnagiri 3600
Raxaul Raxaul 3600
Shimla Shimla 3600
Cooch Behar Cooch Behar 3500
Kanpur Kanpur 3500
Jamshedpur Jamshedpur 3400
Kailashahar Kailashahar 3300
Pasighat Pasighat 3300
Dunakonda Dunakonda 3000
Hyderabad Nodirgul 3000
Shella Shella 3000
Khandwa Khandwa 2900
Behala Behala 2800
Deesa Deesa 2800

A MiG 29 can operate off a 3000 foot runway (generous estimate)
A MiG-21 probably needs a 4000 foot runway to be on the safeside

We can list out the operable airfields in the east and start from there
brar
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Re: Newbie Corner & Military Miscellaneous

Post by brar »

sum wrote: Please do post a pic of our forces having such a scheme!!!
I couldn't find any pictures in Rajasthan but here are some from Kashmir:

Image

Image
Rahul M
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Re: Newbie Corner & Military Miscellaneous

Post by Rahul M »

I'm painting the worst possible doomsday scenario in NE :

#1 The above list is misleading since many of the list are inoperable/inactive. panagarh for instance probably hasn't seen a landing since WW2. behala is inactive for more than a decade now and I doubt if even the residents of malda are aware of an airstrip there.
This is just in bengal area. Others familiar with the local areas would probably find more such.

#2 practically, for defence of the NE you can only consider air strips in north bengal and beyond.
bases in the bengal plains won't count as overflight of BD isn't certain.
how many from the above would make that list in this case ?
let's see :
Guwahati Guwahati 9000
Imphal Tulihal 9000
Jorhat Jorhat AB 9000
Agartala Agartala 6000
Dibrugarh Dibrugarh 6000
Rupsi Rupsi 6000
Shillong Barapani 6000
Silchar Silchar 5800
North Lakhimpur Lilabari 5400
Aizwal Turial 4100
Shella Shella 3000
NOTE : not all are IAF bases and the runway lengths in most cases aren't good enough to operate fighters/heavy transports in case of a hit runway.
to compare from wiki :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_In ... ir_Command
btw, that list has some mistakes, for example barrackpore which isn't totally inactive is not on the list.

#3non IAF bases don't mean much anyway, unless India gets a long and reliable warning(unlikely) of chinese intent, aircraft won't be spread out over these air fields. and if the runway is hit the entire fleet stationed there is out of action.

#4 PLA 2nd artillery holds some 1000 SRBMs/MRBMs. and we have to assume that sub munitions would be available for runway denial. even for a comparatively inaccurate missile(CEP >100m), a salvo of five(say) armed with cluster munitions would pose a very real threat to take out an air-strip. given the numbers they can well afford to have follow on attacks to disrupt any repair activities.
this is without even counting the cruise missiles in their arsenal.

#5 a probable scenario would likely see such an anti-infrastructure missile strike against air bases, army depots, bridges, radar stations followed by massive air attacks on aircrafts on the ground, radar/SAM stations from a/c in the southern chengdu MR, overflying burma.

#6 in case of a surprise attack the PLAAF can have numerical and aerial superiority over NE in the current circumstances.

#7 remember that given the numerical and firepower superiority of the PLA over IA, the IAF may well be the trump card.
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Re: Newbie Corner & Military Miscellaneous

Post by Sontu »

vivek_ahuja wrote:HariC and Lalmohan sirs,

Just so I understand what you are saying: the single length runways are fine in India on the assumed basis that the Pakis or Chinese etc will not be able to deliver a knockout blow (or maintain pressure on a damaged airbase) to an airfield as a further assumption of assured Indian superiority of the skies?

I don't know about others, but I would rather have the additional redundant infrastructure and be on the safe side than be told the above statement and skirt on the edge.

But that's just me, I guess. :)

-Vivek
No Vivek,
It's to not you are alone supporting the above idea..even mee too would like to have additional redundant infrastructure and be on the safer side..specially after looking Chinese and Pak Air bases..

Also please look at how PAf is using bunch of trees to hide the parked fighters in some of their airbases..instead of parking in open termac or herdend shelters.

Please look at some of Chinese Airbase..which are having hills around and they have dug hardend caves in those hills to park their strike aircrafts like J-7s...these shelter can not even be destroyed by bunker blasters also...so well made.

Regards,
Last edited by Sontu on 06 Jan 2009 02:14, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Newbie Corner & Military Miscellaneous

Post by HariC »

I'm painting the worst possible doomsday scenario in NE
in such a worst case, I would give a fig about BD and Bhutan sensibilities and bring all my airfields in Bihar, WB into the fore - - tough luck ;). I should also be allowed to bring in my best case abilities of activating unused airfields and runway repair crews :D
not all are IAF bases and the runway lengths in most cases aren't good enough to operate fighters/heavy transports in case of a hit runway.
They may not be optimum, again invoking the worse case scenario, the IAF will force itself to use some of the runways as secondary landing grounds if needed.

How many airfields do we have?
Guwahati Guwahati 9000
Imphal Tulihal 9000
Jorhat Jorhat AB 9000
Agartala Agartala 6000
Dibrugarh Dibrugarh 6000
Rupsi Rupsi 6000
Shillong Barapani 6000
Silchar Silchar 5800
North Lakhimpur Lilabari 5400
Aizwal Turial 4100
Shella Shella 3000
I will add, Chabua, Dinjan, Hasimara, Baghdogra, Tezpur , Khumbirgram, Panagarh - all of these are active IAF airfields capable of operating fighters (ok I will skip dinjan - but others still stand) - (FYI Panagarh is a Forward Base Support Unit and an active airfield). These are in the immediate vicinity. A bit far, and KKD, Barrackpore, Gorakhpur etc etc come into the picture. and all those airfields in bihar like Bihta, Ranchi, Gaya which are DGCA airfields that are not in disuse, require little activation.
PLA 2nd artillery holds some 1000 SRBMs/MRBMs. and we have to assume that sub munitions would be available for runway denial. even for a comparatively inaccurate missile(CEP >100m), a salvo of five(say) armed with cluster munitions would pose a very real threat to take out an air-strip. given the numbers they can well afford to have follow on attacks to disrupt any repair activities.
this is without even counting the cruise missiles in their arsenal.


How many of these 1000 SRBMs , MRBMs will be deployed against India ? But first - do they have that many in the first place that they can bring to fire?

This page tells us that the much vaunted 2nd Artillery has only about 150 odd ICBMs . SRBMs around 900 for DF11 (300km range) and DF15 (600km range).

How many of these will a chinese general decide to expend in a surprise attack. More importantly how will he get them close to the border and still expect an element of surprise? where will you base them and still be in the striking range of an airfield?

Each of these SRBMs can carry a 500kg warhead. if you are going in for clustered munitions - each cluster bomb would be too small to make a dent in the runway. Yes they can keep the runway clearing team and bomb disposal teams busy for some time. but in the end your eight to ten SRBMs against one airfield has about the same effect as a four aircraft enemy strike on the airfield which will drop about the same amount of ordnance if not more. SRBMs are a singularly inefficient way to attack an airfield even if they have cluster bombs. and to keep the airfield teams suppressed, they will need to fire of ten of these SRBMs every few hours. and still will not be able to cover all the airfields. These guys dont have the bandwidth to keep going at it all the time.

cruisemissiles? again the same problems - range, terrain, anti aircraft defences.

yes doomsday scenarios are fun to play with, but they are hardly realistic.

an airfield requires an inordinately large amount of ordnance to keep it down. You cant do it via ballistic misisles.

so yes, a full fledged suprise attack with hundreds of missiles being launched will still be hard put to knock out all our airfields at one go. and frankly if we allow ourselves to be surprised that much, then we probably deserve to roll over and die.
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Re: Newbie Corner & Military Miscellaneous

Post by Prasad »

Rahul et all ,

can we please move this discussion to the scenarios thread? and discuss it there? It sounds like everyones worst nightmare wrt the NE.
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Re: Newbie Corner & Military Miscellaneous

Post by Shameek »

I understand that we can divert to other runways to land. But what about the rest of the aircraft at that base being grounded? That would be a bigger concern.
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Re: Newbie Corner & Military Miscellaneous

Post by Rahul M »

HariC wrote:
I'm painting the worst possible doomsday scenario in NE
in such a worst case, I would give a fig about BD and Bhutan sensibilities and bring all my airfields in Bihar, WB into the fore - - tough luck ;). I should also be allowed to bring in my best case abilities of activating unused airfields and runway repair crews :D
unfortunately, 'you' do not make that decision and the IAF as a disciplined branch of our armed forces would wait for govt permission to overfly BD. and who knows if and how quickly GoI would permit IAF to overfly BD.
and even if they do, given the flight times involved and time taken for preparation, they would probably be too late to defend the NE against a PLAAF force already in the air unless the local air bases continue to operate.
anyway, how many IAF interceptor a/c can fly all the way to NE and back ?
after all we have only 6 tanker aircraft and there might be IAF commitments in other sectors too ! :eek:

anyway if you assume the best possible scenario you can hardly call it the worst possible one. :)
(the operative word here is possible.)
not all are IAF bases and the runway lengths in most cases aren't good enough to operate fighters/heavy transports in case of a hit runway.
They may not be optimum, again invoking the worse case scenario, the IAF will force itself to use some of the runways as secondary landing grounds if needed.
HOW ? how is a fighter aircraft supposed to land with say half its required runway length ?
or take-off with load ?

also, the # of fighter aircraft dedicated to the defence of NE itself is an eye-opener.
check this page : http://www.scramble.nl/in.htm
and click the orbat. (it's a bit old and there are some inaccuracies but overall gives a good enough overview)
How many airfields do we have?
I will add, Chabua, Dinjan, Hasimara, Baghdogra, Tezpur , Khumbirgram, Panagarh - all of these are active IAF airfields capable of operating fighters (ok I will skip dinjan - but others still stand) - (FYI Panagarh is a Forward Base Support Unit and an active airfield). These are in the immediate vicinity. A bit far, and KKD, Barrackpore, Gorakhpur etc etc come into the picture. and all those airfields in bihar like Bihta, Ranchi, Gaya which are DGCA airfields that are not in disuse, require little activation.
panagarh can't be in the first list, being situated in the western part of south-central bengal.
and yes, I do know that panagarh is being refurbished to even base fighters in the near future.

the other bases can't be considered in this thought exercise at all for reasons specified in the first paragraph.
PLA 2nd artillery holds some 1000 SRBMs/MRBMs. and we have to assume that sub munitions would be available for runway denial. even for a comparatively inaccurate missile(CEP >100m), a salvo of five(say) armed with cluster munitions would pose a very real threat to take out an air-strip. given the numbers they can well afford to have follow on attacks to disrupt any repair activities.
this is without even counting the cruise missiles in their arsenal.


How many of these 1000 SRBMs , MRBMs will be deployed against India ? But first - do they have that many in the first place that they can bring to fire?

This page tells us that the much vaunted 2nd Artillery has only about 150 odd ICBMs . SRBMs around 900 for DF11 (300km range) and DF15 (600km range).

How many of these will a chinese general decide to expend in a surprise attack. More importantly how will he get them close to the border and still expect an element of surprise? where will you base them and still be in the striking range of an airfield?
why are we talking ICBMs here ? how is that relevant ?
the 900 number is pretty close to the 1000 figure I mentioned. other sources quote higher figures.

>>"How many of these 1000 SRBMs , MRBMs will be deployed against India ?"
let me ask in return, what stops the PLA from deploying these missiles against India ?
the number of prime infrastructure targets in NE is not that high. even a salvo of 100 can have a devastating impact on our preparedness there.
Each of these SRBMs can carry a 500kg warhead. if you are going in for clustered munitions - each cluster bomb would be too small to make a dent in the runway. Yes they can keep the runway clearing team and bomb disposal teams busy for some time. but in the end your eight to ten SRBMs against one airfield has about the same effect as a four aircraft enemy strike on the airfield which will drop about the same amount of ordnance if not more. SRBMs are a singularly inefficient way to attack an airfield even if they have cluster bombs. and to keep the airfield teams suppressed, they will need to fire of ten of these SRBMs every few hours. and still will not be able to cover all the airfields. These guys dont have the bandwidth to keep going at it all the time.
are you aware of how much the durandal weighs ?
204 kg, with a 500 kg warhead you can have the equivalent of 2+1/2 durandals. :wink:

and btw :
The development of these bombs was ordered long before the Six Day War was anticipated. Israeli military planners knew that mastery of the Middle East's skies was the key to Israeli survival in any war. Many of the Egyptian air bases, particularly the forward bases in the Sinai, lacked multiple runways. Thus, their entire complement of aircraft could be neutralized by a single well-placed strike.{egypt had around 15 active airbases, more than that of IAF in NE with the fighters much more spread around than IAF} The IAF's commander, Mordechai Hod, noted in reflection that "a jet aircraft is the deadliest weapon in existence -- in the sky. But on the ground, it is useless."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BLU-107_Durandal
cruisemissiles? again the same problems - range, terrain, anti aircraft defences.
range is a non-issue. by now it is expected that the chinese have at least 500 km subsonic LACM. viz the babur. :mrgreen:
and some of these problems can work in favour of the cruise missile. the terrain, coupled with our thin ADGES in NE means that we would have a real hard time detecting cruise missiles, let alone defending against them.
yes doomsday scenarios are fun to play with, but they are hardly realistic.
I don't find much fun in doomsday scenarios that may well happen to my country if we are not prepared.
an airfield requires an inordinately large amount of ordnance to keep it down. You cant do it via ballistic misisles.
BMs are not the only things PRC has. and it doesn't have to keep the bases out of operation indefinitely. air superiority for a couple of days would be enough to destroy the already fragile ground infrastructure. we can say goodbye to the peripheral regions then.
so yes, a full fledged suprise attack with hundreds of missiles being launched will still be hard put to knock out all our airfields at one go. and frankly if we allow ourselves to be surprised that much, then we probably deserve to roll over and die.
its not that un-heard of a situation. and we certainly don't deserve to die just because somebody had a bad day at the office.
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Re: Newbie Corner & Military Miscellaneous

Post by Rahul M »

ts, I won't like to impose upon our gifted writers in that thread ! :)
regards.
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Re: Newbie Corner & Military Miscellaneous

Post by HariC »

unfortunately, 'you' do not make that decision and the IAF as a disciplined branch of our armed forces would wait for govt permission to overfly BD. and who knows if and how quickly GoI would permit IAF to overfly BD.
well exactly my point. the only chinese general who decides to plaster the indian airfields with 900 missiles is 'you' ;) . i dont see any (in)sane chinese general take a decision to expend almost all his missile force or a significant portion of it on a surprise strike against indian airfields - which he knows wont give him a 100% assurance of knocking out indian air capability.
and even if they do, given the flight times involved and time taken for preparation, they would probably be too late to defend the NE against a PLAAF force already in the air unless the local air bases continue to operate. anyway, how many IAF interceptor a/c can fly all the way to NE and back ?
Its not just flying top cover over NE airfields. its a question of 'retaliation' or providing secondary strike against chinese forces. All airfields from Leh, those in NE UP, Gorakhpur, Panagarh, KKD, Barrackpore can all form the second strike capable airfields for a retaliatory strike. Plus - it is quite easy for any aircraft which was airborne at the time of this said surprise strike to recover to any of these airfields. A full fledged strike should ensure there is no second strike capability left. You cant expect to wipe out 10 airfields and expect the other 15 airfields wont launch attacks against your troops who are stringed out along the tibet plateau.
HOW ? how is a fighter aircraft supposed to land with say half its required runway length ? or take-off with load ?
Which fighter in the IAf's inventory actually needs a 6000 foot or a 10000 foot runway to land? if you look at all the numbers, all the fighters (MiG21s, Sukhois, MiG29s) can land in less than 3000 feet. sounds incredible - but its not.

in effect it means a sucessful strike on a runway would need to splinter it into more than three parts. and you have a taxi track parallel to it that needs similar treatment. Try getting enough cruisemissiles or SRBMs to get that effect.
and yes, I do know that panagarh is being refurbished to even base fighters in the near future.
it used to house fighters ever since the 1971 war. it really doesnt need much refurbishing to house fighters again. Panagarh is a full fledged FBSU - which means it can operate combat aircraft at an point of time.
the number of prime infrastructure targets in NE is not that high. even a salvo of 100 can have a devastating impact on our preparedness there.

No it cannot. you need to bring 100 of these missiles within hitting range - if you look at the terrain map of the North east, you will realise what a pain it is to bring about such numbers. if the chinese build up a mass of launchers, we can be rest assured that it will be observed by our recon assets and on our radar and being monitored . Just take a look at the terrain layer in google maps - the entire area around arunachal, burma etc is totally inhospitable. You cannot bring in enough launchers that will saturate the NE with 500 missiles. can you even fire 100 at the same time? I will believe it when I see the planning laid out.

Next - SRBMs cannot have cruise missile accuracy. Even if you fire 20 at an airfield, there is no guarantee that even one will hit a runway. Why? . You yourself stated these missiles have a CEP of 300 meters. 300 meters for a conventional warhead is as good as a 100 miles when you are trying to disable a runway.

Alright - lets requip them with cluster bomblets - How many bomblets can a SRBM with 500 kg load carry? how effective can these bomblets be at less than 5lb a piece? Why do we think Indian army or airforce engineering batallions cannot handle these bomblets in quick time?
are you aware of how much the durandal weighs ? 204 kg, with a 500 kg warhead you can have the equivalent of 2+1/2 durandals.
The durandal needs an extremely accurate mehtod of delivery which only aircraft can make. the SRBMs wont make a 'pass' over the runway or tarmac areas - they would probably do an airburst x feet above the airfield and scatter the warheads which defeats the purpose of the munition. Durandals need aircraft. (happy to be corrected). You want to engage the chinese father of babur to send these durandals ? I will believe it when I see it.
I don't find much fun in doomsday scenarios that may well happen to my country if we are not prepared.
[/quote][/quote]

Sorry to say - but the doomsday scenario we are discussing is not at all realistic and wont stand scrutiny in a reasonable wargame. . This scenario makes a lot of assumptions. It assumes that all the staff officers in the IAF are sleeping at the wheel. That there is absolutely no recon done when the chinese move their SRBMs or Cruise Missile launchers into tibet , or that our guys completely fail to monitor the happenings on the ground. (prep for launch etc) that the chinese fire off all these salvos and all our aircraft are cuaght on the ground by the time they strike, and that our airfields outside the NE wont be used in retaliatory strikes , we wont overfly bhutan, bd or nepal, we wont strike outside the area of fighting etc etc - too many assumptions. not workable, not credible enough.

Lastly coming to the Egyptian Israeli war - seriously why are we comparing IAF with the EAF of 67? if you add in the short ranges involved and the quality of training and the amount of alertness of the EAF, the differences in quality of the Israeli and the Chinese air forces the two are not even in the same league.
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Re: Newbie Corner & Military Miscellaneous

Post by sum »

IAF airfields have runway recovery teams available - to quickly patch in holes, clear UXBs, clear mines etc. how badly does a runway need to be hit to neutralise the team's effort?
I do remembering reading a press release two years back about DRDO having developed a super quick setting cement to deal with damaged airstrips. So, we must be putting a lot of thought in this area.
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Re: Newbie Corner & Military Miscellaneous

Post by Nandan D »

Does anyone know whether Bakshi Ka Talab AFS is near a big city?

Is it near Lucknow?
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Re: Newbie Corner & Military Miscellaneous

Post by Shameek »

Bakshi ka Talab AFS is located close to Lucknow.
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Re: Newbie Corner & Military Miscellaneous

Post by Lalmohan »

dispersing a mirage 2000 is a little different to dispersing a hurricane into a rice paddy in burma as in days of old. modern aircraft need lots of looking after with complex machines and highly trained men, they cannot operate out of any old place. they need lots of fluids, gasses, electrical and computing support, not to mention armaments. not so easy when you're out in the middle of nowhere.

the swedes have developed good capabilities in this regard, but they live in an empty country with nice forests to hide in and good roads to take off from and easy logistics support

the missile strike scenario is real enough - i am sure someone has modelled how many would be required to render a base totally inoperable. the accuracy and targetting capability needs to be very high to hit all areas that need to be hit at the right volumes.

its always going to be a tradeoff between disperse or concentrate.

btw - even a cursory glance through IAF photos will show that we are quite adept at using vegetation and other features to hide our aircraft. i can assure you that i have lurked around iaf bases and completely failed to spot any aircraft despite being able to hear them quite clearly
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Re: Newbie Corner & Military Miscellaneous

Post by Hiten »

It is regarding an article about Bhutto, nuclear weapons and a pak [ex??]military guy who expressed a desire to launch a pre-emptive nuclear attack on India to the journo

I think the link had been provided on this forum, but am unable to recollect which thread or the site it had appeared in [it was a popular media site though]

Some things I remember about the article

* american journo going to bhutto's house in larkana when the family was in exile

* describes the surrounding as dusty, probably also mentions a dog lazing around

* the affairs and caretaking of the property was being looked after by a [ex??]pak military guy whose office was described to be at the back of the house

* journo sitting with the military guy in the living room

* journo notices a picture/potrait in the room - bhutto, a "rocket" heading towards what appeared to e the moon/outer space

* journo asks the military guy about it

* military guy says it is a nuke heading to India. painted by a local who came to present it to bhutto. intially bhutto refused to meet the guy, but on a little convinicing does meet him

* military guy talks about using the nukes against India. journo ask to confirm if he is talking about pre-emptive strikes

* military guy responds affirmatively. then explains the raitonale by talking about the poverty and misery in pakistan and how Idia ill-treated them. says by doing so, Indian retaliation will wipe off a significant number of pakistanis

* military guy then realises what he just uttered and then the article quite ends IIRC

I tried googling numerous keywords since the past couple of days, but failed to come up with the article

the URL had been posted in the forum during the 26/11 period. but am unable to recollect which thread or any helpful detail

If anybody remembers this particular article, please re-share the URL :)

TIA
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Re: Newbie Corner & Military Miscellaneous

Post by SSridhar »

jaladipc
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Re: Newbie Corner & Military Miscellaneous

Post by jaladipc »

Hi all on BRF.

Finally got a place to shed some light and to chill down :D
Anurag
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Re: Newbie Corner & Military Miscellaneous

Post by Anurag »

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200203/landesman


What one prominent Pakistani thinks his country should do with its atomic weapons

by Peter Landesman
A Modest Proposal From the Brigadier
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Re: Newbie Corner & Military Miscellaneous

Post by Hiten »

Thanks Anurag. Got the actual article which was quoted in the article linked by SSridhar

Thanks again
AdityaM
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Re: Newbie Corner & Military Miscellaneous

Post by AdityaM »

what is meant by :
chankian
OT
Yogi_G
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Re: Newbie Corner & Military Miscellaneous

Post by Yogi_G »

AdityaM wrote:what is meant by :
chankian
OT
chankian = Chanakya-n
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