@Shaurya: With India's military posture, it actually makes perfect sense to demarcate the IRF and the SFC assets.
Click at the link below and take a look at China's population density and see how far it is from the border. Striking those population centers will require longer range missiles (Agni series). The same is not true of India. Most of our population centers are easily accessible by Chinese missiles, as you have rightfully pointed out.
Population Density in China: https://www.researchgate.net/figure/The ... _348342855
Chinese military bases are a whole other story though...as a number of them are scattered in Tibet, all along the Indo-Chinese border. These are within the range of a number of missiles that are expected to join the IRF. See the link below....
PLAAF Airbases in Tibet: https://www.thedrive.com/content-b/mess ... quality=60
Attacking population centers will only escalate the conflict to its eventual end - nuclear strike. That is something that China would find politically unpalatable to do, considering how quickly that situation can spiral out of control. I made a post last year on this very topic and I am re-posting some of that below.
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India's infrastructure - like roads, rail lines, rail and road bridges, oil storage depots, power plants - is largely around massive population centers. When China starts attacking that infrastructure, they will invariably kill a very large number of civilians in the process. At that stage, China has basically forced India's hand to retaliate in a similar manner.
And India will respond with missiles that can hit the mainland of China. When China detects those launches, how are they to know that those missiles are armed with conventional or nuclear warheads? What assurance does China have - especially in conflict and under this Indian PM - that India will hold true to her NFU policy? The Chinese in turn will launch nuclear tipped missiles, assuming India is doing a first strike decapitation. When those Chinese missiles explode in India and kill millions more, India in turn will then launch her own set of nuclear tipped missiles and do the same. You now have nuclear winter. What is the point of teaching the evil Yindoos a lesson, when millions of their own are guaranteed to die?"
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The Chinese are not in the business of conducting war to lose millions of their own people. For the Chinese, it is always maximum gain with little to no loss of their own. The opposite scenario is a loss for them. This is the same reason why they never escalated at Doklam or at Galwan. They could have very well prevailed in an all out war, but at what cost? Losing large number of men & material is a loss of prestige for Xi and the ChiComs. And the Indian military is guaranteed to provide that to them. Loss of prestige for Xi & the ChiComs = Collapse.
And if you believe I am stretching that truth, see the on-going situation between the two nations on the border. China has walked into a situation, from which India is refusing to blink first or back down. As a result of the propaganda that the ChiComs have fed the Chinese populace, Indians are viewed with disdain and contempt in China. But the ChiComs are stuck between a rock and a hard place. Backing down first will result in shame. But an all out war with India is also not looking too good, due to the potential losses the PLA will have. For the ChiComs the calculation is this --> If they cannot handle us SDREs, how are they planning to tackle Taiwan?
Another good example is when Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan earlier this year. Do you remember all the noise and war mongering the ChiComs made? What was the end result? Like cute baby Pandas, the Chinese folded and acted like nothing happened. If they went against the US forces in the region, the PLAAF and the PLAN would have gotten their ass handed to them. And after the dust settles, Xi and his Communist Party will get lynched by the Chinese citizenry. This is how dictatorships and communist regimes operate. They overestimate their capability to their own people and then they have to live up to that hype, when push comes to shove.
From our perspective...the goal of the IRF is to inflict pain on the Chinese military and not attack Chinese civilians. While BrahMos and Nirbhay could very likely carry a tactical nuke warhead, it is counter intuitive to our military posture. What purpose would that serve actually? Dropping tactical nukes on Chinese military bases is not something India should ever consider doing, especially when conventional warheads can achieve a similar result and is far lower on the escalatory ladder. India - using nuclear warheads - will have unnecessarily escalated the conflict, which will result in China climbing up the escalatory ladder and result in massive loss of life on both sides.
India cannot threaten Beijing or Shanghai with a missile that does not have the range of an Agni. Look at the range of the BrahMos (500+ km) and Nirbhay (1,000+ km) and then see the distance it will have travel to China's population centers (i.e. Beijing or Shanghai). It will soon dawn on you that this is not going to work. Only the Agni (or a missile of that caliber will). Perhaps in the future, if DRDO can come up with a long range (minimum 3,000+ km) supersonic cruise missile, with a viable payload....then we can revisit the discussion of making missiles dual use.
See this picture to get a better idea --->
https://d18x2uyjeekruj.cloudfront.net/w ... issile.jpg
China is well aware of the demarcation of the assets in the IRF and the SFC. And employing IRF assets lets China know that India will not escalate the conflict to a nuclear one. But China is also aware, that nuclear assets are present and will be used against them if India is pushed to that corner. Our announcements of Arihant deployments are designed to serve that exact purpose.
Pakistan is a basket case. A large percentage of its population suffers from malnutrition which stunts brain development. Pakistanis only think tactically (short term gains) and never strategically (long term gains). The ruling elite in Pakistan control their awaam through bellicosity, fear, coercion and duplicity. For the past 75 years of its independence, they have been constantly fed on a diet of "
Hindus Are Evil" by their Gernails. This narrative makes their Gernails shamelessly rich, who in turn live a life of uber luxury via corner plot bungalows in Islamabad and being chauffeured around in expensive German cars.
Pakistan will not escalate a conflict with India to the nuclear threshold. No Pak Gernail wants to see his corner plot bungalow go up in radioactive smoke, along with his many mistresses. Not worth it. Pakistan can be comfortably dealt with via conventional means. But any war - with either China, Pakistan or both - will result in losses for India. No point in getting melodramatic (i.e. when Abhinandan got shot down in PoK) during military conflicts. Expect loss of life and capture + torture of our military personnel.