My situational awareness is not complete...
Samuel, i hope the previous map answered some of the questions.
considering the impending war with China was known,
check the very first posts for the starting of the war. there was little strategic warning...also, what makes you think Bangladesh wants to cooperate. check the reports on recent indo-bangladesh relations to get a feel of what i am talking about. also check the initial posts for this.
Is the last-minute detection of chinese aircraft due to the loss of radarnet earlier?
no, that's due to the Mountaneous terrain. especially the Great Himalayas that form a sort of a wall. check some previous posts. the radar net was an air control system for the Myanmar theatre, the loss of which prompted the army actions to be put on hold
We did not expect a response on the CAC side, but we must've planned for EAC better, it seems.
sure, but the geography is against us. the 'wall' prevents detection at long range; the close proximity of targets to the border reduces our reaction time, and as mentioned, the small tanker fleet cannot maintain large numbers of fighters in the air continiously.
What is the issue with loss of Bareilly, I don't really get; don't ops move to say Bagdogra or something else till Bareilly comes up?
Baghdogra is extremely forward located. easily within range of anything that has a warhead on it. Would you place your high performance SU-30MKIs at such a place?
In your opinion, have we actually learned something from 62, viz the chinese; I mean this wavefront, saturation, strategy is well-known, right?
i an assuming that you are talking for the IAF. to be quite honest, there was not much for the IAF fighter fleet to do in the 62 war because of political ineptitude. having said that, it follows that everything that the chinese do has saturation written on it, ground or air.
for one thing, the infrastructure needs to be improved, and the EAC should not be dependent on aircrafts from CAC or WAC. at the moment the IAF is oriented against Pakistan and china is being treated as a distant enemy, not an immediate one.
the tanker fleet is too small for much use other than for small skirmishes, and assuming twelve tankers are actually purchased, as they are currently planned, that's still not enough for CAC, EAC and WAC in terms of massive air warfare with China.
as a result you still need forward airfields even today. unfortunately the improved tactical ballistic missile fleets in the nearby region make this venture highly risky for basing anything. you place your bet and take your chances.
so what you do is invest in a larger fleet of aircrafts that can make up for attrition. after the 62 war the IAF had done this, and at one stage we had 900 top of the line aircraft. that was when aircrafts came cheap per head. we all know the state of the IAF today.
you also make or purchase good ballistic defence systems. this we are only now starting to do now.
and then you hope that the chinese do not put flexibility in their tactics or improve their overall training methods. my Posts show a lot of flexibilty and improved tactics in the PLAAF. thia is another 'worst case' scenario i have protrayed here.
but the fact remains that if we don't do anything now, it will be too late later. my post tries to show the 'too late' state of affairs. maybe somebody important reading the posts might be stirred into action...i hope.
thanks
vivek ahuja