Long post warning.
I have been busy with work this entire week, so was unable to post, though I have been tracking the discussions here. There are some points that I need to spell out, which have been clear since long among any serious defense watchers.
1. About India's Nuclear Arsenal and its state of readiness.
I refer you all to this talk given at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories by Vice Admiral Vijay Shankar, Retd. Indian Navy, past commander of the Strategic Forces Command (SFC).
The Entire talk is a Gold mine of nuggets about the status, doctrine and the Release Authority of the Nuclear Command Authority(NCA) and its resistance to Decapitating strikes.
Specifically go to from 41:00 mins onwards for readiness levels, in fact immediately preceding that information was given about an "alternate NCA" in India, if the primary NCA is neutralized for some reason.
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OZpIrZvP0Co
The mating process in India's Nuclear arsenal is no longer physical where guys have to physically lug the warheads to the missile and mate it to the missile manually. He says the mating process is Electronic. NOT PHYSICAL. This means the readiness levels can be brought up form a very low level to a very high level VERY QUICKLY. So there is no way the pakipigs or chongs can surprise us.
In fact, every single doubt and query raised by every one here, about the pakistani irrationality and nuclear security have been answered in that talk. May be not directly but he alludes to the fact that there are factions inside Pakistan that will switch sides the moment it comes to Nuclear exchange. I HIGHLY recommend every single one of you to please watch the entire talk. It will be worth it.
2. The RR about Pakis getting Stealth fighters and we needing our own Stealth fighters to supposedly "counter" the Pakis, recommending emergency buys of F-35 or Su-57.
First, the operations of Chinese stealth fighters are extremely suspect and there are no reliable figures or parameters so that we may hold them to a standard.
There were already concerns raised that Chinese electronics industry has absolutely shit QC and the penetration of these into the Chinese MIC will cause their Military technology to suffer horrendous Failure rates. However, these were quickly quieted down by the US MIC ecosystem and Pentagon to hoard ever more massive budgets to combat the Chinese "Threat"
Please refer to the below blog.
Some Thoughts and Discussion
Air Power Focus. Myths versus realities in the use of air power from the past to the present day.
theboresight.blogspot.com
The Operative part is the following.
"
Programs that are part of China's modernization effort (produced or copied in China) will suffer at the hands of the PRCs' own massive
counterfeit electronic IC and component industry. This industry uses salvaged (consumer-grade) e-waste that is then deliberately re-marked/miss-marked and offered as “new” MIL-spec items. The reduction in PRC military readiness and combat capability will be proportional to the degree of penetration of Chinese counterfeit electronic components into the PRCs own combat systems. This will include systems for international sale or developed by the PRC for others.
We expect Chinese electronic system failure rates on the order of 200% to 500% higher (higher) than Western or Russian systems/per operational hr. This could be an understated figure."
This was always a speculation but could never be confirmed short of China engaging in a military action of their own, post which the After Action Reports (AAR) would be analysed and the failure rates would be drawn up. Now the scenario is different post Operation Sindoor.
EVERY Single one of the Chinese systems failed. Moreover, based on the intact PL-15s that have been recovered, and the abject failure of the Chinese HQ-9 SAM (Copy of S-300), the above assertion needs to be taken more seriously.
So, we have absolutely NO IDEA how effective Chinese stealth fighters are. Moreover, the Chinese stealth fighters are designed around the Doctrine of "Frontal Stealth" . They are designed to be able to minimize their Radar signature while approaching the American CBGs and launch their Anti ship missiles. They are not all around fighters designed to operate optimally under all conditions and having the ability to undertake Multirole missions where they can be shifted from one theater of operations to the other or be used for Dog fights, where their features can overwhelm any 4.5++ generation fighters.
Their Probable usage doctrine calls for the use of groups of 30 or 40 J-20's or J-35's, to approach the American CBGs and launch their missiles. The PRC assumes that a lot of them will be shot down but even if they lose 40 J-20s in exchange for a Single American Carrier, then that is a win in their books. Good for the Chongs, but bad for the Pakis. Why?
Because the same reason why the J-20 or J-35 will work for Chings is the same reason it will not work for the Pakipigs.
What are the Pakis expecting from the "Stealth" Moniker fighters they get from China?
Ability to enter and leave Indian Airspace at will, be able to undertake strike missions or Anti air missions and return to base. That in short is the Paki wet dream.
These are the problems associated with that line of thought.
Stealth fighters are not countered by other stealth fighters. They are countered by VHF Radars that allow you to detect Stealth fighters, Plane mounted and Mast mounted IRST systems and Passive radar signal detection systems that are designed to track the IR and Radar Emissions without giving away their positions (thereby immune to pre-emptive SEAD using Anti Radiation Missiles), and a layered air defense that can stop both the fighter and the missiles it may launch.
Remember, the Pakis need stealth in our airspace to operate, we do not. Because we do not need enter their airspace to pound them. Pakis cannot do the same to us. But the Pakis are not going to risk their planes in suicide runs into Indian Airspace. They would want to ingress into Indian Airspace and launch their Missile payloads at either Ground targets or Air targets. But the moment they launch and turn around to RTB they will lose their stealth because of the above-mentioned Frontal stealth of the J-35 and the IR emissions from their Jet engines, even if they are on Supercruise ( which I highly doubt, given the limitations of the Chinese jet engines at high altitude tests). By the time they can enter their own airspace, Indian fighters on BARCAP would have launched IR guided missiles and Indian S-400s would launch their own missiles and every possible air base they could land at would have its runways cratered and their Fuel depots and other support infra turned into scrap by Ground and Air launched Missiles like SCALP, BrahMos, Rudram etc.
And moreover any missile that could be launched from a J-35 has already been launched at us from the JF-17 Blk 3 and they have failed miserably to score any hits whatsoever.
So, short of turning the plane into a suicide mujahid, what will the Pakis do with the "Stealth" J-35s ? Polish them up nicely to scare the uninformed Hindus next door? Any payload they could launch from that platform has already been neutralized by us in Op Sindoor, and even if they get Stealth fighters, no new missiles will come with them that can change the equation any more than what has already happened.
BTW, I do not think Chings will risk giving the Pakis J-35s, let alone J-20 because if they are shot down or disabled by using the above anti stealth playbook, then the entire Chinese military Superiority shtick will come crashing down faster than Dolund Tramp's wife's panties infront of a Camera in the 90's.
And, I do not think the Pakis can afford it either, especially not when their Agriculture productivity will crash considering the cancellation of IWT.
So, No. We do not need either the F-35, or Su-57 to counter any transfers of stealth aircraft from China to Pak. What we do need are the following.
1. UHF / VHF Radar systems and deploying them in strength.
2. Modernizing even more of our air defence grid, with indigenous SAM systems especially in the 1km to 100 km range, so that we may deploy them in numbers without constraints on numbers or availability. Have Bulk stocks of existing SAM systems.
3. Get the rest of the S400 delivered as soon as possible.
4. Make our own S400 equivalent, i.e Project Kusha, and deploy it in numbers.
5. Induct as many long-range AA missiles as possible, like, Astra Mk1,2, Meteors, and complete the testing and deployment of Project Gandiva (Astra Mk3)
6. Get some more Rafale as a stop gap measure and concentrate on churning out numbers of Tejas Mk1A, so that all our fighter fleet is modernized finally.
If you look at the news coming in these days, 1, 2, are in progress. Dovalji is on his way to Russia to make sure of 3. 4, 5 are in progress to be completed by 2026-27. 6 is also in progress.
3. RR about Fighter squadron numbers "dwindling"
Consider the following number.
The Payload capacity of a WW2 era Heavy Bomber like the B-29 is 9000 kg for 1500 km approx.
The Payload capacity of a Su-30 MKI is 8130 kg over 3000 km. And moreover, given the precise nature of Modern PGMs, what militarily significant damage could be done by a fleet of B-29s can be done by a Single Su 30 MKI.
What does this mean? It means that modern aircraft have capabilities that trump numbers, especially in mission specific environments.
We all seem to be under the misconception that Air Force's job is to conduct large scale air battles with regimented lines of fighters like the old medieval times, with Foot soldiers, Cavalry and Knights. That is not what multirole fighters are for, that is not what modern air forces are for.
What do we need the Air force or fighters multirole or air superiority for? Our primary adversary is China and Pak combined. Meaning we need to be able to do the following.
Defend against the Adversary's Ingress, foil his plans for attacking targets of importance. Offense against the targets of importance of the Adversary.
I postulate that a large part of the defense and offense part has been outsourced to our missiles, because of our lack of requisite aircraft numbers. It is a stopgap measure mind you, but it works.
With regards to the Interception of Enemy Aircraft, basically point defense like what was done by Mig 21s can be done by missiles and that will allow us stretch our limited fighter numbers a long way. The reason fighters were assigned the Point defense duty is the high failure rates and the unreliability of missile systems, which is not a problem for us. We still need the number of aircrafts up in the air, but they are going to be on CAP duty and not with pilots sitting in the cockpit waiting for the " go " to launch. Especially after the Induction of the High-Altitude Pseudo Satellite under development and the deployment of Airships with Radars as has already being done, we will have a full picture of the Adversary's Air space and the airspace around 600 km from our borders precisely in all directions. This improves our response time and takes care of defense.
With regards to offense, our existing missiles are enough to tackle the entire length and breadth of Pakistan. No part of Pakistan is out of reach. So, we do not need fighters venturing inside the Paki airspace to bombard Pakistan.
The Challenge with China is that it has way more strategic depth than Pakistan and the targets of importance in India are way more accessible to the Chinese from Tibet than Eastern China is to us. Remember our posture against China is dissuasive deterrence. Meaning, we need to just defend against the Chinese assaults making sure there are no major territorial losses and then undertake limited assaults across the LAC which result in the capture of Culturally significant Tibetan areas, which can then be used as a bargaining chip.
With regards to offense against Eastern China, I suppose that is why we have developed the Integrated Rocket Force. It will undertake offensive roles in the immediate battlefield, that would otherwise be done by Multirole fighters, and the existing Multirole fighter fleets of the IAF would retain the ability to swing from the Western theater to the Eastern theater on demand thereby neutralizing some amount of the Fighter squadron deficit.
So, in summation, yes there are less squadrons than desired, but it is not a panic scenario. It will be at least a decade of continuous work before we can be at 42 squadrons and no amount of money thrown at the problem will solve it in a hurry. The only thing we can do is make a lot of Tejas and iteratively improve it. Make the Tejas Mk2, AMCA and bring them online and in numbers in the next 10-15 years. We are also investing a lot in the HAL CATS program and the Ghatak stealth UCAV programs as they are easier to get in numbers quickly once certified. Once there are a large numbers of Ghatak stealth UCAVs, and HAL CATS WARRIOR, WINGMAN and Max versions available, many missions undertaken by the multirole fighters can be taken over by these UCAVs, especially Deep Penetration and Strike missions.
So, please stop falling into the narrative traps set by the Pakis and keep disrobing their Field Marshall without engaging in RR.
. So $3.3 Billion TEA WAS FANTASTIC!!! 
