Author Topic: India Deploying Massive Force to Chinese Border  (Read 880 times)

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Offline Cincinnatus

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India Deploying Massive Force to Chinese Border
« on: August 28, 2013, 03:36:12 am »
Syria is not the only hotspot, perhaps not even the most important one.

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Asia’s naval arms race is heating up again; India has joined Japan and China by launching an aircraft carrier to aid its mass of troops and weaponry along the border with China and Pakistan.

China and Japan have both launched carriers, and China has started work on its first large aircraft carrier. Now India has launched its own carrier, called the Vikrant. The Vikrant is the first aircraft carrier built in India, and its launch prompted at least one Chinese newspaper to demand the construction of more carriers in China.

carrier race is only the latest escalation in the potential conflict between Asian powers. India recently approved the deployment of 50,000 soldiers to its border with China and Pakistan in Kashmir. The troops are combat forces equipped with such state of the art equipment as CJ-130J Hercules transport planes that could carry an invasion force into Chinese territory.

The conflict between China and India is potentially dangerous because China has occupied 38,000 square miles of Indian territory in the Himalayas since the 1960s. China and India actually fought a war back then that ended in a humiliating defeat for India. The Chinese claim that India is occupying part of their territory in Arunchal Pradesh. That’s not true; Arunchal Pradesh was occupied by the British and was never part of the Chinese Republic.

The Indians are also staging a large-scale military buildup in their state of West Bengal, which is also near the Chinese border. In other words, thousands of heavily armed troops are facing each other across the Chinese and Indian borders and nobody is paying attention.

What’s worse is that the U.S. government seems to be doing little or nothing to defuse this situation. Instead, it’s turning its back, possibly because American companies profit by selling weapons and equipment to India. The CJ-130J transport planes the Indian army uses are made in the United States by Lockheed Martin.

This situation bears watching even if the U.S. media is pretending it doesn’t exist. This massive military buildup is similar to the one in Europe in the early 1900s that preceded the outbreak of World War I. The situation is even more dangerous because a very unstable nation with a large and very capable army—Pakistan—is also involved.

The Indians and the Pakistanis have been fighting over the godforsaken Kashmir like forever. In addition, as the article notes, China has occupied 38,000 square miles of Indian territory in the Himalayas since the 1960s, a fact the Indians have never forgotten nor forgiven. The Chinese, for their part, appear to be flexing their military muscle and, being Chinese, are not likely to back down.

It should be quite interesting to see how all this sorts itself out.

http://www.storyleak.com/india-deploying-massive-force-to-chinese-border/
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Offline Atomic Cow

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Re: India Deploying Massive Force to Chinese Border
« Reply #1 on: August 28, 2013, 03:52:40 am »
This story is long on innuendo and short on facts.

The Japanese "carrier" is not capable of carrying fighters or strike aircraft.  It is only capable of carrying helicopters; although with modifications it could carry the F-35B.

The Vikrant is replacing a carrier (INS Viraat)designed during WWII and commissioned originally by the Royal Navy in the late 50s.  The Viraat only carries a small number of Harriers.  Vikrant will not be commissioned until 2018 with Viraat out of service by 2020.  Vikrant is only going to carry about 20-30 aircraft.  It is not really a power projection platform.  The only carriers out there capable of that are those of the US Navy, France's Charles de Gaulle, and to some degree, the Russian's Kuznetsov although right now it's air wing is fairly limited, but that might be rectified after a major refit.

And a carrier is absolutely worthless to India in a war with China.  It will be a war between armies and air forces.

The Indian military already has the capability to launch an invasion if it wants to; it does not need the C-130J to do it.

Both sides have IRBMs pointed @ one another and are not going to risk a nuclear escalation for no good reason.
"...And these atomic bombs which science burst upon the world that night were strange, even to the men who used them."  H. G. Wells, The World Set Free, 1914

"The one pervading evil of democracy is the tyranny of the majority, or rather of that party, not always the majority, that succeeds, by force or fraud, in carrying elections." -Lord Acton

Oceander

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Re: India Deploying Massive Force to Chinese Border
« Reply #2 on: August 28, 2013, 04:10:13 am »
Also, China, India, and Pakistan have a long history of posturing at each other and engaging in low-level border skirmishes all the time.