India's Airpower Strategy: Adapting to Two-Front War Challenges

India's Airpower Strategy: Adapting to Two-Front War Challenges\n\nThe Indian Air Force (IAF) is facing unprecedented challenges in terms of its airpower strategy, particularly in the context of a potential two-front war with both Pakistan and China.\n\nA prolonged conflict would severely strain the IAF's resources, making it difficult to maintain a high level of operations while having enough combat aircraft, pilots, spares, and weapons for a protracted war.\n\nThe IAF is still in the process of rebuilding its fleet of fighter aircraft, which would make it even more challenging to maintain a high level of operations.\n\nLessons from Ukraine's air campaign highlight the importance of long-range missiles, drones, and decoys in overwhelming enemy air-defence systems.\n\nIn Ukraine's case, the war with Russia began with a fairly small and old fighter aircraft fleet.\n\nAs the conflict went on, the need to keep its limited number of aircraft became more significant, and the use of long-range missiles, one-way attack drones, decoys, and air-defence systems grew in importance.\n\nThe Russian strike operations have also shown how a large number of relatively cheap drones can be used together with cruise and ballistic missiles to overwhelm or complicate an enemy's air-defence system.\n\nThe IAF might encounter the same kind of structural difficulty in a two-front war, but on a scale that is considerably greater in terms of geography.\n\nIn the western and northern theatres, India would need to carry out air defence, counter-air operations, strikes, electronic warfare, reconnaissance, and close-support operations at the same time.\n\nAircraft would also have to be kept available for the defence of the homeland and for the protection of key military infrastructure.\n\nA fighter aircraft assigned to one theatre cannot at the same time carry out combat air patrols in another, and the number of aircraft available would be still further reduced if some were returning for maintenance or had suffered battle damage.\n\nThe number of fighter squadrons that the IAF is authorised to have has always been about 42, but its actual number has stayed considerably lower than that.\n\nThis situation is made worse by the retirement of the older MiG-21s and other older types of aircraft while the newer ones are entering service more slowly than necessary.\n\nIt will therefore take years to rebuild the numbers of combat aircraft, even with the introduction of the Tejas Mk1A, more Rafales, the Tejas MkII, and eventually the AMCA.\n\nThis would result in a possible weakness should the conflict last for a long time.\n\nAlthough the IAF may have enough aircraft to carry out intensive operations in the opening stage of a war, it would be much more difficult to maintain the same number of sorties over months or years.\n\nCombat losses would only constitute part of the issue; engine availability, maintenance requirements, pilot fatigue, shortages of spare parts, runway damage, and the need to keep aircraft in reserve could all reduce the effective combat power.\n\nIt is here that long-range missiles assume strategic importance.\n\nIndia already has the BrahMos family and is developing longer-range land-attack cruise missiles; a growing stock of cruise missiles would enable the military to launch attacks on airbases, command centres, logistics hubs, ammunition depots, radar installations, and other fixed targets without having to expose manned aircraft to the most dense parts of the enemy's air defence.\n\nThe economic and operational reasons are clear: a cruise missile is capable of carrying out its mission without the need for a pilot, fighter aircraft, tanker support, escort aircraft, or a recovery flight.\n\nThis could therefore enable the IAF and the Indian armed forces to keep their limited number of combat aircraft for tasks where manned aircraft can perform capabilities that missiles cannot easily mimic.\n\nMissiles cannot take the place of fighter aircraft.\n\nCruise missiles are incapable of maintaining air superiority, carrying out continuous combat air patrols, intercepting enemy aircraft, or accompanying strike formations.\n\nThey are also less adaptable when it comes to targeting rapidly moving objects.\n\nAn India which places too much reliance on missiles since it does not have enough fighter planes would therefore have considerable strike capability but at the same time be unable to control the airspace in which its forces operate.\n\nThe key lesson that can be drawn from Ukraine is therefore the development of a multilayered air-warfare system rather than simply replacing fighters with drones.\n\nIndia might soon be able to combine manned fighter aircraft with expendable combat aircraft, electronic-warfare drones, decoys, loitering munitions, and long-range missiles.\n\nRather than dispatch a large number of costly fighters deep into heavily defended airspace, future strike groups could make use of cheap unmanned systems which are intended to detect radars, generate false targets, carry out electronic warfare, take the enemy interceptor fire, and attack weak points in the enemy's defences before the manned aircraft enter the area of combat.\n\nThis method would also enable the IAF to keep its most costly aircraft for missions which truly need the capabilities that they provide.\n\nIt would not be necessary to deploy a Rafale, a Tejas MkII, a Su-30MKI, or an AMCA against every tactical target if an unmanned air system could accomplish the task.\n\nIn conclusion, the IAF's airpower strategy must adapt to the challenges of a two-front war by developing a multilayered air-warfare system that combines manned fighter aircraft with unmanned systems.\n\nThis would enable the IAF to maintain a high level of operations while having enough combat aircraft, pilots, spares, and weapons for a protracted war.