I believe India is planning a cold start attack
Facts we have determined
- The Brahmose land missile system is a version of the anti ship Russian cruise missile
- As it flies at high altitude to take advantage of its ram jet motor it is very detectable at longer ranges and can be shot down by most Pakistani air Defense systems in service today. The missile was tracked 300 kms (180km in India + Pakistani radar located 200 kms from the border). What this means is Pakistan is able to at least see 400-500 kms inside India!
- The missile is not very maneuverable as it losses significant fuel/ range with even basic maneuvers are established like a right turn into Pakistan as it “crashed” after 234 kms of flight with NO warhead meaning the system was 200 kg lighter
- India does not have full control over the missile beyond a certain range and has to rely on pre fed coordinates for attack a lot like most naval weapons. If this were not the case they would have activated self destruct for the weapon
- It is clear from this action that Brahmose does not use cameras or satellite communication as is focused much more on pre fed coordinates or glasnos coordinates
- Brahmose in the Indian service is not nuclear capable and is not governed by Indian strategic command
- Pakistan defiantly has the ability to shoot this missiles down as the same ly-80 and hq-9p systems are placed on Pakistani and Chinese ships to provide air cover against incoming supersonic cruise missiles like brahmos
- Pakistani SOPs against a thread are solid and worked more on this later
- We know India is conducting massive exercises with its best elements of quick strike force.
- The Indian navy tried to infiltrate a submarine in Pakistani waters
- Indians were conducting near live attack tests with cruise missiles with targets in Pakistan
- Indian airborne forces conducted training jumps recently
- India canceled its large air exercises to Reserve parts
- India knows that past April due to harvest, heat and then monsoon which will make it very difficult for tanks and armored formations to maneuver. Pakistani conflicts with India have happened in the winter months ,1965, 1971,1999, 2019…
- Pakistani acquisition of major systems like jf-17 block 3 , j-10c , hq-9p hq-16 hq 9b , multiple naval systems inclusive of ships, submarines , new tanks , sh-15 sp artillery and longer ranged rocket artillery are new and require at least a year of familiarization
- India war time supplies are dwindling as Russia is focused on resupplying its own army first and all the spare factories in Ukraine an alternate source for Russian weapons is no longer available. I estimate the supply of parts for a major operation will be consumed by peace time operations in 3-6 months. Indian has a large military.
- Modi sees that the next election maybe hard for him unless he can give an actual victory for his people. Inflation numbers and economical factors are not in his favor and as America is embroiled in Europe and may be willing to cut deals with the Chinese in return for favors against resupplying Russia . This would lead to the possibility of allowing China to arm its ally and attack a weak india is too great.
- Pakistani government is distracted due to political issues
- Insurgent operations via TTP and BLA have increased significantly tying up Pakistani forces in the north west
- India is not suicidal and would not risk the lives of 1.4 billion Indians to test a weapon in Pakistan as a nuclear response by Pakistan could devastate India.
What I believed happened
I believe india is conducting a short and quick insertion plan for a short and tactical war against Pakistan. In this regard significant training is being conducted of fast deployment units. To punish Pakistan and take a smaller area of Pakistan To stay within the nuclear threshold but gain concessions. In this process of realistic exercises one missile was launched due to incompetence of the army units in-charge of this . The Indians immediately informed the US which then passed the message to Pakistan and China so no retaliation takes place.
Pakistani SOPs against a thread are solid. See what most people don’t realize is In a war India could fire a first salvo to see what systems we use to intercept the missiles and then launch a second strike to take those systems out! Then launch massive air strikes on Pakistani forward bases. To counter this one would guess that Pakistan would attempt to put as many aircraft up as possible as part of the first wave of defenders, prepare a second wave of air defense as they have another 6-8 minutes before the detection of the second strike and thirdly begin preparing long rang strike packages to take out Indian forward air bases this would need to be launched within 1 hour of the strike coordinated with Pakistani Babur cruise missile strikes to weaken Indian air defenses. Babaur has a 800 km range, flies very low and has a nuclear capable payload of 600 kg. Since it uses a turbofan engine it is extremely maneuverable
I have my doubts on whether the missile was shot down or not by Pakistan since it crashed very curiously 63 km away from PAF Rafique , 33 km form Bahawalpur, in a relatively low habitable outskirts of Mian Chanu this may be a wise ploy to hide capability.
What I think Pakistan needs to do
- Use the international forums to continually raise the stink on india with allied countries
- India will not attack Pakistan while the OIC Conference is in effect. The attack will be either be on or earlier than 23 March or after the 25 of March all the way till end of April.
- Immediate attention should be put on war preparedness
- Air Defenses should be put on battle alert at the same level as when Rajiv Gandhi threatened war with Pakistan in the late 80s
- We should conduct our own drills and mobilizations, maybe a large exercise like zarb e momin
- Close the airspace to all Indian civilian and military traffic and order all AD units to shoot down any incoming threat from India. This will reduce the risk of Pakistan engaging any civilian threats from India.
Summary:
I believe that India is planning a cold start like attack. The objective of Cold start is to take some Pakistani Territory to force Pakistan to give concessions. India has been conducting exercises like submarine infiltration, cancelation of air force exercises, special forces parachute insertion etc. in recent days.
The failed test of the Brahmose missile was a test in these series of preparedness exercises. Since this required higher realism test that went south due to the incompetence of the Indian forces. The Pakistani air defense response was near perfect as from our perspective this could have been one of many salvos and the focus during this missile launch would have been I assume to get aircraft up in preparation of Indian airstrikes and denying air superiority to the enemy. I speak more about this above. A lot of weakness of Indian non nuclear capable cruise missile have come to light including a detectability due to a higher flight profile , limited range ,relatively low accuracy , low maneuverability , very small payload etc.
I have my doubts on whether the missile was shot down or not by Pakistan since it crashed very curiously 63 km away from PAF Rafique , 33 km form Bahawalpur, in a relatively low habitable outskirts of Mian Chanu this may be a wise ploy to hide capability.
What we now need to do is prepare for a limited war.
Your opinion is welcome
@Chak Bamu
K
