In the air combat between India and Pakistan, India picked up debris of our PL-15. Many netizens were worried that India might reverse engineer it. However, the fact proves that we overestimated India. In order to maintain the self-esteem of the Indian people, the Defense Research and Development Organization of India claimed that after studying the PL-15, they found out that China's PL-15 is far behind, and is not as good as India's "Astra" series air-to-air missiles.

The Astra is a supersonic long-range air-to-air missile developed by India, with three models: MK1, MK2, and MK3. This missile started development in the early 1980s. However, it was not until 2019 that the Astra MK1 missile was put into service, equipped on Su-30MKI and "Tejas" fighters, with a range of 90 to 110 kilometers, using active radar seekers and smokeless propulsion technology.

In February 2011, the Defense Research and Development Organization (DRDO) of India disclosed the Astra M2 missile. This new model made significant modifications to the Astra MK1 missile, adopting a different aerodynamic layout, with four truncated triangular wings at the front and four controllable tail fins at the rear. It also installed an improved smokeless rocket engine. When intercepting enemy aircraft head-on, its maximum range is 80 km and can be extended to 100 km. Other components are identical to those of the Astra MK1 missile. India once boasted loudly that this missile would be integrated into India's "Tejas" light fighter aircraft by 2012. But in reality, this missile is expected to be operational only by 2027.

While MK2 is still not in service, MK3 has already been introduced. According to India, the MK3 has a range of up to 340 kilometers, directly targeting our PL-17. Judging from this progress, we have to admire India's R&D capability.

Then why didn't they use it during the air combat between India and Pakistan?

In fact, even if India has such powerful long-range air-to-air missiles, without a strong airborne warning and control system as the core and a unified combat network, the air-to-air missiles won't be effective because your radar cannot detect the enemy's exact position, so how can your missiles hit the opponent.

Moreover, the 340-kilometer version is the Astra MK3 of India. This thing hasn't been mass-produced yet, so all the parameters are just up to India.

Although the Astra is said to be an indigenous Indian missile, all its parts come from abroad. For example, the power systems of MK2 and MK3 rely on Israeli and European technologies respectively. Israel does not even have an air-to-air missile that surpasses the PL-15, so how can India develop a 340-kilometer air-to-air missile.

Could it be that India is bragging and secretly developing the PL-15 or handing over the debris of our PL-15 to the United States, since the U.S. currently does not have a long-range air-to-air missile.

We must have confidence in India's industrial capabilities. Even if we give India the blueprints of the PL-15, whether India can produce it is questionable, because India lacks the necessary machines, parts, and materials, and assembly is also a technical job. For instance, the blueprint for the domestically produced aircraft carrier "Vikrant" was designed by France, and the onboard aircraft came from Russia. The construction process was even suspended due to a lack of high-strength steel and had to wait for supplies from Russia. Similarly, although the "Tejas" fighter is called domestically produced, its core components such as the engine (American F404), radar, and avionics system need to be imported, with a domestication rate of only about 65%, which has been further delayed due to American supply chain issues (such as reliance on raw materials from China). Moreover, the Carvelli turbofan engine project took 25 years and cost $3 billion but failed, exposing serious shortcomings in India's core technologies like engines. Simply put, even if India buys all the parts, assembling them is still very difficult.

As for us? Thanks to our unmanned automated production lines, our precision reaches the millimeter level. Can India do this by hand? Even the U.S. may not be able to.

Moreover, the PL-15 is already more than 10 years old. Our PL-17 is already something else, and now our PL-21 is on its way.

In fact, compared to the advancement of one or two weapons, modern digital warfare focuses on systematic combat capabilities. The PL-15 is just one node in this system. Today, a Pakistani TV station interviewed pilots who said that the flight helmet provided by China automatically locks onto targets that can be hit and tells the pilot that they can launch the PL-15 missile*. All the pilot needs to do is verbally confirm whether to fire.

The entire process is like giving voice commands to open windows in a new energy vehicle; it would be very difficult to achieve this in the era of oil-powered vehicles. India doesn't understand this point. They have a bunch of seemingly advanced weapons, but they are all in pieces. Can Russia's air defense missiles share information with the Rafale fighters? Definitely not.

If they don't understand this point, India will continue to suffer defeats. Since the J-20 abandoned the cannon, China has realized this point. Future combat modes will be beyond visual range, informatized, digitized, and networked. Close-range dogfights have already become obsolete.

America also has this problem because America is a military-industrial complex, and the various military industries are in competition with each other. They can share information, so the U.S. military has not built a cross-platform combat network either.

This also means that under China's systematic combat, even the F35 of the U.S. might be destroyed by the J-16. Because under the priority of the system, the lead of one or two weapons is meaningless.

Original article: https://www.toutiao.com/article/7505436305103389194/

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