Different threat perceptions shape India, China and Pakistan’s air power priorities

Air Cmde T.K. Chatterjee (retd)

“India confronts a ‘tyranny of geography’— that is, serious external threats from virtually all directions,” Brahma Chellaney rightly noted in his 2019 article ‘The Curse of Geography’. With two nuclear-armed nations, China and Pakistan, on its borders, India is in an unenviable geostrategic position. The situation is further complicated by the politico-economic-military collusion between them. This creates unique challenges for India’s defence planners. Any confrontation with either will bring into play the other party’s political, diplomatic, intelligence or military support. Such a situation demands constant review of India’s capabilities vis-à-vis its adversaries.

In any conflict between two similarly capable armed forces, the initial contest is invariably for the control of the air domain, as it can set the pace, depth and escalation parameters of the conflict. Its physical characteristics distinguish it fundamentally from the other two historical domains of conflict: land and sea. These attributes mean that, to quote the Allied Joint Doctrine for Air and Space Operations 3.3, “Air power offers the advantage of finding, fixing, tracking, targeting, engaging and assessing adversary forces across the full depth of the engagement space, without many of the same physical, spatial, and environmental limitations imposed on surface forces.”

According to the 2026 Global Firepower Index, China ranks third globally, India fourth, and Pakistan 14th—a hierarchy reflected in their air capabilities. The People’s Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF) is supported by China’s massive defence-industrial ecosystem. It is growing at a furious pace with an increasing number of stealth fighters, long-range missiles and resilient networks. The Indian Air Force (IAF) remains a potent regional force with slow but steady modernisation, but fears of being stretched too thin in a multi-front war. The Pakistan Air Force (PAF), being a smaller force in terms of numbers, is fundamentally India-centric and depends on agility and cost-effective deterrence.

A capability comparison of the three air forces, therefore, cannot rest solely on a count of hardware possessed. It must consider their doctrines, combat aircraft quality, force structure, logistic depth, training standards, ISR resources, and operational experience. That will give a balanced view of relative air power in South Asia, and their ability to wage and escalate conflict while remaining under the nuclear threshold. A key point is that any reference to the PAF in this assessment should be understood to refer to a PAF enabled by Chinese support, including ISR, datalink, electronic warfare, and targeting assistance. 

All three being nuclear-armed nations, it makes any all-out war a remote possibility, unless miscalculated escalation spirals out of control. India and China are heavily engaged in trade and commerce, with USD 127.71 billion in 2024-25, which is an automatic disincentive to conflict. This is not the case between India and Pakistan, where major disagreements often lead to hot wars because there are no commercial interests to protect. Official India-Pakistan trade had shrunk to around USD1.2 billion in 2024, further reducing to zero after the 2025 rupture in trade relations.

Between India and Pakistan, any future conflict will possibly start with major terrorist activity on Indian soil attributable to the Pakistani state, or with the misplaced territorial ambition of Pakistani military leadership, as in Kargil, or with India’s stand on the Indus Water Treaty posing an alleged existential threat to some regions of Pakistan. 

Between China and India, past confrontations have stemmed primarily from differing perceptions of the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in the Himalayas. Another possible reason for confrontation with China is its policy of slowly but steadily gaining territory by ‘salami-slicing’ in Ladakh and Arunachal Pradesh. But the last time India confronted China in the Galwan Valley in Ladakh, ground force levels were evenly matched, and India has not withdrawn from its advanced posture since. India’s upgrading of communication and transport links close to the LAC has reduced China’s earlier infrastructural advantage in Tibet by improving India’s mobilisation speed, situational awareness, and ability to sustain forward deployments. This strengthens deterrence against salami-slicing tactics by making rapid reinforcement and coordinated response more credible. But, at the same time, denser infrastructure and faster movement of forces create a more militarised frontier, where local incidents can escalate more quickly if crisis-management mechanisms fail.

Doctrinal Aspects of Use of Air Power

Air warfare doctrine worldwide has changed. It no longer views air warfare as a platform-versus-platform dogfight; instead, it views it as a confrontation of systems-of-systems.

Chinese air power doctrine has undergone a fundamental transformation over the past two decades. To paraphrase from the US department of defence assessments in military and security development in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) 2024, the PLAAF has evolved from a limited force focused on homeland air defence into a strategic air force capable of offensive operations, long-range power projection, and joint counter-intervention missions. The Chinese Military Strategy White Papers (2015, 2019), published by the State Council Information Office of the PRC, mandate that the PLAAF achieve airspace integration (Kongtian Yiti), in which traditional aerial platforms are supported by space-based intelligence and guidance. It is known to advocate simultaneous offensive-defensive operations (Gongfang Jianbei), which holds that defending airspace requires striking enemy airfields, tankers, airborne warning networks, and naval assets at long stand-off ranges before they can deploy forces. For joint operations, the aim is to integrate the PLAAF with the PLA Navy (PLAN), PLA Rocket Forces (PLARF), and land-based missile and cyber/ space support units seamlessly.