And they will conveniently keep any weaknesses of their systems to themselves.
Nothing wrong with that. Why would you want to broadcast your technical weaknesses? But that is not the point to start.
If your army have a machine gun, you do not test against a simulated opponent that have only single shot rifles. Your machine gun may have weaknesses, but at least you will be able to see if your army can tactically withstand an enemy that have a machine gun.
That is why Red Flag is something that no one else has and everyone wishes they get an invitation. Red Flag comes %90 close to actual combat. Participants at Red Flag engages in EW as well. The point is not that Red Flag have to simulate actual Soviet/Russian/Chinese hardware, even though the 507th Air Defense Aggressor Squadron...
https://www.nellis.af.mil/News/Article/284637/one-of-a-kind-squadron-trains-airmen-from-ground-up/
...Have a classified complement of actual Soviet/Russian/Chinese air defense radar and missile battery readied against Red Flag participants.
What the 507th have does not need to be the latest but only that the EW threat is sufficiently different than NATO. The goal is to make Red Flag participants create countermeasures when their systems detect something that is not in their threat libraries.
It takes knowledge of current state of the art to extrapolate enemy's true capabilities and form a plan. China and Russia are in a position to do this in the field of EW.
No one is better than US at SIGINT. Simply put, no one is more foresighted than US.
As much as you like it to be, neither Russia nor China can defy the laws of physics. If we provoked a Chinese radar station to active state, what we collect from the ether will be enough for US to extrapolate with better than %75 accuracy as to the hardware that produced that signal. Then we can replicate those signals ourselves with our own hardware to test against our own fighters.
A SIGINT flight is not obligated to declare what it is like an airliner must. The reason is because the SIGINT aircraft does not seek to enter any sovereign airspace like the EP-3E in the Hainan Incident. That mean Soviet/Russian/Chinese air defense radars always go active when they encounter an unidentified target, and when they go active, the SIGINT aircraft collects vital EM signatures.
We have doing this for decades while the best the Soviets done was with 'fishing trawlers' that shadows US fleets in the oceans. China have zero experience in SIGINT at this time.
My argument wasn't about professionalism. It was about American weapons and their inability to project power to an extent which would cause China to relent to their demand.
And you used the wrong event to try to criticize US. We have yet to make our presence known in the South China Sea.
I'll grant that describing it as buzz was taking liberties with the technicality, but this was because I didn't fully recall the specifics rather than any willfull intention to twist facts. Thank you for correcting me.
Recall? No, you do not know the details of the event
AT ALL. Your lack of relevant experience is glaring, as is your unwillingness to remain in whatever domain that you know about. You did more than just took liberties with the event. Your usage of the word 'buzz' was meant to be demeaning of US as it is common among pilots that to 'buzz' someone is to make that person a victim of your superior position. Simply put -- you do not know what you are talking about. You failed your forum handle.
I want the contest to be skewed in favor of PAF. It would be illogical to try for complete dominance over India from zero hour. The result of the contest will establish the final control level.
PAF being the smaller force must try for both force preservation and continued force availability while simultaneously causing attrition in the enemy. Given available technological options, PAF's best bet is to produce the technology it needs locally.
The PAF and the InAF are essentially at technological parity. Assume that what you say is true that the InAF have numerical superiority, it means the InAF can create contested airspaces of large scope inside Pakistan. Numerical superiority plus your demand for force preservation will nearly assure the InAF's air superiority over Pakistan's sovereign airspace.
Make no mistakes. Desert Storm was an important lesson for all air forces, especially those that have numerical superiority over its potential adversaries. Desert Storm taught air forces that have numerical superiority over its potential enemies the need to create contested airspaces in the early stages of an air campaign and to create with as much scope as possible.
