IAF's Tactical/Strategic Bombing capabilities

[Defcon 1]

Major chunk of our delivery vehicles of nukes are by airplanes.

Thats primarily because missiles haven't matured as a nuclear delivery option for India. Agni 3 is still in user trials, Agni IV and V are a long way from deployment. Before Kargil, we had only Prithvi missile which was capable of carrying nuclear weapons. Hence it was imperative to have a aircraft fleet capable of carrying nuclear weapons. Pakistanis were lucky to get M9 and M11 missiles from China, and hence have relied on missiles for nuke delivery. However, the situation is changing now with various nuclear capable missiles of all ranges and capabilities being developed by DRDO. So BMs will now center-stage as far as nuclear delivery is concerned

 

[PaliwalWarrior]

And how will we know if plane is carring nuke mated missiles or no?

usually in the past we have advertised overtly what sort of plane we are using as a part of strategic / nuke delivery systems

so that there are no misunderstandings

 

[Chinmoy]

Dear All,
With all due respect to users and visitors here, I do agree that the war scenario now a days has been changed. BM does plays a major role, but one can't deny the importance of an strategic bomber because of it. A bomber doesn't mean only for carpet bombing or dropping nukes. It is also important for a strategic role. No doubt that we do have Mirage and Jaguars for ground attack role, but we cant use them as a whole for strategic bombing purpose in event of a full fledged war.

Lets take the case of Brahmos and Su30MKI. To integrate the two, MKI had to underwent major structural changes. Now imagine the same scenario with a strategic bomber like B-1 where it could carry such four missiles in its internal bay along with other conventional and smart weapons.

I agree that it would be difficult for a bomber to penetrate the high density AAM defense of China, but it would not be impossible. As of now it may not look practical for us to have a costly and high maintenance bomber in our arsenal, but it should not stop us from venturing in this field. We should also keep on working on such project along with LCA, AMCA, MMRCA et. al, if we do want to project power in the region in future. One should always remember that the best weapon is one which would intimidate your enemy even without you firing it .