Continued Part 4……
How the India - China conflict unfolds in 2030
Today is 2030, and Narinder Modi retired two years ago as Prime Minister. The new prime minister is facing political opposition, although no leader of the opposition parties has emerged to challenge the BJP. The 2029 elections was a regular affair, but there were internal dissensions within the party, hence a change at the federal level was overdue.
The Chinese, in their infinite wisdom, thought this was the ideal time to exert pressure on India to accept the LAC dictated by the Chinese and control of Tawang in the Arunachal Pradesh. The Chinese had not been able to implement their will over Taiwan, where tension in the east was high as before. The QUAD of Japan, Australia, US & India had not fully secured its charter of mutual defence but military exercises on larger scale had continued.
In 2030, India was about to hit the $10 trillion GDP mark, and over the last five years it has started to spend a lot more on defence. It’s Army was very secure in Ladakh and In the East. It’s Army had been modernized, the navy had three aircraft carriers & 5 nuclear submarines and its Airforce had highly agile foreign and locally made fighters with capability to shoot hundreds of miles away.
In addition, China has had a new leader for the past three years. He wished to implement his will in Asia, hence he picked arch rival India to teach a lesson. He was starting to exert pressure on the Indian Ocean and wanted to capture or control Andaman Island. With its capture they would implement their will on the Straits of Malacca.
Here's how they did it:
They escalated a patrolling dispute in Arunachal Pradesh but did not begin a shooting war, but they escalated at sea. A large armada of aircraft carriers, submarines, frigates, landing crafts and destroyers was dispatched to the Indian Ocean to intimidate India. Within 10 days they were supposed to reach the Indian Ocean with ulterior motives.
India assembled its own navy and was at the mouth of the Strait of Malacca. Naval and Air Arm of the Airforce were activated from the Andaman Island. India was ready for any emergency.
Now there was a good chance of naval engagement at the western mouth of the Straits Malacca. It was then that the Chinese navy split its fleet into two. One remained at the Straits and the other one turned around and attempted passage into the Indian Ocean thru the Indonesian Straits of Sunda. That permission was denied by Indonesia.
The bottled Chinese fleet hence decided to up the ante. Their lone submarine, which had been in the Indian Ocean was ordered to seek and torpedo an Indian destroyer. Two days later, it found an Indian mine sweeper without escort and torpedoed it with 95 people on board. It was a major loss for India. Indian P8i planes could not find the offending submarine. Chinese rejoiced the shooting in a cleverly worded diplomatic message to India not to escalate any further.
India ignored the message and set its sight on the capture of Chinese listening post in Myanmar at the CoCo Island. It took one day to overrun the listening post and capture 130 Chinese officials as prisoners of war. In five days time, the Chinese submarine was located closer to the Iranian coast. A major operation was mounted to sink it. That is where QUAD capability at sea became useful. Once located, the submarine was shot at but escaped. It surfaced again to charge its batteries and a single shot from P8i missile hit it hard. It was never heard of again. Chinese radio broadcasts began to air somber music, indicating that the vessel is lost.
This is when a serious discussion in the world capitals began to defuse the situation. America rushed its fleet from the Persian Gulf and Madetreanean Sea to the Indian Ocean.
The Chinese were not interested in listening; they wanted war. The Indian Ocean is already lost to them, hence they began a land campaign with India in Arunachal Pradesh.
Their new campaign never materialized as India stood strong and fast. Now they began to listen to discussions at the UN.
After this skirmish, India emerged strong and Chinese once again got branded as paper tiger.
