Darrell Castle discusses the war between India and Pakistan which began over an apparent terrorist attack in the disputed territory of Kashmir a few weeks ago. He alleges that the real winner in the war so far has been China.

Transcription / Notes:

WHO WON THE INDIA-PAKISTAN WAR

Hello, this is Darrell Castle with today’s Castle Report. This is Friday the 30th day of May in the year of our Lord 2025. I will be talking about the war between India and Pakistan which began over an apparent terrorist attack in the disputed territory of Kashmir a few weeks ago.

Yes, rather than hide or delay the lead I will tell you right away that there is no real winer as yet but in the initial battle the winner was China and in this report I will attempt to defend that view. First, to set up my argument it will be necessary to review a little history. It is often said that generals fight the last war and in many respects I believe that to be an accurate assessment.

For example, coming out of WWl the navies of the world viewed the battleship as the future of naval warfare because it had proven so decisive in the naval battles of that war. The air arm of the navy didn’t begin until the 1920’s and that was just a primitive experiment. In the 1930’s seagoing nations started to develop aircraft and aircraft carriers and to experiment with them but the battleship was still expected to dominate the next naval war. Even the Japanese put their effort into battleships including the Yamato, the world’s largest.

When the war started with the attack on Pearl Harbor and then the battle of the Coral Sea and Midway it was soon obvious that aircraft carriers were the future, not battleships. The U.S. had three carriers in the Pacific after Pearl Harbor and the Yorktown was lost at Midway June 4, 1942, but within 2 years they had 17. When the war ended and the U.S. had the world’s money so it could buy anything it continued to put its effort into the ships that won the war in the Pacific. When nuclear power entered the navy the cost of an aircraft carrier continued to skyrocket until today it exceeds $13 billion.

Only one nation can afford to build and equip 13 of those ships and as a result the U.S. Navy has dominated the seas since WWll. Other nations such as China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran had to find some cheaper way to keep up and they did. While the U.S. was building $13 billion aircraft carriers to project power around the world those nations devoted their resources to building relatively cheap missiles to counter them.

My theory then is that the aircraft carrier, like the battleship before it, has had its day and the future of warfare will be robotic, ai generated, and probably in space. With that background we look at what is happening in one of the most dangerous corners of the world today and that is Kashmir where the borders of Pakistan, India and China converge. The immediate cause of the outbreak of war was a terrorist attack on April 22 that killed 26 Indians. People get really upset when they are attacked by terrorists and they demand that their nation’s government do something.

The Indians did do something and that resulted in one of the most interesting air battles since WWll. During the battle of the Coral Sea in 1942 the U.S. and Japanese navies fought a battle in which each side had ships sunk but the opposing ships didn’t even see each other. The battle was entirely between carrier-based aircraft from about 200 miles apart. The Indians and Pakistanis engaged in an air battle using the latest fighter aircraft in their inventories and the interesting thing is that the entire battle was fought in what pilots call BVR or beyond visual range combat. BVR is completely different from the air combat maneuvering and the dogfighting videos we see from WWll.

It pits aircraft, their radars, and guided missiles against each other at extremely long ranges. Each aircraft tries to acquire radar lock on his opponent b...