Systemic warfare and surprise attacks will be key to winning future wars, according to a Study Times commentary published this week that appeared to be based on lessons drawn from the India-Pakistan conflict of early May.
“Recent real-world combat experience from regional conflicts has profoundly revealed the core logic of modern warfare: the contest of individual weapon performance has been replaced by systemic operations,” it said.
While the article – which appeared on Monday in the Central Party School-affiliated newspaper – did not explicitly refer to the conflict, it contained descriptions that closely mirrored what is reported to have occurred on the battlefield.
According to the commentary, a seemingly weaker force leveraged an imported combat system – “combining data links, early warning aircraft, air defence systems, and coordinated fighter jets” – to overwhelm its opponent’s mishmash of weapons from different countries.
During the four-day skirmish, which began on May 7, Pakistan deployed a combination of Chinese-made weapons against Indian forces equipped with arms from Russia and several Western countries.
One of the conflict’s most notable developments was the combat debut of China’s 4.5-generation J-10C fighter jets, which Pakistan claimed were used to shoot down five Indian fighters, including three French-made Rafales.
