China’s war lessons after India-Pakistan conflict prioritise integrated systems

“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conflicts has profoundly revealed the core logic of modern warfare: the contest of individual weapon performance has been replaced by systemic operations,” it said.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.