China is stronger: IAF chief

Gandhinagar
Sept. 23: Air Chief Marshal P.V. Naik said on Wednesday the Indian Air Force’s aircraft strength was “inadequate”, just “one-third” the size of China’s, and that it was therefore going in for more acquisitions to enhance its capability.
He downplayed reports of Chinese air incursions along the Line of Actual Control. “As far as the Air Force is concerned there are no incursions anywhere,” he said. “Our present aircraft strength is inadequate. We have one-third of the Chinese numbers,” he said, echoing recently retired Navy chief Admiral Sureesh Mehta’s concern that the country didn’t have the capability to match China.
“The government is doing a lot to augment Air Force capability,” he said at the South-Western Air Command headquarters. His comments come against the backdrop of reports about Chinese “incursions” into India in the past several weeks.
“We are not downplaying the challenges before us. But there is a strategy to handle it. One can either deal with it sternly or play cool and continue to develop capabilities,” ACM Naik said. On deployment along the Sino-Indian border, he said, “We have increased our capabilities on land as well as in the air.”