Army conducts largest war games

[EagleEyes]

Army conducts largest war games
PTI
Friday, May 19, 2006 19:18 IST

Mos JAGRAON (Punjab): Hundred miles from the international border with Pakistan, the Indian Army on Friday carried out its largest war exercises in recent times involving tanks, mechanised troops, fighter aircraft and helicopter gun ships to validate its new concepts of rapid, integrated high intensity thrusts.

Sanghe Shakti, as the war manoeuvres were codenamed, tested for the second year in running army's operational preparedness to fight in nuclear, biological and chemical weapons environments.

More than a week of exercises witnessed the country's frontline T-90 and T-72 main battle tanks, mechanised columns and special forces crisscrossing areas on either sides of the River Sutlej to what a senior Brigadier SH Kulkarni said was to validate the army's new operational war doctrine.

As stipulated by a bilateral agreement, New Delhi had informed Islamabad of the holding of the exercise. But the Pakistani media saw the war games as aimed at a blitzkrieg against it.

Pakistan media saw in Indian Army's newly conceptualized operational doctrine Cold Start as Pakistan-specific but senior commanders at the war games being conducted by the army's Kharga Strike Corps as a measure to test rapid mobility and use of all arms as an integrated force multiplier.

The exercises envisaged eight to 10 rapidly deployable integrated battle groups drawn from the army and the air force make swift and hard inroads for lethal destruction of an adversary, with the theme being 'to destroy and not to hold or capture territory’.

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[EagleEyes]

Army tests ‘Cold Start Doctrine’
Web posted at: 5/20/2006 3:47:34
Source ::: IANS


Ludhiana • Barely 100km from the Pakistan border, 20,000 Indian Army troops yesterday concluded a week-long exercise in conjunction with the Indian Air Force (IAF) that aims to validate its Cold Start Doctrine — a swift strike into enemy territory in case of war.

“We firmly believe that there is room for a swift strike even in case of a nuclear attack, and it is to validate this doctrine that we conducted this operation,” Lt Gen Daulat Shekhawat, commander of the elite II Corps, one of the three key strike formations of the Indian Army, told reporters as the exercise concluded.
The operation, code-named Exercise Sanghe-Shakti, was important in more ways than one. It not only tested the feasibility of the army’s new doctrine, but also the manner in which the IAF had been brought on a common net — an issue that was sorely tested during the 1999 border war in Kargil.
Also successfully tested was the capacity of the army to respond to an NBC (nuclear, biological and chemical) attack — though the focus was on the chemical element.

Indian Army chief General J J Singh specially flew in here yesterday afternoon for a briefing on the exercise and expressed happiness at the integration that had been achieved between the ground and air forces.

Singh was appreciative of the fact that a battalion strength — 1,000 fully equipped soldiers — had been airdropped from 25 IAF heavy and medium aircraft during the exercise.

“This indicates that given the will, the army and the air force can successfully operate in tandem,” Shekhawat contended.

The airdrop was conducted late on Wednesday night, with three IAF Il-76 jets and 22 An-32 turboprops flying in close proximity — a navigational marvel — to conduct the operation.

The army deployed an array of weapons systems, ranging from its T-90 and T-72 main battle tanks, troops carriers, radars and unmanned aerial vehicles during the exercise. So, what made the just-concluded exercise any different from its predecessors?

“In the past, our strike corps would take as long as a month to fully deploy if there was the threat of hostility. This was evident during Operation Parakram (when the army deployed over 100,000 troops in the wake of the December 13, 2001 on the Indian Parliament that New Delhi has blamed on Pakistan-based terror groups),” Shekhawat explained.

“That made us realise that we did not have to deploy all the elements of the strike corps before going into action. What was needed was a quick response with the others following on that,” he added.

“That’s how the Cold Start Doctrine came into being and that is what we are now refining,” Shekhawat pointed out.

The other element of the doctrine is redefining the role of what are termed the defensive corps 11 and 12 that are stationed at Jalandhar and Bhatinda in Punjab respectively.

“In the event of a conflict, the first response will be from these two corps while an outfit like II Corps gets its act together. They will hold the ground for us till we move in,” Shekhawat explained.

Should such a situation eventually happen, it will mark a sea change in the way the Indian Army functions because it will mean that the forced is truly a lean and mean fighting machine. As stipulated by a bilateral agreement, New Delhi had informed Islamabad of the holding of the exercise. But the Pakistani media saw the war games as aimed at a blitzkrieg against it.

Pakistan media saw in Indian Army’s newly conceptualized operational doctrine as Pakistan-specific but senior commanders at the war games being conducted by the army’s Kharga Strike Corps as a measure to test rapid mobility and use of all arms as an integrated force multiplier.
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