Russia vs Ukraine example is being used wrongly by people. Russia only committed a small bit of its army in Ukraine. Ukraine has more manpower then Russians far more manpower they probably out number Russians 5:1 even. Russians had max of 190k troops built up near Ukraine before the invasion whereas Ukraine including its army, reserves and volunteers had close to a million men and after making it mandatory for every man to fight and accepting foreign fighters that number would have gone up a lot.
What is Russia getting massacred in Ukraine?
Russians Battalion Tactical Groups are high tech high quality combined arms battalions something people here are basically advocating for because those BTG’s include the best tanks, ifv’s, apc’s and artillery. Why are they getting massacred by Ukrainians? BECAUSE THEY LACK ENOUGH INFANTRY. Russians made their BTG’s keeping a war with NATO in mind so they only have 200 very very well equipped infantrymen per Battalion Tactical Group. These infantrymen have the best of best equipment yet their getting slaughtered because it’s not enough infantry especially when that many vehicles are involved.
Pakistan’s goal is Kashmir.
To capture peaks you need a massive superiority in number of troops vs the defender. You can have the most modern and well equipped soldiers but they’ll get slaughtered while tryna capture peaks if you don’t outnumber the defenders heavily. Tech goes out the window when your fighting on loc to capture a dominating peak. What matters there is numbers not tech because even with all those fancy helmets and bullet proof vests your soldiers will still get massacred if they don’t heavily outnumber the defenders.
Also you need many soldiers in the ground to man posts on loc. “concentrate well equipped soldiers in one place” would be a good strategy if we had excellent infrastructure along loc. Up north it takes many hours to go from one city to another and the roads are small two lane roads. Try sending a division worth of troops from Rawalpindi to muzzaffarabad by road and you’ll see how long it takes. Pakistan doesn’t even have that many helicopters to rapidly transfer troops from one place to another and even if it builds better infrastructure and acquires equipment to rapidly transfer troops, you’ll already have wasted more money then more troops cost.
If Pakistan was to attack even Jammu, you can have super high tech equipment and well trained and equipped troops BUT if you lack numbers you’ll get massacred like Russian are in Ukraine. Russians BTG’s lack adequate infantrymen which is the reason their getting massacred. For example, Pakistan cuts down troops, even has the best of best tanks in the world and attacks Jammu, how do you plan on holding on to any gains without heavy numbers of infantry? Firepower and mobility is good UNLESS you want to occupy a territory. WE CLAIM KASHMIR AS OUR JUGULAR VEIN. How can we hold on to any gains made in J&K without tons on infantry?
If Pakistan becomes a truly defensive force waiting for the enemy to attack first and fight in its own territory only then Allah Hi Hafiz hai Pakistan ka. If you give Indians the time to build up their troops and attack when their ready at their time of choosing and bring the fight to your territory, your asking to be destroyed. People would say “what about Ukraine” but at what cost is Ukraine resisting? Ukraine half of it is destroyed. Russia is intact. Do you want Pakistan to suffer Ukraine level destruction. Would you rather Pakistan be fighting defensive tryna save Karachi or Pakistan fighting offensive tryna capture Ahmedabad? Do you want the front lines to be on the outskirts of Lahore or on the outskirts of Amritsar?
And if anyone says “war with india won’t happen”, your seriously living under a rock. India is run by radical terrorists who daily make remarks on wanting to occupy our land. Indians got bold enough to first claim surgical strike in 2016 then actually drop bombs in Pakistan in 2019 then shoot a nuclear capable super sonic cruise missile at us in 2022.
Indians misadventures will never stop.
Indians firing brahmos at us shows rouge elements deeply infiltrated it so they can start a war.
Even a politically motivated move like balakot which wasn’t with the intention to start a war, can start a war. Imagine if the bombs did hit a madressa with 300 + kids in it, what do you think Pakistan would do?
Imagine if Indians did go ahead with their planned missile strike on us after 27 Feb or imagine Pakistan shoot down enough of their fighters to start a war.
You can tech tech tech all you want but after the first few days of war tech goes out the window. After the first few days of war, you’ll go back to improvising with the low tech stuff you have and it’ll rely on how much man power you have physically to win the war.
Even in Russia Ukraine war we see Russian now resorting to have pickup trucks with hmg’s mounted on them.
If soldiers are in a trench it won’t matter if their wearing a good helmet or not but what will matter is if enough men are manning the trench.
Pak army infantry already have the anti tank, anti aircraft, and anti personal weapons needed to fight it’s not like we lack atgms or manpads or machine guns that we can’t afford .
The insurgencies Pakistan is facing, you can’t get rid of those by lowering troops but making them high tech only. Americans learned this and said them self you need a ratio of 1:10 if you want to fight an insurgency. North and south Waziristan combined have a population of around 1.2 million. That means ideal number of troops there should be 120 000. Can we afford to downsize at a time when TTP have launched their first ever spring offensive against Pak Army? Give soldiers mraps, bullet proof vests etc but that won’t change shit. What happened to Americans in Afghanistan? Taliban simply used bigger ieds and would ambush the soldiers when least expected. In insurgencies you will take casualties many casualties it doesn’t matter how well equipped your troops army many will still be killed. You need numbers to crush insurgencies.
In Balochistan you need boots on the ground to man check posts. We need check posts in Balochistan to monitor road networks or else terrorists would move freely in Balochistan. You need boots on the ground so terrorists don’t occupy any territory. Do you want to go back to pre 2014 era where terrorists in Pakistan occupied territory? Baitullah declared Islamic Emirate in waziristan during his time. If you have a well equipped but small number of troops, they’ll do operations in waziristan but won’t be able to have a proper presence there so terrorists will re occupy the area and your operations will be useless. In Afghanistan didn’t Taliban simply let US and its allied soldiers do operations in areas, patrol areas and do whatever? They would allow this them re occupy the area. US had no real control of majority of the country because they didn’t have enough boots on ground to have a physical presence in many areas of the country at once. Taliban would literally wait it out till Americans left an area then go back in. Do people want the same to happen to waziristan? TTP who were fighting are well aware of Taliban’s successful tactics and will surely use them against us.
Now people can say “seal the borders”. It takes troops to seal the border no matter how much tech you have no matter what surveillance systems you have you still need many tens of thousands even hundreds of thousands of troops to physically man the border and set in border posts to keep terrorists out.
And “raising more police” or any other units would defeat the very purpose of lowering the number of army.
We can all dream of un corrupt police and politicians to fix issues so army won’t be needed in these areas to fight insurgencies but like I said we can only dream of that happening. ITS MORE LIKELY OUR ECONOMY WILL SIGNIFICANTLY GET BETTER THEN THE ABOVE HAPPENING.
What we need is to strengthen our economy. Instead of wasting time begging for peace with india, set down with all stakeholders in Pakistan, call gold Pakistani financial advisors from all over the world and make a plan on how to pay off loans and improve economy.
Instead of these “security conferences” we need economic conferences to help our economy.
Instead of army losing hope in our economy, it should play its part and produce security in places like Balochistan so investment can flow into Balochistan.
Army can’t even provide proper security to big businesses who want to set up in Balochistan then complain our economy is bad.
