COAS Gen Bajwa intends to cut army strength of 5,38,000 substantially over next 5 years

[INS_Vikrant]

They have the worst sex ratio in the world as well, which magnifies things.

No we don't India sex ratio currently is 102 females per 100 males compared to Pakistan 105 M to 100 F

I think you missinterpret what is the meaing of lakh in India. No way India has 12 million soliders, even China has only 2 million

Lakh means 100 thousand
India has 1.2 million soldiers

 

[INS_Vikrant]

Their younger population is shrinking bro

Right now it isn't, although in near future as population control law is introduced and avg life expectancy improves it would go up a bit but as long as it is in mid 30s it shouldn't be of much concern. Best thing for us is closely study chinas one child policy and make damn sure not to repeat the same mistakes they did in their pop control programs.

 

[KaiserX]

By downsizing, I think he mean reallocation of resources/personal.

Pakistan has many paramilitary forces- Frontier corp, Punjab Rangers, Sindh Rangers, etc...

It would make sense for Pak to reduce army size to around 480k which is 70k less than today. All paramilitary forces can be combined into a National Guard/Gendarmerie similar to Turkey/Most western nations. If one looks at Urkaine their territorial defence brigades have been very effective.

While decreasing the size of the regular army, Pak should proactively increase the number of SSG. 5k SSG is not enough in todays warfare were SSG are the tip of the spear and would be most likely involved behind enemy lines and also night operations which can significantly demoralize the enemy. Thus I strongly believe SSG size needs to be increased to 20-30k Minimum. We have the population and resources.

Lastly we should sett up a National Rapid Action Battalion group similar to Bangladesh for internal riots/protests. We cannot always use our army for these situations as they are not trained for this. The RAB personel initially can be sources from the Frontier corp special forces and SSG, while slowly increasing their numbers to around 10-20k.

In all whatever personal the PA would lose would simply be reallocated to new structures-

1. Unified National Guard
2. Increased funding/personal for SSG
3. Formation of a Rapid Action Battalion for internal riots.

 

[Kompromat]

Cutting the Army is not necessary for tech transformation.

 

[R2D2]

Army marches on its stomach. There is no money.

 

[Sayfullah]

Worst decision Pakistan could ever make.
You can’t afford downsizing when your neighbours all want you dead and you have multiple insurgencies inside your country.

At least if this is true Pakistan should increase its reserves by a lot.
Pakistan should create 3 types of reserves.
Type 1): have combat experience and can be called up any minute when needed.
Type 2) have military training but no experience.
Type 3) have no training no experience but can be mobilized during war.

 

[waz]

No we don't India sex ratio currently is 102 females per 100 males compared to Pakistan 105 M to 100 F



Lakh means 100 thousand
India has 1.2 million soldiers

Nope not at all.
India has 108 males to 100 females Pakistan has 105 males to females. UN sex ratio.

According to world bank stats india ranks 183 to Pakistan’s 177.

Countries by sex ratio 2024 - StatisticsTimes.com

list of countries/territories by sex ratio based on the projections by United Nations. Sex ratio by world bank. Data tables and maps.

m.statisticstimes.com

Now here is the killer part Pakistan’s female count was undercounted by 10 million females or more according to experts as male census counters were refused entry to conservative regions, chief of these being Kyber Pakhtunkhwa and Baluchistan. The London School of Economics published research on this. It also make sense as Pakistan has a high birth rate, which wouldn’t be possible if it had such fewer women.

Pakistan ranks 41 at 27.44.
India ranks 87 at 18.18

Birth rate - Country Comparison

www.indexmundi.com

 

[Raja Porus]

Our Mechanised forces are already to far stretched to be down sized. Similarly in the North we can't afford to shrink the number of troops.
Moreover how can we downsize when we continuously raising new formations and units. Unfortunately Nawaz Shareef appointed a man who had never commanded a Division(or even a brigade most probably) in WoT; when we had so many brilliant officers who had commanded formations in the battlefield. Hence he doesn't know the challenges faced by our commanders against the terrorists. Most of the times our units were too far stretched especially in Keeping the lines of communication open and we had to induct new units for fresh offenses and if they weren't available then we had to resort to consolidation of gains until then. Imagine what will happen against a conventional enemy with better mechanisation and AF. It is impossible for us to downsize considerably when we have both western as well as Eastern fronts open.

I think he just used a fancy word, that's all.

 

[Mr.Green]

All i hear when he talks is peace with india, negotiations, dialogue, peace.. as if he is not a COAS but president of green party. I didnt like this guy before and even more so now

People say that the length of Pakistan should be equal to its width. I say that the width of Pakistan should be equal to its length.

Worst decision Pakistan could ever make.
You can’t afford downsizing when your neighbours all want you dead and you have multiple insurgencies inside your country.

At least if this is true Pakistan should increase its reserves by a lot.
Pakistan should create 3 types of reserves.
Type 1): have combat experience and can be called up any minute when needed.
Type 2) have military training but no experience.
Type 3) have no training no experience but can be mobilized during war.

Have good relations with Afghanistan. Can get reserves of all kinds from there.

 

[The Terminator]

Over next 5 years??? How?.

Maybe by suspending new recruitments and many officials would get retired by that time.

 

[S.Y.A]

I hate to say but I don't see a massive increase in investment if troop numbers fell. The simple answer to this is a better economy, again I've stated the point before playing opportunity cost with numbers never works, the current problems with European forces is a prime example. Their spending is many times greater than Pakistan's as well.
India's population is actually decreasing, their replacement ratio fell to 2 and their median population is age is one of the oldest in developing world at 30.
Investment with current troop levels is the way forward, and your point about stemming further increases is a good idea.

agreed. the manpower doesnt get paid enough that reducing said amnpower will result in somehow massive amounts of money being available for high tech purchases.

 

[The Terminator]

If true, then the reason may be (?) :


Bajwa said [he probably had a little slip of tongue in one sentence, but you'll get the point]:


"finally one quick and important lesson, as a military man, that emerges from Russia-Ukraine conflict which must be highlighted over here and that is that it is the preeminence or dominance of fire power over mobility [I think he wanted to say mobility over fire power ? ] as was the case during first war this has given a heart to smaller country that they can still defend their territory with smaller but agile forces against an aggression by a bigger country by carrying out selective modernization in equipment and adopting novel ideas and this is the course we intend following for our future developmental studies"



i.e. Redirect some spending on quality from quantity (?)



Full txt of his speech here:

I would contradict to your assessment. General rightly said to prioritize firepower over mobility (heavy armor). As our military Generals are inspired by the US. Many US armed forces have planned to shrink their heavy armor component as a future policy. Specially US Marines gonna entirely ditch their heavy armor (M1 Abrams) tanks in the future to increase lethality in firepower, flexibility and agility for the future conflicts.

Current Ukraine war and recent Azerbaijan-Armenia war has proven that heavy chunky armor is vulnerable to effective drone and ATGM attacks. Unless you have complete air dominance and massive infantry forces cover to protect those heavy and costly hardware and not to be bogged down by a couple of well placed hits on heavy armor. Logistics would be inconsistent and constantly under threat due to drone and precision artillery and missile attacks. And tanks are one hell of a logistics hungry platform. A smaller IFV carrying some troops and heavy firepower at its RWS station is far more effective and agile than huge bulky tanks. That's what people around the globe deduced from the recent conflicts. That's why recently Pakistan armed forces have focussed that much on combat drones development and acquisition programs and we are getting battle proven cutting edge drones from our closest allies

 

[FuturePAF]

Cutting the Army is not necessary for tech transformation.

Agreed, We need a growing economy to fund modernization more than anything else.

 

[Chacha_Facebooka]

Worst decision Pakistan could ever make.
You can’t afford downsizing when your neighbours all want you dead and you have multiple insurgencies inside your country.

Modern armies operate this way. Smaller but heavily armed and trained. Local insurgencies need to be dealt by a reformed police.

 

[Areesh]

@Areesh see this coas this it weak link of pakistan

He should leave. Simple as that