Indian Army ORBAT Against Pakistan-Visualised

[Khan vilatey]

which is why logic dictates Pakistan use a offensive doctrine to exploit advantages gained in the early stages of war.


which is why a defensive doctrine is defeatism. allowing them the luxury of mobilizing and giving them first mover advantage is stupid. the lack of geographical barriers means Pakistan cannot hold on the defensive for more than a few days in a conventional battle.

That’s not really possible. see Pakistan does not have the logistical muscle to deploy more than a 100 kms from its border. we lack supply trucks and heavy lift aircraft for an offensive like that. The same problem we see in Russia - Ukraine conflict. I believe this will be a similar problem for the Indians as well. They lack the capacity to wage war beyond 60-70 kms inside Pakistan. They are too rail dependent.

The only area where an offensive strategy will work is Kashmir Because 80% of the population is against India. this is also the only place where Muslim majority is in excess of 80% . They would have no strategic surprise on their side and once Pakistan is at war in Kashmir the populous will make it hard for the outnumbered Indians (800 k Indian military vs 14 million Kashmiri ratio 1:17) .

I will write a much longer article on lessons for Pakistan from the Ukraine conflict. How I think Pakistan’s strategy in terms of ATGMs is paying dividends now and how Russian equipment has faired badly in a modern war. how Chinese equipment has prevailed on Russian equipment in Africa and how a bunch of type 85 tanks took out multiple t-72s

k

 

[Raja Porus]

This is the crux of the problem for strategic planning by India.

1. The Pakistan Army has its bases very close to the frontiers; to get into action hardly takes 36 to 72 hours.
2. The Indian Army does not have a similar string of bases along its western frontier. A simple scrutiny will underline the problem - the IA has units at Ambala, at Meerut, at Bareilly, at Sagar, at Jhansi, at Hyderabad (this is not a complete list).
3. Long before the IA can mobilise, taking railway tracks and road networks into consideration, the PA will be in full strength deployment and ready to roll.
4. The IA's salvation is to delink the multiple functions it has, and to put them in the hands of separate leadership structures and processes:
   • Defensive bases stretching along the border;
   • Specialist formations responsible for neutralising named units on the opposite side;
   • The equivalent of independent brigade groups, independently tasked, with integral resources, free to operate away from the activities of the first two 'types'.
5. Close integration of aerial resources, manned and unmanned;
6. Close integration and major expansion of artillery resources,

None of these will apply to the northern frontiers.

I also pointed this out by panzerkiel laughed ot off saying India has been raising new cantonments

The road network allows us to do all this

The quality of roads id equally good.

 

[Shehryar Ashraf]

. see Pakistan does not have the logistical muscle to deploy more than a 100 kms from its border. we lack supply trucks and heavy lift aircraft for an offensive like that.

Yes, we lack the logistical muscle to deploy more than a 100 km from the border . but that is a consequence from employing a defensive doctrine that has been used since 1971. the whole 1000 cuts policy comes to mind.
investing in logistics and supply will only happen when the people at the top decide to plan for it. which they wont because they live in a world where Pakistan is able to deter a war using the threat of going nuclear, which doesn't work, because if it did, we wouldn't need to upgrade and expand our conventional arsenal.

 

[farooqbhai007]

That’s not really possible. see Pakistan does not have the logistical muscle to deploy more than a 100 kms from its border. we lack supply trucks and heavy lift aircraft for an offensive like that. The same problem we see in Russia - Ukraine conflict. I believe this will be a similar problem for the Indians as well. They lack the capacity to wage war beyond 60-70 kms inside Pakistan. They are too rail dependent.

NLC & FWO be hitting their heads against the walls,

 

[Joe Shearer]

oe, the points you listed are very opposing to the 'cold start' doctrine of India. Could you enlighten us about that doctrine, was it real or just a verbal threat?

It was very real and tested in exercises. However, a myriad problems emerged.

To make it effective, much more has to be done in terms of building additional cantonments and roads. Making these today has been represented to be far more complex than such exercises have been a century ago; for instances, new cantonments, including those under building, are well within the range of opposing artillery including short-range missiles.

Roads, too, have to be built as complex networks; simple, point A to point B links are vulnerable to interdiction as well as to sabotage.

Finally, if the Army is to retain its old cantonments, that have become very familiar family stations and become encrusted with maintenance facilities that will be costly to duplicate, attention has to be paid to intermediate bridges and constrictions in road networks. Even today, rail transportation to near forming up points is the most efficient way to ship personnel, equipment and materiel; these have to be made suitable for passage of equipment that is significantly larger than was the case earlier.

 

[Joe Shearer]

Your above post is like that it was not India but Pakistan who 'in real' implemented and benefitting from the 'sold start'.

This was situational; Pakistan had those cantonments in place. Plotting the corps and division headquarters on the map itself will give an idea about the huge concentration that the PA has created, that is matched, on the Indian side, not by north-south alignments but by east-west alignments. As a result, a Pakistani action will always be swifter than an Indian action.

Cold Start was an artificial methodology to overcome these ground realities, to deploy what was close to the boundary, and to allow time for more distant formations to be deployed, but not delay matters until every formation was in place on the boundaries. In other words, it reflected the reality of Indian Army force locations.

 

[khail007]

Its been there since maybe half a century now. The road network allows us to do all this.

It means that Pakistan knowingly or unknowingly already adopted a 'cold start' strategy for a long.

 

[Joe Shearer]

I also pointed this out by panzerkiel laughed ot off saying India has been raising new cantonments


The quality of roads id equally good.

Please note the excellent paper on the issues involved references in @PanzerKiel 's post. It has issues; I believe there are certain assumptions that require review. However, for those of us who are not eyeball to eyeball with these issues on a daily, working basis, it is an important paper to put things in perspective.

It is misleading from an Indian point of view; from our point of view, only one sub-set of possible situations - scenarios - have been considered, and our own experience has been the opposite, on more than one occasion. That paper summarises the position as it stands today, but may need expansion to be of general application on a broader basis. Meaning, what happens if it is not a trigger-happy Indian majoritarian government that has no real comprehension of the risks involved in seguing from Hot Pursuit to Pro Active Strategy? Cold Start began to appear in people's thinking in 2004; was the political situation in India then what it is as described in the paper?

The paper is deep. Off the cuff analysis is avoidable, and it may be considered only after thorough review and comprehension.

 

[Khan vilatey]

This was situational; Pakistan had those cantonments in place. Plotting the corps and division headquarters on the map itself will give an idea about the huge concentration that the PA has created, that is matched, on the Indian side, not by north-south alignments but by east-west alignments. As a result, a Pakistani action will always be swifter than an Indian action.

Cold Start was an artificial methodology to overcome these ground realities, to deploy what was close to the boundary, and to allow time for more distant formations to be deployed, but not delay matters until every formation was in place on the boundaries. In other words, it reflected the reality of Indian Army force locations.

is there a thread where we discussed this in detail. This sounds very much like the Russian take on the blitzkrieg i.e. 100 SP guns, 100. -150 tanks 1-1.5 brigade and armored infantry on bmp 2s about 2-3 brigades in strength more or less a division to move quickly and punish Pakistan’s holding corps entangling Pakistans strike formations in a battle in Pakistan And hopefully take some territory ( the infantry Is there to capture)

k

 

[Joe Shearer]

It means that Pakistan knowingly or unknowingly already adopted a 'cold start' strategy for a long.

Unknowingly.

There was no labelling, no packaging, it was the way things were. There were specific incidents that occurred in 1965, and in 1971, and, on a sharply reduced scale, in 1999. These were discussed, and modified in masterful manner by a member who is known to all.

is there a thread where we discussed this in detail. This sounds very much like the Russian take on the blitzkrieg i.e. 100 SP guns, 100. -150 tanks 1-1.5 brigade and armored infantry on bmp 2s about 2-3 brigades in strength more or less a division to move quickly and punish Pakistan’s holding corps entangling Pakistans strike formations in a battle in Pakistan And hopefully take some territory ( the infantry Is there to capture)

k

As briefly mentioned, these were discussed tangentially when talking about what happened during armed encounters. These were not, to my knowledge, addressed directly before, but I could be wrong.

 

[Joe Shearer]

I was talking metaphorically. Ofc a division can't be just brushed aside especially with PAF playing a role. I was trying to point at how PA is deployed like a chain which appears thin on the map, unlike IA which appears to be rather dense especially when we take Eastern cmd into account.

Speaking purely in an abstract sense, there will be three trends noticeable, that an analysis of the situation will have to recognise.

Two obvious ones are that

• the PLA GF has traditionally used internal lines of communication to stress Indian Army deployments, and has established that stationary deployments will not work against a mobile and very logistically robust adversary.

Arising from this, the second point - can the Indian Army do similarly? Yes and no.

• Too much fertile land lies close to the boundary other than in the sterile patches Batalik-Dras and again Sri Ganganagar - Ahmedabad. The Indian Army cannot afford the luxury that the PLA enjoys, of not considering the possibility of occupation of patches of land that will be negotiating pawns in a post-conflict peace settlement.
• Imitating the PLA strategy - it is correctly classified under strategy, rather than the headline-ready attention-catching Sunday magazine use of the term - will require an enormous strengthening of the Indian Army logistical system. Enormous, and multi-modal.

The third point will be obvious to all, but is best left to the imagination, to avoid the adverse reactions of the rabid anti-Indian fringe elements who watch this and other threads with malice and spite.

is there a thread where we discussed this in detail. This sounds very much like the Russian take on the blitzkrieg i.e. 100 SP guns, 100. -150 tanks 1-1.5 brigade and armored infantry on bmp 2s about 2-3 brigades in strength more or less a division to move quickly and punish Pakistan’s holding corps entangling Pakistans strike formations in a battle in Pakistan And hopefully take some territory ( the infantry Is there to capture)

If someone juxtaposes the Indian Army dispositions with the PA dispositions, where such operations are possible, and where they are not possible, will be straightaway obvious.

In abstract terms, one side has internalised the element of surprise, and will continue to use that element in planning and in war-fighting. The other side has used it once, is unlikely to shake off civilian oversight to be able to do the same, and therefore must look for geographical opportunities coupled with technical strength to overcome local difficulties.

 

[Khan vilatey]

Speaking purely in an abstract sense, there will be three trends noticeable, that an analysis of the situation will have to recognise.

Two obvious ones are that

• the PLA GF has traditionally used internal lines of communication to stress Indian Army deployments, and has established that stationary deployments will not work against a mobile and very logistically robust adversary.

Arising from this, the second point - can the Indian Army do similarly? Yes and no.

• Too much fertile land lies close to the boundary other than in the sterile patches Batalik-Dras and again Sri Ganganagar - Ahmedabad. The Indian Army cannot afford the luxury that the PLA enjoys, of not considering the possibility of occupation of patches of land that will be negotiating pawns in a post-conflict peace settlement.
• Imitating the PLA strategy - it is correctly classified under strategy, rather than the headline-ready attention-catching Sunday magazine use of the term - will require an enormous strengthening of the Indian Army logistical system. Enormous, and multi-modal.

The third point will be obvious to all, but is best left to the imagination, to avoid the adverse reactions of the rabid anti-Indian fringe elements who watch this and other threads with malice and spite.


If someone juxtaposes the Indian Army dispositions with the PA dispositions, where such operations are possible, and where they are not possible, will be straightaway obvious.

In abstract terms, one side has internalised the element of surprise, and will continue to use that element in planning and in war-fighting. The other side has used it once, is unlikely to shake off civilian oversight to be able to do the same, and therefore must look for geographical opportunities coupled with technical strength to overcome local difficulties.

Two things you made me lookup a word juxtaposes…… good one

Second point when you speak of internalizing surprise attack am I correct in assuming you mean Pakistan I.e refrence 1965, 1971 and 1999

K

 

[Joe Shearer]

Two things you made me lookup a word juxtaposes…… good one

Second point when you speak of internalizing surprise attack am I correct in assuming you mean Pakistan I.e refrence 1965, 1971 and 1999

K

Yes.

 

[Joe Shearer]

The way the paper distinguishes between strategy and grand strategy was a little unsettling. One is used to an old-fashioned trifurcation (@Khan vilatey - that word popped out before I could stop it!) between tactics, grand tactics and strategy, grand tactics covering the Napoleonic use of manoeuvre off battle-field to achieve crushing concentrations of power; they didn't always achieve it, but even the effort kept the opposition off balance.

In today's context, all that occurs to one is that the Indian Army should stop reacting to the mentally calcified responses of the civilian leadership and take a deeper, longer view. That is, there should be no reaction to, say, the Bombay terror attacks; instead, those emotional jolts to the country's thinking should be rolled up and included in a carefully-timed, carefully-planned response that has a prelude and a sequel, and a continuing engagement. No surgical strikes; instead, set strategic objectives and achieve them over time, such that achieving them in whole or in part will reduce the opportunity for the adversary to do any damage in future. Reduce, not eliminate.

 

[Joe Shearer]

On the paper: a lot of the preliminary groundwork is essential; however a quick and dirty first impression is possible by starting from pg 31.

It is sobering to think that a Major wrote this. I really take the point made by the person nudging us to wake up and read that more such should be printed and read, before we open our mouths on any military subject.