A single Nimitz class carrier needs almost 5 miles of space to completely turn around in normal uninterrupted conditions
.... And here we are talking about a million strong armed forces and decades old doctrine and equipment, plagued by lack of money and resources.... With triple stretch conditions, with half of the world against you, no guaranteed support base like Israel has...
What is missed so often on this forum is context and circumstance. It took the United Kingdom until 2012 (more than a decade since the invasion) to deploy the Foxhound Light Patrol Vehicle to replace its Snatch Land Rovers which were mobile death traps in Afghanistan. This is a nation with a GDP ten times larger than Pakistan, supported in a theatre by the premier international military alliance, and one of the better indigenous defense production capabilities out there. Moreover, the United Kingdom and other allied forces still found themselves repeatedly on the defensive with IEDs and ambushes, because fighting an asymmetrical enemy with a symmetrical conventional army is the security equivalent of playing Whack-A-Mole.
Now many on this forum will posit that Pakistan will have the option to procure MRAPS or other equipment from foreign sources. It certainly could, but with what money? Somehow, PDF posters are determined to ignore the reality that military capability in the modern world is in large part defined by the access you have to available funds. Pakistan is a country fighting at least three insurgencies (TTP, BLA, Sindh), has a hostile conventional neighbor to its East and an unstable failed state to its West. It is also a nuclear power, which includes the relatively advanced delivery options it has. All this whilst not having had any real economic growth for 20 years and with recurrent balance of payment crises.
Pakistan's options are very limited. There is a reason that American and British KIAs were so limited in Afghanistan - the average cost to kit out an American infrantyman is $17,500 or PKR 2,966,250.00 (according to today's rate). Even still, allied forces still had a significant amount of personnel with long/longer term injuries.
The point I am trying to make is
fighting insurgencies is damn difficult. The USSR lost the Afghan War, not because of some sort of theological superiority by the Afghan Mujahideen and Pakistani supporting forces, but as an insurgency (and particularly a well equipped and trained one) is impossible to defend against. Many here may posit that in the case of Afghanistan the USSR had certain disadvantages as it was outside of its own territory, but that fact also carries advantages too (namely increased operational freedom and a lack of blowback). The hard truth is that for developing countries, like Pakistan, casualties and KIAs are always far higher than for developed countries. Some posters here have made a laughable comparison with African - one would ask them to really look at the capability of African forces in general, and the casualty rates they have incurred in conflict.
Pakistan does certainly punch above its weight with the hand it has been played. But it is not capable of miracles, or more aptly put, escaping the hard limits that it has as a nation state. Resorting to puerile personal attacks (as many on this thread have done) on the Army Senior Command does nothing but betray one's own immaturity. Anybody with even a modicum of understanding of management structures, civil or military, will know that Bajwa does not solely (or event at all) occupy his time with DHA Projects or commissioning patriotic ensembles. And even worse, are the attacks on Senior Command for thinking about the wider
strategic (indeed I have always thought one of our greatest weaknesses as a nation is thinking in the
tactical and not
strategic) challenges Pakistan has. Geo-economics is the greatest challenge facing us, and unlike the fantasy land many posters here seemingly occupy, India's economy is outgrowing Pakistan at some pace and that has serious (and even fatal) repercussions for Pakistan's ability to maintain the balance of conventional forces. An institution as broad and complex as a national army is capable of thinking about more than two things, or dare I say it, multiple things, at once.
