I have heard and learned that in a war of attrition it is always advisable to plan for replacements of men and material. By grace of God we have no shortage of manpower. A country that is much smaller in size to its enemy should always have a back up plan. People have given examples of Israel where every one has to go for compulsory military training. Even our neighbour Iran has three tiers of combat forces. One of the civilian volunteers is BASIJ estimated at 11.2 million(Wikipedia) with active for mission at 600,000.
Every Iranian also has to go through a two year compulsory military training. Here it will be unfair to talk about the Revolutionary guard corps.
A country which has less than half our population has mustered more than three times the men in arms.Maybe its the reason the the West and the Arabs thing twice before any actions.
If you really had thought about this strategically, then maybe you would have seen areas where the bolstering of forces is required for Pakistan.
KPK and Baluchistan have doubled the strength of the FC. Punjab and Sindh has major deployments of Army and Rangers. The smallest ground wing in paramilitary forces is GB scouts, a brigade sized force which helps FCNA in maintaining LOC and also provides internal security duties. Pakistani forces keep thinning out as you move north from Kel towards Siachen. FCNA needs to be expanded to Corps sized force and GB scouts a Division sized force.
Next, if a paramilitary brigade is attached with every Division, Armor or Mechanised or Infantry, then it will take the pressure off from regular troops to defend a captured area and they can carry on their offensive without worrying about lines of communications or supply routes. The Paramilitary Brigade can stay as the rear element of the advancing division.
This way you are not just throwing men with guns into the battlefield but trained them in defense warfare, to defend a strategic area and hold it. NG is almost trained on the same lines, they are usually deployed at a less critical area which is held between regular infantry regiments of Pakistan Army.
This should give you food for thought about training methods; offense, defense and somebody mentioned in this thread; Guerrilla warfare. When all hell breaks loose, its the discipline taught in military training institutions and then in training and courses that helps the soldiers keep nerves of steels during artillery bombardment, facing attack by enemy Armored forces and attack by a force ten times superior in numbers.
There are many smart weapons now in Pakistan's arsenal that negate the need of an over-sized gun-brandishing force of irregulars. You should also read about the concept of holding ground through massive firepower (Anti-Tank missiles and Heavy Machine guns) without using extensive man power. This helps hold the ground and inflict damage with 350-400 troops instead of 800 troops.
Also read about force multipliers and combined arms formations.
Force multipliers help provide an all-round monitoring, surveillance as well as firepower through employing different types of electronic equipment and weapons systems, where the emphasis is on successful mission completion, rather than show of force.
Combined arms formations are the ones, where Task Forces from different arms like Infantry, Armor, Artillery, Aviation etc are created which helps them complete a task independently. This means a few troop carriers, a few Tanks, some artillery, couple of gunships etc, are used to fulfill a mission with different types of weaponry used instead of putting in one type of formation only (e.g infantry or armor) and also using as less number of troops as possible, just the right amount to complete the task at hand. This minimizes causalities, is cost effective, time efficient but logistically it can be demanding due to many types of weaponry being used.
I would still however suggest primarily to divert Pakistan's HR in education and research to help economy and set a basis for industrialization of Pakistan.
not really. they are perfect for guerrilla warfare & will slaughter any modern army, just look at what happened to the u.s. in Afghanistan...the problem is that they know their value & put a greedy, thuggish warlord as their heads and BINGO, they'll blackmail the state into ruins...
Please give them education and guide them towards Research and Development.
Recently, a PHd told me that she was advised to pursue research abroad since research (methods/tools) is very limited in Pakistan in her domain. This is very disturbing.
