You have started revolving around JF-17, its cost and fighter acquisition. I asked specific Q's to clear an over all picture with few basic points:
1. Army has raised new formations, upgraded older formations (Mech inf and Sp Arty Regts), PAF has also raised couple of Squadrons and PN has inducted new ships. So an overall expansion has taken in all three forces. In the past, Army was expanded the most which has changed now. However, all this expansion in three forces is excellent, but how does one get an edge over the enemy in conventional warfare?
2. Army cannot match its brigades and divisions with indian Army and Navy cannot also match ship to ship. However, if PAF starts to match its number of squadrons to IAF squadrons, would that raise alarms in IAF ? would that give an edge to PA and PN in conducting their Ops also since both are dependent on air cover ?
3. India has always started a weapons race and knows that it can win that weapon race, in numbers especially. Pakistan can match in quality though and it has most of the times. Its the numbers where Pakistan lacks and will continue to do so.
I think the force needed to defend Pakistan is enough. There is both a strategic and conventional balance as is. However, if the objective is different - to liberate Kashmir or to fight an enemy that is bound to start a war - and win that war - then the equations change.
Stalin is famous for saying -
quantity has a quality all it's own. Is Pakistan's qualitative edge and small size good enough to win a war to liberate Kashmir? That is the pertinent question for me.
Is it possible for Pakistan to win bag Kashmir? Again another axiomatic question.
Pakistan has gone beyond the point where it can be militarily defeated in a short conventional war. Or even in a long unconventional one. For me, the objective now should be to liberate Kashmir and to prepare for a Hindutva war where they attempt to occupy GB and Azad Kashmir.
This means that from my POV, the objective isn't conventional balance but conventional imbalance in favour of Pakistan. Thus, the fundamental premise is why we aren't on the same page. To buttress my point, I can bring up that PM IK thinks (as according to his many speeches), that India has adopted a Nazi-like ideology whose logical conclusion is going to lead them to attack Pakistani Kashmir.
From the other side, Kashmir is critical to Pakistan's ideological existence, and to liberate Kashmir is a fundamental order of Jinnah. So, to fulfill the political requirement, Pak Armed Forces job is to search for and implement strategies and plans that will help them achieve a victory in Kashmir. By ignoring this and holding on to minimal balance of forces vis-a-vis India, Pakistan Armed Forces is not truly serving the objectives set.
To fulfill such a purpose, the armed forces has to realize that it has to up the game - and a part of upping that game is to see how the quantity variable can be changed. Pakistan isn't as rich as India that it can match them professional soldier to professional soldier. But can it close the gap in a cost-efficient manner?
Now, it is on the onus of the armed forces to figure out what plan they have. That plan has to have the objective of having the possibility of retaking Kashmir. Not the objective of the past. Whether that includes conscription or not, whether that includes more combat aircraft or not, or what balance of quality and quantity that will require, or whatever. First and foremost those proposals have to come from the armed forces.
The post you quoted is from a thread I started giving my amateur views on how this later objective of a coming showdown and an attempt can be made to retake Kashmir using a different kind of quantity, and a different combination of variables. It outlined my
amateur attempt to show what kind of operational plans would need to be laid out - like the Bhuj salient or the flanking maneuver in Rajistan. Within my narrative, none of that is possible without a significantly larger military, and I simply used the point of least resistance to overcome that fundamental problem.
Likewise, in this thread I've simply highlighted a similar idea for increasing the combat efficiency and effectiveness of the air force,
in line with the objectives I had outlined. The loss in translation is because our fundamental premise of the ultimate objectives differ.
