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Was the army ready for war?
Manoj Joshi
New Delhi, January 17, 2009
The Indian Air Force and the Indian Navy were ready to strike almost immediately after the Mumbai carnage on November 26 the former activating its forward bases and the latter fuelling its anti-ship missiles.
But, the government stayed its hand when the Indian Army apparently indicated to the government that it might take it several weeks before it could prudently begin the operations.
Sources said that the Army apparently lacked adequate stocks of ammunition as well as key elements of artillery and other equipment.
This was confirmed by a well-connected retired general who said, The 400-odd Bofors guns we bought in the 1980s are falling apart for want of spares, the (600-odd) Shilka anti-aircraft cannon are in desperate need of upgradation. And this is just the tip of the iceberg. He added that Indias numerically vast tank fleet is in poor shape, and it did not have any mobile artillery to speak of. The governments mantra in all this has been that all options are open.
Earlier this month, defence minister A.K. Antony declared that, They (the armed forces) are in a state of full preparedness. On Thursday, on the occasion of Army Day, the Chief of Army Staff Gen Deepak Kapoor repeated for the nth time that all our options are open, though he carefully insisted that war would be the last one.
So, given the imperative of striking immediately, the Manmohan Singh government perhaps could not press ahead because of indications that its Army was in an unready state. In such a scenario, there could be no guarantee that Pakistan would not make counter- moves across the border into Indian territory, gains which could have proved to be politically, rather than militarily, costly.
According to officers familiar with the developments, the Air Force was prepared to strike specified targets using a variety of weapons. These included the Israeli-made Popeye, a very destructive 100- km range flying bomb of remarkable accuracy; or the Paveway GPS-equipped guided bombs.
In fact, Air Marshal P.K. Barbora, who heads the Western Command that would lead the air campaign against Pakistan in case of war, publicly declared that the Indian Air Force (IAF) had plans that would target as many as 5,000 key Pakistani targets in the event of an all-out war.
Less is known of the Navys plans. But, besides preparing for general war by fuelling its old liquid propellant missiles, the Navy was also ready to use its conventional solid- fuelled Klub land- attack missiles that have a range of 220 km for any mission.
However, the government was concerned over the fact that any attack on shore targets could entangle the Navy with the US which uses the Karachi port for supplying its forces in Afghanistan.
While all the three services were keen to strike, one source said they were not ready to guarantee that any surgical strike would not spiral into an all- out war, for which they were prepared only at varying levels of readiness.
Currently, by any reckoning, India enjoys a qualitative and quantitative edge over Pakistan in its air and naval assets. But even the edge India has in the air and sea cannot prevent a Pakistani riposte.
Pakistans army chief, General Pervez Ashfaq Kiyani threatened that Pakistan would respond within minutes to an Indian surgical strike. This obviously means a missile strike which could be aimed at an Indian air base, said an Air Force officer. How would we then respond? If we hit their base, then we would enter into an escalation scenario, he added.
Experts admit that notwithstanding the numbers, the armies of the two countries are evenly matched. This means that if India can capture territory in Pakistan, the latter could also do the same in India.
On paper, Indias 1.3 million- man Army with more than 12,000 tanks, artillery guns, rocket launchers and infantry combat vehicles is almost twice the size of Pakistans 620,000- strong force with some 6,000 tanks and artillery guns. But, minus nine divisions of the Indian forces that are committed to deal with China, the two armies are approximately equal in size.
As it is, a big chunk of the Indian Army is involved in counter-insurgency operations.
As the Kargil review committee report had noted, The heavy involvement of the Army in counter- insurgency operations cannot but affect its preparedness for its primary role, which is to defend the country against external aggression.
Sources say that the armed forces were concerned about four aspects of the situation shortages, obsolescence of equipment, the quality and quantity of the holdings. The latest Comptroller and Auditor General report reveals, the Ordnance Factory Boards (OFB) manufacture of 23mm ammunition for the Shilka and 30mm guns mounted on Infantry Combat Vehicles was riddled with bad production planning, inefficient and uneconomic production of components and ammunition and inadequate quality control.
As a result, the OFBs supply was 34 per cent short of what the Army needed. In February 2007, the Army had to import Rs 45 crore worth of 23mm ammunition.
The 2003 CAG report had pointed out that an ordnance factory had landed the Army with as many as 135,000 defective tank ammunition worth Rs 600 crore. The defect, which was detected after one shell had killed a tank commander and injured a crew member, is yet to be rectified.
In 1999, when the Navy was mobilised in the wake of the Kargil war, it found that its plans were crimped because some of its newest frigates did not have any air defence missiles because of the Defence Research and Development Organisations failed Trishul project. This was the reason why the Barak missile was subsequently sourced from Israel. These are just two of the many horror stories that afflict the Indian defence set-up.
The key worry for all three services is in what constitutes their war wastage reserves. This is the stock of missiles, munitions and equipment kept as a reserve and is equivalent to the time that an actual Indo- Pak war is expected to last usually around three weeks.
As stocking ammunition and missiles cost a great deal of money, since the materials have a shelf- life and must be thrown away after that, the defence ministry has pared the reserve in some types of munitions to a couple of days to a week.
A 2003 government report has pointed out that, At the commencement of Operation Vijay ( the 1999 Kargil war), the stocks of Laser Guidance Kits with the Air Force were sufficient for only 12 days requirements as against then applicable War Wastage Reserve of 30 days requirements. The same report said another type of bomb and its tail units held by the mother depot at the beginning of the war were only 23 per cent and 2.2 per cent, respectively, of the mandatory minimum reserves, while no fuses were held in stock by the depot. You can be sure that the same story, multiplied by 100, is repeated across the three services.
In September 2002, after the crisis that developed following the December 2001 attack on Parliament had waned, President Pervez Musharraf travelled to the US and in an interview with the Christian Science Monitor , had this to say: my military judgment was that they [Indians] would not attack us Militarily there is a certain ratio required for an offensive force to succeed. The ratios that we maintain are far above that far above what a defensive force requires to defend itself...
Cocky Musharraf was not wrong. Fire eaters across the country have been egging the government to go to war with Pakistan over the Mumbai massacre. But could it be that India have an Army that is simply not ready for one? Who is responsible for this? Everyone, from the generals who have become progressively bureaucratised, to the bureaucrats whose only concern is over their empanelment and time- scales. And, above all, their political bosses, who are content to let things be the way they are and allow hundreds of thousands of crores of rupees to be spent for an armed force that is not ready when needed.
Courtesy: Mail Today
is this a smoke-screen to make us complacent!!!
Manoj Joshi
New Delhi, January 17, 2009
The Indian Air Force and the Indian Navy were ready to strike almost immediately after the Mumbai carnage on November 26 the former activating its forward bases and the latter fuelling its anti-ship missiles.
But, the government stayed its hand when the Indian Army apparently indicated to the government that it might take it several weeks before it could prudently begin the operations.
Sources said that the Army apparently lacked adequate stocks of ammunition as well as key elements of artillery and other equipment.
This was confirmed by a well-connected retired general who said, The 400-odd Bofors guns we bought in the 1980s are falling apart for want of spares, the (600-odd) Shilka anti-aircraft cannon are in desperate need of upgradation. And this is just the tip of the iceberg. He added that Indias numerically vast tank fleet is in poor shape, and it did not have any mobile artillery to speak of. The governments mantra in all this has been that all options are open.
Earlier this month, defence minister A.K. Antony declared that, They (the armed forces) are in a state of full preparedness. On Thursday, on the occasion of Army Day, the Chief of Army Staff Gen Deepak Kapoor repeated for the nth time that all our options are open, though he carefully insisted that war would be the last one.
So, given the imperative of striking immediately, the Manmohan Singh government perhaps could not press ahead because of indications that its Army was in an unready state. In such a scenario, there could be no guarantee that Pakistan would not make counter- moves across the border into Indian territory, gains which could have proved to be politically, rather than militarily, costly.
According to officers familiar with the developments, the Air Force was prepared to strike specified targets using a variety of weapons. These included the Israeli-made Popeye, a very destructive 100- km range flying bomb of remarkable accuracy; or the Paveway GPS-equipped guided bombs.
In fact, Air Marshal P.K. Barbora, who heads the Western Command that would lead the air campaign against Pakistan in case of war, publicly declared that the Indian Air Force (IAF) had plans that would target as many as 5,000 key Pakistani targets in the event of an all-out war.
Less is known of the Navys plans. But, besides preparing for general war by fuelling its old liquid propellant missiles, the Navy was also ready to use its conventional solid- fuelled Klub land- attack missiles that have a range of 220 km for any mission.
However, the government was concerned over the fact that any attack on shore targets could entangle the Navy with the US which uses the Karachi port for supplying its forces in Afghanistan.
While all the three services were keen to strike, one source said they were not ready to guarantee that any surgical strike would not spiral into an all- out war, for which they were prepared only at varying levels of readiness.
Currently, by any reckoning, India enjoys a qualitative and quantitative edge over Pakistan in its air and naval assets. But even the edge India has in the air and sea cannot prevent a Pakistani riposte.
Pakistans army chief, General Pervez Ashfaq Kiyani threatened that Pakistan would respond within minutes to an Indian surgical strike. This obviously means a missile strike which could be aimed at an Indian air base, said an Air Force officer. How would we then respond? If we hit their base, then we would enter into an escalation scenario, he added.
Experts admit that notwithstanding the numbers, the armies of the two countries are evenly matched. This means that if India can capture territory in Pakistan, the latter could also do the same in India.
On paper, Indias 1.3 million- man Army with more than 12,000 tanks, artillery guns, rocket launchers and infantry combat vehicles is almost twice the size of Pakistans 620,000- strong force with some 6,000 tanks and artillery guns. But, minus nine divisions of the Indian forces that are committed to deal with China, the two armies are approximately equal in size.
As it is, a big chunk of the Indian Army is involved in counter-insurgency operations.
As the Kargil review committee report had noted, The heavy involvement of the Army in counter- insurgency operations cannot but affect its preparedness for its primary role, which is to defend the country against external aggression.
Sources say that the armed forces were concerned about four aspects of the situation shortages, obsolescence of equipment, the quality and quantity of the holdings. The latest Comptroller and Auditor General report reveals, the Ordnance Factory Boards (OFB) manufacture of 23mm ammunition for the Shilka and 30mm guns mounted on Infantry Combat Vehicles was riddled with bad production planning, inefficient and uneconomic production of components and ammunition and inadequate quality control.
As a result, the OFBs supply was 34 per cent short of what the Army needed. In February 2007, the Army had to import Rs 45 crore worth of 23mm ammunition.
The 2003 CAG report had pointed out that an ordnance factory had landed the Army with as many as 135,000 defective tank ammunition worth Rs 600 crore. The defect, which was detected after one shell had killed a tank commander and injured a crew member, is yet to be rectified.
In 1999, when the Navy was mobilised in the wake of the Kargil war, it found that its plans were crimped because some of its newest frigates did not have any air defence missiles because of the Defence Research and Development Organisations failed Trishul project. This was the reason why the Barak missile was subsequently sourced from Israel. These are just two of the many horror stories that afflict the Indian defence set-up.
The key worry for all three services is in what constitutes their war wastage reserves. This is the stock of missiles, munitions and equipment kept as a reserve and is equivalent to the time that an actual Indo- Pak war is expected to last usually around three weeks.
As stocking ammunition and missiles cost a great deal of money, since the materials have a shelf- life and must be thrown away after that, the defence ministry has pared the reserve in some types of munitions to a couple of days to a week.
A 2003 government report has pointed out that, At the commencement of Operation Vijay ( the 1999 Kargil war), the stocks of Laser Guidance Kits with the Air Force were sufficient for only 12 days requirements as against then applicable War Wastage Reserve of 30 days requirements. The same report said another type of bomb and its tail units held by the mother depot at the beginning of the war were only 23 per cent and 2.2 per cent, respectively, of the mandatory minimum reserves, while no fuses were held in stock by the depot. You can be sure that the same story, multiplied by 100, is repeated across the three services.
In September 2002, after the crisis that developed following the December 2001 attack on Parliament had waned, President Pervez Musharraf travelled to the US and in an interview with the Christian Science Monitor , had this to say: my military judgment was that they [Indians] would not attack us Militarily there is a certain ratio required for an offensive force to succeed. The ratios that we maintain are far above that far above what a defensive force requires to defend itself...
Cocky Musharraf was not wrong. Fire eaters across the country have been egging the government to go to war with Pakistan over the Mumbai massacre. But could it be that India have an Army that is simply not ready for one? Who is responsible for this? Everyone, from the generals who have become progressively bureaucratised, to the bureaucrats whose only concern is over their empanelment and time- scales. And, above all, their political bosses, who are content to let things be the way they are and allow hundreds of thousands of crores of rupees to be spent for an armed force that is not ready when needed.
Courtesy: Mail Today
is this a smoke-screen to make us complacent!!!
