Why India needs to reduce the size of its Army

[Stephen Cohen]

You don't win wars by huge ill equipped army,rather a bit smaller army more well equipped.More numbers you have more maintainence,salary,pensions and equipping costs -these eat away at budget for R & D and actual hardware acquisitions.This mass man approach is 20th century concept,not a 21st century age of special forces, precision munitions-digital battlefield.
Our southern command is clearly overbloated and such large forces are not needed there but closer to the borders.So instead of raising more and more regiments and increasing the financial strain -we should redeploy some of these assets.
Instead of huge numbers we should increase the firepower of the existing units with more artillery,PGMs,Army air aviation assets,new assault rifles etc.

All modern armies like russia,usa,china have moved towards this trend,India does possess a huge paramilitary force.And delhi is pipe dream,in case of total war both opponents will be destroyed by nuclear attacks.

Sir You write very good War Histories but you are out of tune with the reality of Indian sub continent
My questions are

1 Why does Pakistan have such a huge number of Armed Militias and Armed Civilians
what is their role and purpose ( Nearly Ten Million Men can be mobilised )

2 Southern Command is just the name of the Command whose formations
ie men and equipment are based in Southern India

Their Area of Responsibility is the border of Gujarat and Rajasthan

3 Large numbers do not mean ill equiped
have you seen what have the AK 47 and RPG wielding Iraqis and Afghans done to US soldiers

And EACH US soldier has 100 Thousand USD worth of equipment on his body
NVG; Body Armour ; Satellite connections and still blown up by IED s and shot by RPGs and AK 47

Why because they were overwhelmed by huge numbers

4 Do you know what they say about Mountains in the Army
Mountains ABSORB Manpower at an unbelievable rate

Indian borders in the LOC ; LAC are all mountainous

5 Firepower is essential ; there is No doubt about it

But if you have dont have sufficient man power ; you can be easily OUT flanked

The enemy will get behind you and you will never know
You also need Manpower for rear area operations and getting behind enemy lines

Just a case in point : The Three tier LOC Grid is heavily manned and still
terrorists sneak in

So the same thing can happen in a war on the International Border

 

[xyxmt]

@Echo_419

Hence we need a very large Army
Otherwise the Hordes from across the border will swamp the country and reach DELHI

they will do that regardless

 

[AUSTERLITZ]

Sir,
I am not sure if we have surplus soldiers.
Since last 2 decades I have been hearing it from Indian army officers that Army is short of its sanctioned strength of soldiers. At one point of time (in TOI prolly) I read the number was 50000, now it is about 18% in the officer category.
Ostensibly, GOI will bring the shortfall down to 12 per cent by 2021- that's another 6 years from now. Right now, they are improving on the situation in 2010, when the Army was 26 per cent short of its sanctioned strength of soldiers.

I think you are talking of officer shortage rather than that of men.

 

[Levina]

I think you are talking of officer shortage rather than that of men.

Soldiers after all.

 

[Stephen Cohen]

they will do that regardless

Please dont day dream ; Be afraid of the Indian Army

Indian Army is so powerful that it can DISMEMBER Pakistan for Good
in Just FIVE DAYS

 

[xyxmt]

Please dont day dream ; Be afraid of the Indian Army

Indian Army is so powerful that it can DISMEMBER Pakistan for Good
in Just FIVE DAYS

hehe those days are gone my friend, next war will be Diash style

 

[Stephen Cohen]

hehe those days are gone my friend, next war will be Diash style

We have taken into account the number of Both soldiers PLUS
Armed militias Available to Pakistan WHILE doing our
Force structure and size planning

And the fact that Pakistan has to rely on so many Armed civilians
and armed militias ; speaks about the Size and strength of Indian Army

India has no concept of armed civilians

 

[tsinga]

You are not appreciating the problem of Armed Militias and Armed civilians

Pakistan can easily mobilise TEN MILLION armed civilians

And Then there is the Fatigue factor

The reason US soldiers could not hold on To Iraq and Afghanistan
is because of fatigue ; they were simply too overstretched

So if you reduce the number of soldiers ; the LOAD becomes more on the remaining soldiers
who will simply succumb to Fatigue

You are forgetting three things.

1. In addition to the Military - The size of Central(not even state forces - ie police, etc, just the Center) Paramilitary Forces in India is close to 2 million. These men and women are trained to fight and fire .

The tens of millions that Pakistan can muster are not trained in military techniques or accurate shots. Ergo, they are just men who will fire the weapons from their hip.

Ergo, these trained soldiers would be able to inflict a 1:5 damage ratio against untrained hordes of armed civilians.

The paramilitary forces alone would be able to stall if not defeat the entire mass wave of Pakistani armed civilians.

2. The tens of millions that Pakistan can muster are not trained in military techniques or accurate shots. They are just bearded men who will fire the weapons from their hip.

Answer: India can easily summon up close to 100 million (at a very very very conservative 10% response rate to a national call) volunteers in case of a war. Able bodied. While they may not be able to shoot straight, they would be more than enough to overwhelm any opponent using human waves, particularly the likes of Pakistani armed civilians.

What they will not be able to do is fight a trained Army. But then this is assuming that Pakistani military has already been destroyed by India in the first place which is why Pakistan would be mustering these civilians for human waves tactic.

Please note this survey as proof:
The response rate here is 75%....our population is 1.3 Billion

3. That India possesses nuclear weapons. Which implies that no country in the world can inflict total war on India and survive to tell the tale. That country(and most likely its neighbouring countries as well) would be obliterated/irradiated in such a scenario.


So what you are suggesting is that maybe we should have the infrastructure ready(ordinance factories, etc) to be able to ramp up production of arms at short notice or keep a large reserve instead of increasing the size of the army so that we can equip volunteers at short notice.

Which ever way you look at it, whichever scenario you use...in any total war scenario, it is Pakistan that would be worried about getting wiped off instead of us.

 

[AUSTERLITZ]

Sir You write very good War Histories but you are out of tune with the reality of Indian sub continent
My questions are

1 Why does Pakistan have such a huge number of Armed Militias and Armed Civilians
what is their role and purpose ( Nearly Ten Million Men can be mobilised )

2 Southern Command is just the name of the Command whose formations
ie men and equipment are based in Southern India

Their Area of Responsibility is the border of Gujarat and Rajasthan

3 Large numbers do not mean ill equiped
have you seen what have the AK 47 and RPG wielding Iraqis and Afghans done to US soldiers

And EACH US soldier has 100 Thousand USD worth of equipment on his body
NVG; Body Armour ; Satellite connections and still blown up by IED s and shot by RPGs and AK 47

Why because they were overwhelmed by huge numbers

4 Do you know what they say about Mountains in the Army
Mountains ABSORB Manpower at an unbelievable rate

Indian borders in the LOC ; LAC are all mountainous

5 Firepower is essential ; there is No doubt about it

But if you have dont have sufficient man power ; you can be easily OUT flanked

The enemy will get behind you and you will never know
You also need Manpower for rear area operations and getting behind enemy lines

Just a case in point : The Three tier LOC Grid is heavily manned and still
terrorists sneak in

So the same thing can happen in a war on the International Border

Mate do you know that around 50% of IA budget goes to salaries,pensions and just maintainence.
Now imagine if a part of those funds could be freed up for actual hardware acquisitions.
And now even more assets are being raised.I understand that much of southern command's forces are deployed in west india,but still there are surplus formations there.This huge mobilization concept consisting of strike forces being redeployed by rail is very good for prolonged war..but let me ask you do you ever see such a war occuring without escalating to nuclear exchange?

I am specifically talking of the XXI strike corps deployed in central india.I doubt this formation could play a significant role in any potential conflict due to time fo redployment .Yet it houses some of IA's most potent offensive abilities.Parrikar says we don't have funds to raise a new strike corps on china border and only enough for 30,000 men.Why not redeploy some of these assets to those 30,000 men instead of trying to raise fresh 90,000 men corps.
Iraqis and afghans have suffred losses to the ratio of 1 to 100 in the guerilla war,most usa casualities came from IEDs.AK-47s can't penetrate their body armour under most circumstances,RPGs useless unless they are modern variants(rpg-28 onwards).
China is outnumbered by our forces at the border currently,but they can mobilize rapidly due to infrastructure and their artillery is much better -we need to understand static defence is near impossibility all along border.We need mobile reserve forces well equipped for decimate any dangerous flanks or penetrations...this you can't do with just numbers.

So i agree to disagree,what we need is more airlift capability like globemasters,helicopters and hercules to shift troops around quickly and efficiently.Well equipped special forces for rear area attacks.More precision guided munitions under army control(perhaps a prahar regiment to each corps),plentiful mobile artillery,drones,surveillence and comm assets,new body armour and rifles.

We have 1130,000 active and perhaps a million reserve troops.I believe we don't need any further increase,and even modest reductions by 50,000-100,000 and increase the firepower component of these divisions by adding gunships,airlift capability and new technology.In current age war of millions of soldiers is not possible without nuclear escalation.We need to prepare our forces for short swift wars lasting less than a week with maybe a surprise attack to seize some territory like Tawang.A huge unwieldy force can't respond quickly enough to these challenges -we saw that in OP parakram.For Kashmir i agree manpower is needed because Counter -ops,counter infiltration and garrisoning duties are a heavy strain.

Soldiers after all.

The more formations you raise,more the pressure to train more officers to lead these units .Capacity at IMA is limited.So actually more men will deepen officer shortage problem.

 

[Stephen Cohen]

You are forgetting three things.

1. In addition to the Military - The size of Central(not even state forces - ie police, etc, just the Center) Paramilitary Forces in India is close to 2 million. These men and women are trained to fight and fire .

The tens of millions that Pakistan can muster are not trained in military techniques or accurate shots. Ergo, they are just men who will fire the weapons from their hip.

Ergo, these trained soldiers would be able to inflict a 1:5 damage ratio against untrained hordes of armed civilians.

The paramilitary forces alone would be able to stall if not defeat the entire mass wave of Pakistani armed civilians.

2. The tens of millions that Pakistan can muster are not trained in military techniques or accurate shots. They are just bearded men who will fire the weapons from their hip.

Answer: India can easily summon up close to 100 million (at a very very very conservative 10% response rate to a national call) volunteers in case of a war. Able bodied. While they may not be able to shoot straight, they would be more than enough to overwhelm any opponent using human waves, particularly the likes of Pakistani armed civilians.

What they will not be able to do is fight a trained Army. But then this is assuming that Pakistani military has already been destroyed by India in the first place which is why Pakistan would be mustering these civilians for human waves tactic.

Please note this survey as proof:
The response rate here is over 75%

3. That India possesses nuclear weapons. Which implies that no country in the world can inflict total war on India and survive to tell the tale. That country(and most likely its neighbouring countries as well) would be obliterated in such a scenario.


So what you are suggesting is that maybe we should have the infrastructure ready(ordinance factories, etc) to be able to ramp up production of arms at short notice or keep a large reserve instead of increasing the size of the army so that we can equip volunteers at short notice.

Which ever way you look at it, whichever scenario you use...in a total war scenario, it is Pakistan that would be worried about getting wiped off instead of us.

How many Indian civilians have SEEN an AK 47 ; forget about picking up one

In Pakistan due to the large scale militarisation of the society the exposure to weapons
and experience of using weapons is very high

So the only way to counter it is a Large UNIFORMED army of well Trained soldiers

There is NO need for US fancy gadgets

Our population is high but they are all unaware of weapons and Military training

It takes some time for a rookie to become a soldier

And our Paramilitary and police will be busy with Internal security duties in Kashmir and North East

Also There will be MANY trouble makers ISI sympathisers who would have to be taken care of

We have 1130,000 active and perhaps a million reserve troops.

You would be surprised by the REAL numbers

I believe we don't need any further increase,and even modest reductions by 50,000-100,000

SIR ; I was arguing AGAINST the REDUCTION in the size of the Army

The current numbers are fine but we cant reduce them JUST for saving money

I am specifically talking of the XXI strike corps deployed in central india.I doubt this formation could play a significant role in any potential conflict due to time fo redployment .Yet it houses some of IA's most potent offensive abilities

The XXI corps and the Southern Command
is firmly gearing up for the Rapid mobilisation challenge

21 CORPS ON WAR EXERCISE IN RAJASTHAN | Defence Mail
Bhopal-based 21 Corps to undertake war exercise in Rajasthan | Business Standard News

Fire power ; Rapid Airborne divisions ; PGMs ; HIgh tech C4 ISR ; attack copters
are all necessary ; but the money for them cannot come from reducing the number of soldiers

Army HQs has done a lot of planning and thinking and they have wisely decided against reducing numbers

We should increase the defence budget for getting capital intensive equipment

.In current age war of millions of soldiers is not possible without nuclear escalation.

That is just a theory ; If and That is a BIG IF ; we reduce numbers and then
we have a war with Pakistan and China ( and Bangladesh too opens a front )
how would we be able to counter the huge number of Soldiers and armed civilians

I dont want India to run to UNSC or BEG USA for Help
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
And there is also another advantage of a large Army ; Indian Army's size makes Pakistan Nervous
AND they keep Investing in jihadis and Non state actors who cause them more harm than good

 

[xyxmt]

We have taken into account the number of Both soldiers PLUS
Armed militias Available to Pakistan WHILE doing our
Force structure and size planning

And the fact that Pakistan has to rely on so many Armed civilians
and armed militias ; speaks about the Size and strength of Indian Army

India has no concept of armed civilians

Indian cannot maintain an Army large enough to encounter our "armed Militias" as you put it.
Remember whenever a reporter asks Musharaf what if India attacks Pakistan and his answer is always India wont even know what hit them if next war starts.

 

[Nilgiri]

Thank you for the invite @Echo_419

My take:

India is still nowhere near the economic size to create the margins where massive qualitative investment per soldier can be upped. I think we need to wait for the Economy to reach at least 5 trillion USD in nominal terms before we look at major manpower cuts. The economy has to reach a stage where it is able to absorb youth excellently and ALL their prospects are quite excellent in civilian sectors (whatever their economic and social background) and there is the opportunity cost really starts to rise from having the manpower in the army at the levels we have today (which I feel still doesnt quite exist yet given Kashmir deployment, Naxals + other hotspots + the margins we need to adequately deal with the neighbours).

Thats when we can look at gradually shedding by ways like not replacing retirees on a 1 to 1 basis till we get a force level more in line with what the consensus decides is the best ratio to maximise effectiveness. I am not in favour of jarring cuts (through VRS, honourable discharge with job placement etc.)....because I feel changes in our military must be organic over a long period of time....to better reflect the organic long term growth and rise of India.

Right now I am in favour of investing more heavily in certain regiments as a sort of pilot project to determine the lethality ratios that can be achieved so that we have a reference to work with later when we want to equip the whole army to these standards while shedding the flab. For next 5 - 10 years this can be done along with overall quality spending per soldier generally too. They joined to serve their motherland to their best ability.....we should not cut short their intention and motivation to artificially impact the structure of our army in a few short years. It should always be a long term organic plan I feel.

So I agree with the overall intent, just that it should be paced accordingly and appropriately.

 

[Rajaraja Chola]

You don't win wars by huge ill equipped army,rather a bit smaller army more well equipped.More numbers you have more maintainence,salary,pensions and equipping costs -these eat away at budget for R & D and actual hardware acquisitions.This mass man approach is 20th century concept,not a 21st century age of special forces, precision munitions-digital battlefield.
Our southern command is clearly overbloated and such large forces are not needed there but closer to the borders.So instead of raising more and more regiments and increasing the financial strain -we should redeploy some of these assets.
Instead of huge numbers we should increase the firepower of the existing units with more artillery,PGMs,Army air aviation assets,new assault rifles etc.

All modern armies like russia,usa,china have moved towards this trend,India does possess a huge paramilitary force.And delhi is pipe dream,in case of total war both opponents will be destroyed by nuclear attacks.

What are the respective strengths of all the commands in the Indian Army?!
Lets include the Territorial Army also for the sake pls

 

[Zarvan]

Despite being a Pakistani no India can't afford to reduce its Army

 

[Echo_419]

And we don't have enough funds to support that? How about we set the system up where politicians cannot siphon Trillions of rupees from the exchequer?

We are becoming a society of bean counters where we are ready to leverage security and sovereignty for a cleaner balance sheet, an extremely dangerous precedent to set for future generations.

Just look at the equipment IA has & also their CAPEX:OPEX ratio