Kashmir : Counter Terror Operation Updates and Discussions

Shajida Khan · Feb 25, 2019

Ashutosh said:
But these are the things we know, have known for ages. Yet this never ending, ad nauseam, point. So this begs the question given the pathetic situation what is to be done? surely going on wolf-howls by all memebers here isn't helping. Whats your perspective? Give some thing that resembles some thing interesting and half feasible. can you ?

Trouble with India is that we have a massive population. So, any kind opinion sinks under that. This cannot be made an election issue because honestly, there are not enough people to raise it. Heck the membership of this forum only is too small. Perhaps the membership of ALL the indian defence forums COMBINED will be smaller than PDF.

Secondly, unlike Pakistan, defence forces are not much of a part of Indian civil life. In Pakistan, "Fauj" is the way a lower or middle class citizen can acquire power in the polity overtime : think Mussharrf. Political power is concentrated with "ruling class" purely. India has no such situation. In India, it is very much possible for a non-political person to gather political power by launching a new regional party. Secondly, Indian bureaucrats hold a quite a bit of power and influence. The result of this situation is that within India, Forces are not capturing the imagination of common Indians. People of UP and Bihar -- the movers and shakers of Indian politics-- are more obsessed with IAS rather than being a General or Admiral or Air Chief Marshall in Indian forces. Hence, too few civilians understand the issues faced by forces, even fewer are interested in analyzing them and still fewer have any power to do anything about them. Meaning, the status quo from License Raj continues in defence procurement, production etc.

Now, once we know what is wrong the solutions are possible...

1. Folks from defence background should encourage their children, their younger siblings, their relatives to fight for IAS jobs, rise to become principal secretaries and join various defence and other ministries in such power. This will help to put forward defense requirement more strongly within Indian civil apparatus.

2. Currently, a common pathway many defence personnels take, post their service tenure is that of getting licenses to operate trades. Like petrol station, gun and ammunition business and so on and so forth. Among forces and veterans, to the best of my knowledge, there is very little incentive to enter enterpenureship arena. I personally know few punjabi families but they are in fringe. Most of them are in repairs and supply businesses. We need to promote enterpenureship among veterans. One simple way will be to encourage kids to go for short service commission with provision to earn college credits while they are still in service. After completion of their service they can take up jobs in defense manufacturing with their college degrees and defense background and then finally start their own businesses. A person who has a first hard experience of how shitty INSAS is and what is required in say Kashmir can design a better gun provided he has a degree and right training in mechanical engineering. It is very very common in US/Europe and a number of defense companies are started like this.

For those of us, who are not even in defense forces, we can start by :-

1. Setting up VC funds to support defense start-ups. In US, there are dedicated funds for this. Mostly run by veterans turned CIA turned MBA turned fund managers.

2. Join the damn forces! If someone is smart enough to figure out or ask question on this, then they may consider joining the forces and take up that path.

3. If you are considering doing a degree in arts/commerce/public administration and later planning to go for IAS, keep the forces in mind. Work you way up in the chain to principal secretary and make a difference.

Pankaj · Feb 25, 2019

Do all of the below indicate that like 26/11 we are going to take Pulwama attack also on our chin and forget about it without any major retaliation?

- Pakistan has initiated backdoor channels with GOI to diffuse tensions and we entertained such dialogues at this time.
- Cross LoC bus service resumed
- Cross LoC trade resumed

RATHORE · Feb 25, 2019

Pankaj said:
Do all of the below indicate that like 26/11 we are going to take Pulwama attack also on our chin and forget about it without any major retaliation?

- Pakistan has initiated backdoor channels with GOI to diffuse tensions and we entertained such dialogues at this time.
- Cross LoC bus service resumed
- Cross LoC trade resumed

Modi was already boxed in because of his campaign promises and image; on top of that he piled further pressure on himself in his speeches - including promising revenge in the name of Ma Bhavani in Rajasthan.

I wouldn't be shocked if the points you listed are classic Modi Misdirection/Deception; with a plan to eventually settle scores when they see the chance.

You can't perpetually stay at maximum alert, or stay fully mobilized; especially with Pakistan's economy.

Pankaj · Feb 25, 2019

RATHORE said:
Modi was already boxed in because of his campaign promises and image; on top of that he piled further pressure on himself in his speeches - including promising revenge in the name of Ma Bhavani in Rajasthan.

I wouldn't be shocked if the points you listed are classic Modi Misdirection/Deception; with a plan to eventually settle scores when they see the chance.

You can't perpetually stay at maximum alert, or stay fully mobilized; especially with Pakistan's economy.

I hope that's what Modi's line of thinking also is. Otherwise he can kiss his vote bank good bye for the upcoming elections.

noksss · Feb 25, 2019

Milspec said:
My question remains, Does the accomplishments you list take 5 years to fructify? buying a rifle takes 5 years, for 5 years not a single precision system bought untill we start taking casualties? 5 years for M777 which has production line running to be delivered? In 5 years we have 10 K-9's and 2 ATAGS prototypes for the rapid deployment for the IBG's -Awesome. isn't it?

India was not formed in 2014 neither were Indian security problems, this government verywell knew what it was getting into when it signed up to run for elections. If you really want everything to be compared to previous dispensation and call marginally better performance as it's forte, then fine by me, I apologize for my criticism of the GoI here, Kudos on the response to Pulwama. Congrats All.

Chinkook , Apache, Rafale Agreement signed in 2015 , K-9 Agreement and M777 signed in 2016 which is within a year or two after the new government is formed and none of these projects are expected to face any delay in delivery. If you still want to call this governments negotiating skills and fast tacking of defense purchase a marginal improvement then please vote for rahul gandhi in 2019 who can make amethi like Singapore in 15 years from tomorrow .

Milspec · Feb 25, 2019

Ashutosh said:
MilSpec, we are apparently clear your level of disenchantment with the "Indian" setup of things related to security/defence armed preparedness. We agree it is nothing to write home about. We can debate/whine to death on how pathetic everything is, and again we do get your point, there is hardly any argument there.

But these are the things we know, have known for ages. Yet this never ending, ad nauseam, point. So this begs the question given the pathetic situation what is to be done? surely going on wolf-howls by all memebers here isn't helping. Whats your perspective? Give some thing that resembles some thing interesting and half feasible. can you ?

It all starts with a Plan, not a secret one but a public one to which people can held accountable.

Just for example lets say we need 42 sqdns of aircraft; setting a achieve achievable deadline, and deliverable milestones every year is good starting point. This is needed for the entire outlay of the defence forces, and in my opinion the only way to that is to completely restructure MoD and replace it with a DoD-Pentagon type structure where military forces actually head the directorate of Indigenisation, procurement, R&D so and so forth similar to what IN has been trying to do within thier structure. We need to take the same structure and replace the entire Defense secretary setup top down.
Now for that we need an extremely strong defense minister that is willing to dilute the power of RM and PMO over MoD, and delegate that authority to the military, thats where we start, or 100 years down the line we ill be seeing the exact same thing as now. What this does is security policy of the nation does not get affected by election cycles or dispensation in power. A K-9 Vajra- whose trials took place in 2013 doesn't need to sit idle until the new dispensation arrives to be signed in 2015; similarly with the bureaucracy - army rift, armed forces cannot pull fast ones like ridiculous assault rifle requirements in which tavor, Galil, SCAR, Brens, all fail consistently, just because army does not get it's way.
if armed forces are not adequately equipped, a DoD lead by the armed forces should be created to look out for it's own strategic modernization plan with them being accountable for what they need so they cannot point fingers at political dispensation.

This restructuring need is obvious from the fact that corruption fiasco of Rajiv, held back arty upgrades for decades. if the system is so broken there is need for it's restructuring; defense roadmap of the country needs to de-linked from political and bureaucratic setup, irrespective of the political dispensation there needs to be unflinching resolve to the strategic road map set by the defense forces.

Lets say if tomorrow by some magic India is ahead of the curve in it's modernization plan, with complete capability to launch IBG's at it's will, would Pakistan's threat perception be different from what it is now where it knows for sure it can deploy faster and be very well aware of any mobilization plans of Indian forces and thwart Indian advances by crying to the entire world, look the big Indian forces are trying to chew us up at the border, and then international machines force India back on the back foot, this happened in Parliament attacks, any buildup will see the same. Now a fully equipped indian forces would be able to react more swiftly by taking out couple of air bassed and production sites, knowing that any retaliatory measure would be nullified by the defenses at will or will come at an escalation unbearable for Pakistani forces.

Pakistani Army is one unit whose primary goal is self preservation; there primary goal is to stay in power via India as boogeyman, now if you want to nullify this threat, we need remove the root assertion that Pakistani military's has any credible deterrence, that happens through rubbing it's nose in the ground now and calling it's nuclear bluff. That onlyt happens if we get the capability to hit them at will, publicly and with utter devastating results for everyone to see. If we want to yield the biggest stick, we need to have one first, unless MoD restructuring and delinking from Politicians and Bureaucracy; that is not going to happen.

Sometimes it just takes one person to radically change things, given Modi surely is not the one, as I foolishly expected, hopefully a strong RM would be able to convince him to do that, Ms Sitharamen definitely is not that RM.

vstol Jockey · Feb 25, 2019

Milspec said:
It all starts with a Plan, not a secret one but a public one to which people can held accountable.

Just for example lets say we need 42 sqdns of aircraft; setting a achieve achievable deadline, and deliverable milestones every year is good starting point. This is needed for the entire outlay of the defence forces, and in my opinion the only way to that is to completely restructure MoD and replace it with a DoD-Pentagon type structure where military forces actually head the directorate of Indigenisation, procurement, R&D so and so forth similar to what IN has been trying to do within thier structure. We need to take the same structure and replace the entire Defense secretary setup top down.
Now for that we need an extremely strong defense minister that is willing to dilute the power of RM and PMO over MoD, and delegate that authority to the military, thats where we start, or 100 years down the line we ill be seeing the exact same thing as now. What this does is security policy of the nation does not get affected by election cycles or dispensation in power. A K-9 Vajra- whose trials took place in 2013 doesn't need to sit idle until the new dispensation arrives to be signed in 2015; similarly with the bureaucracy - army rift, armed forces cannot pull fast ones like ridiculous assault rifle requirements in which tavor, Galil, SCAR, Brens, all fail consistently, just because army does not get it's way.
if armed forces are not adequately equipped, a DoD lead by the armed forces should be created to look out for it's own strategic modernization plan with them being accountable for what they need so they cannot point fingers at political dispensation.

This restructuring need is obvious from the fact that corruption fiasco of Rajiv, held back arty upgrades for decades. if the system is so broken there is need for it's restructuring; defense roadmap of the country needs to de-linked from political and bureaucratic setup, irrespective of the political dispensation there needs to be unflinching resolve to the strategic road map set by the defense forces.

Lets say if tomorrow by some magic India is ahead of the curve in it's modernization plan, with complete capability to launch IBG's at it's will, would Pakistan's threat perception be different from what it is now where it knows for sure it can deploy faster and be very well aware of any mobilization plans of Indian forces and thwart Indian advances by crying to the entire world, look the big Indian forces are trying to chew us up at the border, and then international machines force India back on the back foot, this happened in Parliament attacks, any buildup will see the same. Now a fully equipped indian forces would be able to react more swiftly by taking out couple of air bassed and production sites, knowing that any retaliatory measure would be nullified by the defenses at will or will come at an escalation unbearable for Pakistani forces.

Pakistani Army is one unit whose primary goal is self preservation; there primary goal is to stay in power via India as boogeyman, now if you want to nullify this threat, we need remove the root assertion that Pakistani military's has any credible deterrence, that happens through rubbing it's nose in the ground now and calling it's nuclear bluff. That onlyt happens if we get the capability to hit them at will, publicly and with utter devastating results for everyone to see. If we want to yield the biggest stick, we need to have one first, unless MoD restructuring and delinking from Politicians and Bureaucracy; that is not going to happen.

Sometimes it just takes one person to radically change things, given Modi surely is not the one, as I foolishly expected, hopefully a strong RM would be able to convince him to do that, Ms Sitharamen definitely is not that RM.

But Doval is.

Milspec · Feb 25, 2019

noksss said:
Chinkook , Apache, Rafale Agreement signed in 2015 , K-9 Agreement and M777 signed in 2016 which is within a year or two after the new government is formed and none of these projects are expected to face any delay in delivery. If you still want to call this governments negotiating skills and fast tacking of defense purchase a marginal improvement then please vote for rahul gandhi in 2019 who can make amethi like Singapore in 15 years from tomorrow .

I have clarified my position on #1045, in conjunction, my criticism is of GoI, not BJP-GoI specifically, There is a need to delineate dispensation from political background, defense minister or a finance minister irrespective of which party they belong to has responsibilities to discharge, the efficacy of the post is to be established from it's absolute performance and not relative performance, especially to what has been promised explicitly or implicitly.

Now coming to specifics, lets see when Chinook and Apache, where shortlisted, in 2011, why would it take Indian government irrespective of the dispensation 4 years to sign the deal, why is it even contingent upon political parties to make that decision, it's a defense requirement, set by the forces, selected by the forces, all the dispensation of the day is there for is to facilitate and not be roadblocks.

as for your Rahul Gandhi Jibe, I could care less for who wins the elections, the point is neither of the parties are ready for MoD overhaul, so to me hamam me sab nange.