Lt Gen Anil Chait (rtd)
Feb 20, 2015:
In both the geographic and strategic contexts, India is located in the most dangerous region of the world. The threats it faces are manifold – conventional threats from traditional adversaries who are nuclear powers with a very low professed threshold to escalate a prospective combat to a nuclear conflagration.
There are, in addition, longstanding and ongoing threats of internal disturbances-past insurgencies, which are lying dormant, but not subdued. More recent and alarming is the threat of the non-conventional Fourth Generation Warfare with prospects of causing crippling damage to institutions and systems extending far outside the military strategic sphere, for which proactive preclusive deterrence is the only practical defence.
To be effective in accomplishing their duties, the armed forces need to maintain a concept led, capability based modernisation even while remaining threat aware and resource conscious. This is feasible only if threats in all their manifestations are carefully understood and capabilities needed to accomplish operational and strategic requirements identified.
The operational roles of our forces is not one monolithic task. On the other hand, it is diverse and diffused, akin to three or four armies rolled into one combating conjointly, a proxy war in J&K, insurgency in the North East, keeping vigil and generating response against Chinese probes across Himalayas, besides the day to day border management role on the border and LOC with Pakistan. For each of these roles, training, equipment, plans and tactics are vastly different and call for our forces to make deliberate and harsh choices in modernising within the constraints of budget priorities.
To do so effectively, there is first, a need for a new military doctrine that takes into consideration the changing environment that denominates a new generation of equipment to counter the myriad threats growing in the South Asian region. The doctrine should outline ways to defend and secure India, deter near-term aggression and generate and maintain long-term conventional military parity/supremacy.
How uphill is this task? First, maintaining their largely aging equipment holdings designed for cold war generation warfare, which are now almost relic, has two primary drawbacks – declining capabilities and greatly increased costs. By itself, it cannot fulfil the requirement of winning for a modern military force in an ever-changing, technologically advancing world.
A winning, strategy-led construct, focusing on modernisation requires to be evolved to serve as the basis for determining the most effective and purpose driven composite of equipment and military where withal. The parameters upon which this determination should be made are to determine:
First, what do we need to win an all out war – purpose of use of force if what you get is going to be destroyed or you will destroy yourself; Second, can our strategy to deal with most pressing military threat on our Western borders create military conditions for a favourable political outcome; Third, whether we want to match China on our Northern borders or accommodate its capability.
In this backdrop, the thrust areas for effecting modernisation should structure around: ramping up mobilisation by factoring in terrain and infrastructure constraints; advanced technological capability to see (strategic/operational/tactical space);enhanced capability to garner, share and use intelligence to strategic or tactical advantage; sharpen our capability to strike; provide speedy mobility, and the capability to protect – personnel, equipment and national assets.
What then are the options and sequence of exercising them? Should we modernise the entire force, an exercise that would roll out over several years if not decades with no decisive cutting edge advantage in the course of the process of modernisation with the cheese having moved just that much further in terms of enhanced threats and technologies even as the envisage end state approaches? Or should we, as an alternative, pour resources into developing certain key capabilities or into enhancing war-fighting capacity in select theatres to achieve a winning capability?
Three approaches
The debate over the modernisation of the military forces has often been framed around three approaches: modernising the current generation of weapons; investing in next-generation technologies or developing totally new and revolutionary technologies--the so-called generation-after-next weapons proposed to be pursued under the Make in India programme.
These, however, are not ‘either-or’ options. In fact, viewing them as such would be misleading and result in oversimplifying what is a very complex issue. Rational, threat-determined modernisation will require careful choice from each of these options, based on the temporal tactical advantages that would accrue.
The objective of modernisation, the decisions for which should be made on entirely professional considerations, should be to develop a balance and synchronised solution which is affordable, useful supportable and based on mature technology and importantly lend a sharp cutting edge to the cause of national security.
Certain less advanced systems may cost more to maintain over their lifetime, lag behind the threat and divert funds away from choices to acquire new, more capable systems. Yet, adopting this path may well be a better response when quantity is more important than quality.
Next-generation weapons are the evolutionary extension of existing weaponry and investing in new designs and technologies to current models could yield much more advanced capabilities though this may require more time, cost and patience.
A modernisation strategy that relies too heavily on next-generation weaponry could however be besieged with inherent disadvantages. This is because next-generation weapons often require a greater initial investment in order to complete development and begin production.
Also, they would need a longer maturing period to be brought into force. Some of the evolutionary capabilities may not be adequate to meet the next threat, rendering further investment useless. Lastly, too heavy an investment in evolutionary systems could again also divert scarce deployable resources away from a comprehensive military transformation require to ensure national security in a dynamic evolving and rapidly changing strategic environment.
At the Aero India, where over three hundred foreign defence sector suppliers are displaying their products - both large systems and niche subsystems - there is a need to exercise caution and restraint to adhere to a purchase agenda specific to the requirements of our security as per professionally determined choices made on the basis of threats now faced and expected in the near term.
Large ‘glamour driven’ procurement contracts for equipment, which drives expeditionary capabilities but only marginally, enhances defence and security should be avoided. To put it bluntly, “let not the glitz get the better of rationale”.
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