Indias current army strength

India’s armed forces look good on paper. It fields the world’s second-biggest standing army, after China, with long fighting experience in a variety of terrains and situations. It has topped the list of global arms importers since 2010, sucking in a formidable array of top-of-the-line weaponry, including Russian warplanes, Israeli missiles, American transport aircraft and French submarines. State-owned Indian firms churn out some impressive gear, too, including fighter jets, cruise missiles and the 40,000-tonne aircraft-carrier under construction in a shipyard in Kochi, in the south of the country.

Yet there are serious chinks in India’s armor. Much of its weaponry is, in fact, outdated or ill maintained. “Our air defense is in a shocking state,” says Ajai Shukla, a commentator on military affairs. “What’s in place is mostly 1970s vintage, and it may take ten years to install the fancy new gear.” On paper, India’s air force is the world’s fourth largest, with around 2,000 aircraft in service. But an internal report seen in 2014 by IHS Jane’s, a defense publication, revealed that only 60% were typically fit to fly. A report earlier this year by a government accounting agency estimated that the “serviceability” of the 45 MiG 29K jets that are the pride of the Indian navy’s air arm ranged between 16% and 38%. They were intended to fly from the carrier currently under construction, which was ordered more than 15 years ago and was meant to have been launched in 2010. According to the government’s auditors the ship, after some 1,150 modifications, now looks unlikely to sail before 2023.

Such delays are far from unusual. India’s army, for instance, has been seeking a new standard assault rifle since 1982; torn between demands for local production and the temptation of fancy imports, and between doctrines calling for heavier firepower or more versatility, it has flip-flopped ever since. India’s air force has spent 16 years perusing fighter aircraft to replace ageing Soviet-era models. By demanding over-ambitious specifications, bargain prices, hard-to-meet local-content quotas and so on, it has left foreign manufacturers “banging heads against the wall”, in the words of one Indian military analyst. Four years ago France appeared to have clinched a deal to sell 126 of its Rafale fighters. The order has since been whittled to 36, but is at least about to be finalized.

India’s military is also scandal-prone. Corruption has been a problem in the past, and observers rightly wonder how guerrillas manage to penetrate heavily guarded bases repeatedly. Lately the Indian public has been treated to legal battles between generals over promotions, loud disputes over pay and orders for officers to lose weight. In July a military transport plane vanished into the Bay of Bengal with 29 people aboard; no trace of it has been found. In August an Australian newspaper leaked extensive technical details of India’s new French submarines.

The deeper problem with India’s military is structural. The three services are each reasonably competent, say security experts; the trouble is that they function as separate fiefdoms. “No service talks to the others, and the civilians in the Ministry of Defense don’t talk to them,” says Mr Shukla. Bizarrely, there are no military men inside the ministry at all. Like India’s other ministries, defence is run by rotating civil servants and political appointees more focused on ballot boxes than ballistics. “They seem to think a general practitioner can perform surgery,” says Abhijit Iyer-Mitra, who has worked as a consultant for the ministry. Despite their growing brawn, India’s armed forces still lack a brain.

Read More

Indias current army strength

India’s armed forces look good on paper. It fields the world’s second-biggest standing army, after China, with long fighting experience in a variety of terrains and situations. It has topped the list of global arms importers since 2010, sucking in a formidable array of top-of-the-line weaponry, including Russian warplanes, Israeli missiles, American transport aircraft and French submarines. State-owned Indian firms churn out some impressive gear, too, including fighter jets, cruise missiles and the 40,000-tonne aircraft-carrier under construction in a shipyard in Kochi, in the south of the country.

Yet there are serious chinks in India’s armor. Much of its weaponry is, in fact, outdated or ill maintained. “Our air defense is in a shocking state,” says Ajai Shukla, a commentator on military affairs. “What’s in place is mostly 1970s vintage, and it may take ten years to install the fancy new gear.” On paper, India’s air force is the world’s fourth largest, with around 2,000 aircraft in service. But an internal report seen in 2014 by IHS Jane’s, a defense publication, revealed that only 60% were typically fit to fly. A report earlier this year by a government accounting agency estimated that the “serviceability” of the 45 MiG 29K jets that are the pride of the Indian navy’s air arm ranged between 16% and 38%. They were intended to fly from the carrier currently under construction, which was ordered more than 15 years ago and was meant to have been launched in 2010. According to the government’s auditors the ship, after some 1,150 modifications, now looks unlikely to sail before 2023.

Such delays are far from unusual. India’s army, for instance, has been seeking a new standard assault rifle since 1982; torn between demands for local production and the temptation of fancy imports, and between doctrines calling for heavier firepower or more versatility, it has flip-flopped ever since. India’s air force has spent 16 years perusing fighter aircraft to replace ageing Soviet-era models. By demanding over-ambitious specifications, bargain prices, hard-to-meet local-content quotas and so on, it has left foreign manufacturers “banging heads against the wall”, in the words of one Indian military analyst. Four years ago France appeared to have clinched a deal to sell 126 of its Rafale fighters. The order has since been whittled to 36, but is at least about to be finalized.

India’s military is also scandal-prone. Corruption has been a problem in the past, and observers rightly wonder how guerrillas manage to penetrate heavily guarded bases repeatedly. Lately the Indian public has been treated to legal battles between generals over promotions, loud disputes over pay and orders for officers to lose weight. In July a military transport plane vanished into the Bay of Bengal with 29 people aboard; no trace of it has been found. In August an Australian newspaper leaked extensive technical details of India’s new French submarines.

The deeper problem with India’s military is structural. The three services are each reasonably competent, say security experts; the trouble is that they function as separate fiefdoms. “No service talks to the others, and the civilians in the Ministry of Defense don’t talk to them,” says Mr Shukla. Bizarrely, there are no military men inside the ministry at all. Like India’s other ministries, defence is run by rotating civil servants and political appointees more focused on ballot boxes than ballistics. “They seem to think a general practitioner can perform surgery,” says Abhijit Iyer-Mitra, who has worked as a consultant for the ministry. Despite their growing brawn, India’s armed forces still lack a brain.

Read More

India raging terror on broken militia

To many Indians, their country’s strategic position looks alarming. Its two biggest neighbours are China and Pakistan. It has fought wars with both, and border issues still fester. Both are nuclear-armed, and are allies with one another to boot. China, a rising superpower with five times India’s GDP, is quietly encroaching on India’s traditional sphere of influence, tying a “string of pearls” of alliances around the subcontinent. Relatively weak but safe behind its nuclear shield, Pakistan harbours Islamist guerrillas who have repeatedly struck Indian targets; regional security wonks have long feared that another such incident might spark a conflagration, reports the Economist.

So when four heavily armed infiltrators attacked an Indian army base on September 18, killing 18 soldiers before being shot dead themselves, jitters inevitably spread. The base nestles in mountains close to the “Line of Control”, as the border between the Indian and Pakistani-administered parts of the disputed territory of Kashmir is known. Indian officials reflexively blamed Pakistan; politicians and pundits vied in demanding a punchy response. “Every Pakistan post through which infiltration takes place should be reduced to rubble by artillery fire,” blustered a retired brigadier who now mans a think-tank in New Delhi, India’s capital.

Yet despite electoral promises to be tough on Pakistan, the Hindu-nationalist government of Narendra Modi has trodden as softly as its predecessors. On September 21 it summoned Pakistan’s envoy for a wrist-slap, citing evidence that the attackers had indeed slipped across the border, and noting that India has stopped 17 such incursions since the beginning of the year. Much to the chagrin of India’s armchair warriors, such polite reprimands are likely to be the limit of India’s response.

There are good reasons for this. India gains diplomatic stature by behaving more responsibly than Pakistan. It is keenly aware of the danger of nuclear escalation, and of the risks of brinkmanship to its economy. Indian intelligence agencies also understand that they face an unusual adversary in Pakistan: such is its political frailty that any Indian belligerence tends to strengthen exactly the elements in Pakistan’s power structure that are most inimical to India’s own interests.

But there is another, less obvious reason for reticence. India is not as strong militarily as the numbers might suggest. Puzzlingly, given how its international ambitions are growing along with its economy, and how alarming its strategic position looks, India has proved strangely unable to build serious military muscle.

India’s armed forces look good on paper. It fields the world’s second-biggest standing army, after China, with long fighting experience in a variety of terrains and situations. It has topped the list of global arms importers since 2010, sucking in a formidable array of top-of-the-line weaponry, including Russian warplanes, Israeli missiles, American transport aircraft and French submarines. State-owned Indian firms churn out some impressive gear, too, including fighter jets, cruise missiles and the 40,000-tonne aircraft-carrier under construction in a shipyard in Kochi, in the south of the country.

Yet there are serious chinks in India’s armour. Much of its weaponry is, in fact, outdated or ill maintained. “Our air defence is in a shocking state,” says Ajai Shukla, a commentator on military affairs. “What’s in place is mostly 1970s vintage, and it may take ten years to install the fancy new gear.” On paper, India’s air force is the world’s fourth largest, with around 2,000 aircraft in service. But an internal report seen in 2014 by IHS Jane’s, a defence publication, revealed that only 60% were typically fit to fly. A report earlier this year by a government accounting agency estimated that the “serviceability” of the 45 MiG 29K jets that are the pride of the Indian navy’s air arm ranged between 16% and 38%. They were intended to fly from the carrier currently under construction, which was ordered more than 15 years ago and was meant to have been launched in 2010. According to the government’s auditors the ship, after some 1,150 modifications, now looks unlikely to sail before 2023.

Such delays are far from unusual. India’s army, for instance, has been seeking a new standard assault rifle since 1982; torn between demands for local production and the temptation of fancy imports, and between doctrines calling for heavier firepower or more versatility, it has flip-flopped ever since. India’s air force has spent 16 years perusing fighter aircraft to replace ageing Soviet-era models. By demanding over-ambitious specifications, bargain prices, hard-to-meet local-content quotas and so on, it has left foreign manufacturers “banging heads against the wall”, in the words of one Indian military analyst. Four years ago France appeared to have clinched a deal to sell 126 of its Rafale fighters. The order has since been whittled to 36, but is at least about to be finalised.

India’s military is also scandal-prone. Corruption has been a problem in the past, and observers rightly wonder how guerrillas manage to penetrate heavily guarded bases repeatedly. Lately the Indian public has been treated to legal battles between generals over promotions, loud disputes over pay and orders for officers to lose weight. In July a military transport plane vanished into the Bay of Bengal with 29 people aboard; no trace of it has been found. In August an Australian newspaper leaked extensive technical details of India’s new French submarines.

The deeper problem with India’s military is structural. The three services are each reasonably competent, say security experts; the trouble is that they function as separate fiefdoms. “No service talks to the others, and the civilians in the Ministry of Defence don’t talk to them,” says Mr Shukla. Bizarrely, there are no military men inside the ministry at all. Like India’s other ministries, defence is run by rotating civil servants and political appointees more focused on ballot boxes than ballistics. “They seem to think a general practitioner can perform surgery,” says Abhijit Iyer-Mitra, who has worked as a consultant for the ministry. Despite their growing brawn, India’s armed forces still lack a brain.

Read More

FORGOTTEN PROMISES & DEFUNCT DOGMAS: - IS KASHMIR BEING PUSHED TO AN ARMED STRUGGLE?

      “Absence of International Collective Conscience Is What Breeds Armed Struggles”

Che Guevara

Popular Uprising, Public Revolt or National Mutiny, there many words found in the English Language for a phenomenon more commonly referred to as an Armed Struggle. Armed Struggle is a Movement Supplemented by Violence and undertaken by a National Entity for the achievement of defined Political Objectives. Though romanticized in pieces of fine literature, armed struggles have and will always continue to be a matter of grave concern for students of Peace and Conflict Studies. Armed struggles throughout the course of history and even in recent times have served as catalysts to chain of disorder, rampage and violence which have adequate potential of invoking prospects of a Civil War. Irish Republican Movement and or The Angola National Campaign are manifestations of how Justifiable movements turned in Mass Humanitarian Tragedies. Armed Struggles thus no matter how legitimate are discouraged by previews of Strategic Studies and the only productive measure that can be undertaken in this regard is the engagement of international community in general and power-players in particular with issues related to Self Determination and Identity Crisis. It is however appalling to see that the ultimate Preacher of Democracy and Justice has decided to shy away from a brewing crisis that is unfolding as we speak. Will this disengagement provide Raison D’être for an Armed Struggle?

Four Day Visit of the U.S Secretary of State Mr. John Forbes Kerry to India has just concluded on the 1^st day of September 2016. The significance and impact of this visit was already anticipated and many in the region as well as in the rest of the world were looking forward to it. Many of these onlookers belonged either to the Defense Contractors Club who were high up on their heels peeking into the Money Mint this visit could have ignited or to the Diplomatic/Academic circles observing strategic alignment in South-Asia. Without doubt this is the audience that was catered the most by the press and held in high esteem. However as cigars were being smoked and wine glasses being toasted in these elitist circles, far away from the Lutyens of Delhi in a God Forsaken Valley called Kashmir, another group of onlookers was also anxious about this visit. Hundreds of Thousands of Assaulted, Abused, Oppressed and Subjugated Children of a Lesser God were also trying their best to look on to this visit with their Pellet Ridden Eyes. These misfortune Kashmiris as we know them have been subject of abhorrent state brutalities for the past 2 months. Dozens have fallen to Indiscriminate Firing by Indian Security Forces, Hundreds including children have suffered Permanent Visual Disabilities due to the use of Pellet Guns by LEAs and Thousands have suffered Harrowing Torture when they were found violating the terms curfew due to immediate needs. These people and many more that care for them had their Eyes Locked at the Secretary of State’s Visit as they hoped that the ultimate custodian of Human Rights and Civil Liberties in this unipolar world would care for them. If not in a position to Restrain India from its wrongdoings or even Reprimand it The Secretary of State was at least expected to pay a lip service by expressing regret over the Loss of Life in Kashmir. Expectations of the distressed were high as they hoped that even an expression of Sorrow and Regret would placate them and heal their wounds to some extent but all these hopes were in vain. 

The Secretary of State found enough time for Sightseeing in the Suburbs of Delhi as he Visited Temples and Collected Artifacts but he could not find enough time to acknowledge or comment upon the tyranny that exists in the valley. It is difficult as to say whether the Secretary of State found himself Short of Time or SHORT OF COURAGE but this visit has left deep scars in the valley. It seems as if human rights and fundamental liberties are Meant Not for the inhabitants of Kashmir, what await them is further Oppression, Torture, Enforced Disappearances and Mass Graves. Franklin Roosevelt the 32^nd President of the United States had famously said “Never Again” while responding to the Holocaust, this promise has gained further significance in the post-cold war transformation of the world into a unipolar entity. Many today across the globe look up to This Promise but it seems as if Uncle Sam has either Forgotten these boastful words or Lost Some Calcium in His Back Bone. The United States of America either due to the Shine of the Indian Capital Market or due to Vested Interests has in the recent past began to shy away from its responsibilities as a Super-Power in the New World Order. Let alone stand for the millions of oppressed Kashmiris U.S has also restricted its self from Acknowledging the International Status of the Kashmir Dispute which is Supplemented by Several U.N Resolutions. Kashmiris have been watching these Shades of American Diplomacy quite minutely yet they thought that Hundreds of Deaths would awake the long Dozing American Conscience. This visit however seems to have out the Final Nail in the Coffin. It has certainly conveyed to the Kashmiris the message that their Policy of Political Struggle and Endurance of Oppression is yielding No Results as their Shrieks and Cries fall on Deaf Ears.

 Adaptation of an Alternate Path of Struggle is thus the call of the hour. Its seems as if Kashmiris have Reached the Bank of the ferocious River Slavery where they would either have to Jump into it and drown till eternity Without Any Hope of Rescue or build a Bridge of Armed Struggle and cross it by the strength of their backs and the sweat of their brows, to the other side where the every lovely Freedom awaits them. This struggle if undertaken will surely inflict unimaginable pain and sufferings as a Wave of Violence would inevitably erupt. The decision rests with Kashmiris alone regarding the path they chose. The Secretary of States and his office is however advised to refrain from issuing any statements condemning violence if Kashmiris adopt the later path because the United States of America has lost the Moral Authority to do so.

Read More