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India's internal security environment has been
vitiated by a ‘proxy war’ through which Pakistan
has fuelled an uprising in J&K since 1988-89.
Various militant movements in India’s north-eastern
states and the rising tide of Maoist terrorism
in large parts of Central India have also contributed
to internal instability. India’s regional security
is marked by instability in Afghanistan, Bangladesh,
Myanmar, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka.
Military strength is a pre-requisite for peace
and stability on the Indian Sub-continent. India’s
socioeconomic development, and that of its neighbours,
can continue unhindered only in a secure environment.
No nation can afford to be complacent about and
to take unmanageable risks with its security.
In the rapidly changing geo-strategic environment,
comprehensive national strength hinges around
modern armed forces that strive constantly to
keep pace with the ongoing technological revolution.
The rapidly changing nature of warfare, the existential
threat from India’s nuclear-armed military adversaries
and new threats like terrorism spawned by radical
extremism, require a quantum jump in the Indian
army’s operational capabilities.
 Despite
all the tensions confronting it, India has maintained
its coherence and its GDP is now growing at an
annual rate in excess of eight per cent, except
for the dip suffered during the financial crisis.
Growth at such a rapid rate would not have been
possible but for the sustained vigilance maintained
by the Indian armed forces and their many sacrifices
in the service of the nation over the last six
decades. The Indian army has fulfilled its multifarious
roles with admirable valour and in a spirit of
sacrifice and selfless devotion to duty.
The Indian army ’s personnel strength is approximately
1.1 million. It has performed remarkably well
to keep the nation together. It is a firstrate
army but has been saddled for long with second-rate
weapons and equipment, despite heavy operational
commitments on border management and in counter-insurgency
operations. The modernisation dilemma that the
Indian army faces is that it can carry out substantive
modernisation only by simultaneously undertaking
large-scale downsizing as the funds available
for modernisation are extremely limited.
However, it cannot afford to downsize as its
operational commitments on border management and
internal security duties require a large number
of manpower-heavy infantry battalions.
In order to successfully defeat future threats
and challenges, the Army must modernise its weapons
and equipment and upgrade its combat potential
by an order of magnitude. The shape and size of
the Indian Army’s force structure a few decades
hence merits detailed deliberation and quick decisions
as capabilities take several decades to create,
test and experiment with till they finally mature.
It has been well said that there are no prizes
for the runners up in war .
War is a gruesome affair and, as Napoleon put
it so eloquently about two centuries ago, “God
is on the side of the battalions with the bigger
cannon.” To afford the “bigger cannon” there is
a need to make adequate budgetary provisions.
The present defence budget, which is pegged at
less than 2.0 per cent of India’s GDP, is grossly
inadequate to support genuine modernisation as
against the replacement of obsolete equipment.
 MODERNISATION
IMPERATIVES
The Army must reduce its deployment timings
by upgrading the logistics infrastructure for
mobilisation so that it can facilitate the execution
of its Cold Start doctrine. A modern intelligence,
surveillance and reconnaissance (the ‘sensors’)system
is required to reduce the number of troops needed
to man the borders. The Army needs to enhance
its capabilities for carrying offensive operations
into the territories of India’s military adversaries
so as to deter them from waging war. Firepower
assets (the ‘shooters’) – artillery, missiles,
rocket launchers, unmanned combat air vehicles,
attack helicopters, ground strike aircraft – must
be increased substantially, particularly with
precision strike capabilities.
Command and control systems should be automated
and synchronised with the sensors and shooters
to exploit the synergies provided by network centric
effects based operations. Rapid reaction and air
assault capabilities need to be developed to intervene
militarily in India’s strategic neighbourhood
whenever the national interest so requires. It
has to be so as terrorist and militant attacks
are often launched and supported from across the
borders.
The Army’s internal security, counter-insurgency
and counterterrorism capabilities also need to
be modernised as most of the emerging challenges
will lie in the domain of sub-conventional conflict
and operations other than war. The time has come
to seriously consider a ‘third force’ for internal
security operations. Doctrinal concepts, organisations
structures and training methodologies must keep
pace with technological advancements. The Army
must train its personnel for certainty and educate
them for uncertainty.
Restructuring and modernising the Indian Army
will require political courage, military astuteness,
a nonparochial approach and a singularity of purpose.
NEED FOR A NATIONAL MILITARY
COMMISSION
 Only
a future-ready army can march into the coming
decades with confidence, well prepared to tackle
the new challenges looming over the horizon. The
Government of India must appoint a bipartisan
National Military Commission to go into the whole
gamut of restructuring and modernisation. The
commission should comprise eminent political leaders,
armed forces veterans, civilian administrators,
diplomats and scholars who are capable of dispassionate
reasoning and are familiar with the current military
discourse. It should be given no more than six
months to complete its work so that the restructuring
exercise can begin early and be completed by 2020-25.
MODERNISATION PROGRAMMES
Sadly, the Indian Army has almost completely
missed the ongoing Revolution in Military Affairs
(RMA).
This is because extremely limited funds are made
available for modernisation and a large portion
of the funds allotted on the capital account is
surrendered year after year due to political scandals
and bureaucratic red tape. Defence Minister A
K Antony had admitted recently, “New procurements
have commenced… but we are still lagging by 15
years.”
If this state of affairs continues much longer,
the quantitative military gap with China will
soon become a qualitative gap as well.
Also, the slender conventional edge that the
Indian army enjoys over its Pakistani counterpart
will be eroded further as Pakistan is spending
considerably large sums of money on its military
modernisation.
While Pakistan has acquired 320 T-80 UD tanks
and is on course to add Al Khalid tanks that it
has codeveloped with China to its armour fleet,
vintage Vijayant tanks and the ageing T-55s continue
in the Indian Army’s inventory despite their obsolescence.
The indigenously developed Arjun MBT has not
quite met the Army’s expectations due to recurring
technological problems and cost over-runs, though
the tank has entered serial production to equip
two regiments. Consequently, 310 T-90S MBTs had
to be imported from Russia. In December 2007,
a contract was signed for an additional 347 T-90
tanks to be assembled in India. Meanwhile, a programme
has been launched to modernise the Sovietvintage
T-72 M1 Ajeya MBTs that have been the mainstay
of the army’s Strike Corps and their armoured
divisions since the 1980s.
The programme seeks to upgrade the night fighting
capabilities and fire control system of the tank,
among other modifications. Approximately 1,700
T-72 M1s have been manufactured under licence
at the Heavy Vehicle Factory (HVF), Avadi. The
BMP-1 and, to a lesser extent, the BMP-2 infantry
combat vehicles, which have been the mainstay
of the mechanised infantry battalions for long,
are now ageing and replacements need to be found
soon.
 The
replacement vehicles must be capable of being
successfully employed for internals security duties
and counter-insurgency operations in addition
to their primary role in conventional conflict.
Despite the lessons learnt during the Kargil
conflict of 1999, where artillery firepower had
undeniably paved the way for victory, modernisation
of the artillery continues to lag behind. The
last major acquisition of towed gun-howitzers
was that of about 400 pieces of 39-calibre 155
mm FH-77B howitzers from Bofors of Sweden in the
mid-1980s. New tenders have been floated for 155mm/
39- calibre light weight howitzers for the mountains
and 155mm/52-calibre long-range howitzers for
the plains, as well as for self-propelled guns
for the desert terrain. As re-trials have not
yet commenced, it will take almost five years
more for the first of the new guns to enter service.
The artillery also needs large quantities of precision
guided munitions (PGMs) for more accurate targeting
in future battles. The present stocking levels
are rather low.
A contract for the acquisition of two regiments
of the 12-tube, 300 mm Smerch multi-barrel rocket
launcher (MBRL) system with 90 km range was signed
with Russia’s Rosoboronexport in early-2006. The
BrahMos supersonic cruise missile (Mach 2.8 to
3.0), with a precision strike capability, very
high kill energy and maximum range of 290 km,
was inducted into the army in July 2007. These
terrain hugging missiles are virtually immune
to counter measures due to their high speed and
very low radar cross section. Both of these will
provide a major boost for hitting the enemy at
long ranges.
 The
indigenously designed and manufactured Pinaka
multi-barrel rocket system is likely to enter
service in the near future. It is also time to
now consider the induction of unmanned combat
air vehicles (UCAVs) armed with air-to-surface
missiles into service for air-to-ground precision
attacks.
The Corps of army Air Defence is also faced with
serious problems of obsolescence. The vintage
L-70 40 mm AD gun system, the four-barrelled ZSU-23-4
Schilka (SP) AD gun system, the SAM-6 (Kvadrat)
and the SAM-8 OSA-AK have all seen better days
and need to be urgently replaced by more responsive
modern AD systems that are capable of defeating
current and future threats.
The Akash and Trishul surfaceto- air missiles
have not yet been fully developed by India’s Defence
Research and Development Organisation (DRDO),
which is tasked to build indigenous capabilities.
The short-range and medium-range SAM acquisition
programmes are embroiled in red tape. This is
one area where the Army has lagged behind seriously
in its modernisation efforts.
The modernisation plans of India’s cutting edge
infantry battalions, aimed at enhancing their
capability for surveillance and target acquisition
at night and boosting their firepower for precise
retaliation against infiltrating columns and terrorists
holed up in built-up areas, are moving forward
but at a snail’s pace.
These include plans to acquire hand-held battlefield
surveillance radars (BFSRs), and hand-held thermal
imaging devices (HHTIs) for observation at night.
Standalone infra-red, seismic and acoustic sensors
need to be acquired in large numbers to enable
infantrymen to dominate the Line of Control (LoC)
with Pakistan and detect infiltration of Pakistan-sponsored
terrorists.
Details are important. For instance, it is important
to ensure that powering devices for hand-held
and manportable systems are powered by the best-available
batteries and energy devices that last long.
Similarly, the operational capabilities of Army
aviation, engineers, signal communications, reconnaissance,
surveillance and target acquisition (RSTA) branches
need to be substantially enhanced so that the
overall combat potential of the army can be improved
by an order of magnitude. Modern strategic and
tactical level command and control systems need
to be acquired on priority basis for better synergies
during conventional and sub-conventional conflict.
While the Artillery Combat Command and Control
system (ACCC&S) has entered service, the Battlefield
Surveillance System (BSS) is yet to mature. The
communication systems linking these C3I systems,
Project ASTROIDS and the Tactical Communication
System (TCS), are still in various stages of development.
Despite being the largest user of space, the Indian
Army does not have a dedicated military satellite
to bank on.
CONCLUDING OBSERVATIONS
With India’s defence budget now pegged at less
than 2.0 per cent of the GDP, the funds available
for modernisation of the armed forces are grossly
inadequate.
The only other alternative of undertaking quantitative
reduction in force levels so as to save funds
for modernisation cannot be resorted to due to
large-scale manpowerintensive operational commitments
of the Army. The Army is not only deployed along
or stationed close to a long border with China
and along the LoC with Pakistan on a permanent
basis but is also engaged extensively in manpower-intensive
counter-insurgency operations and, hence, finds
it difficult to reduce its manpower.
As the availability of funds remains low, India’s
military modernisation is likely to continue at
a slow pace in the foreseeable future.
Finally, the Indian Army of the future must be
light, lethal and wired; ready to fight and win
India’s future wars jointly with the Indian Navy
and Indian Air Force over the full spectrum of
conflict, from sub-conventional conflict and operations
other than war to an all-out conventional war;
so as to ensure regional stability and internal
security. The nation must get a modern force that
can fight and win India’s future battles with
the least number of casualties and minimum collateral
damage through surgical strikes.
The Indian Army should be a force capable of
carrying the battle into an enemy territory, from
where terror or military attacks are launched
or might originate.
Only then will the nation get a peaceful environment
for socioeconomic development. The aim should
be to ensure peace through conventional deterrence
so that India can achieve all round prosperity
and join the ranks of the world’s developed nations.
The author is Director,
Centre for Land Warfare Studies (CLAWS), New Delhi.
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