Lt Gen Syed Ata Hasnain
On the 16th anniversary of the Kargil War (Operation Vijay) a review of where we stand in terms of border security. This article comes with our deep remembrance of the heroes of Kargil and all those brave hearts of the Armed Forces who made this victory possible
Today is the 16th anniversary of the Kargil victory. This year the mood of the Armed Forces and its veterans is somber because of the sword of One Rank One Pension (OROP) hanging over all official events as a call has been given by some ex-servicemen organizations to exercise the democratic right of boycott. I will use this space, my first entry into IBN Blogs, to neither celebrate nor boycott. I find it best to reflect on what Kargil (Op VIJAY) really triggered in terms of capability and where we stand today. I do this because the public deserves to know this from the minds of soldiers more than any other minds.
Everyone knows Kargil was an order of battle and tasking blunder with the Srinagar based 15 Corps looking after threats in Eastern Ladakh, Siachen, Kargil, Kashmir LoC (infiltration) and the Valley based militancy, then running into its tenth year. All this with a negligible increment to the HQ staff. Everyone’s attention was on the Valley, the Valley’s LOC segment or Siachen; who would be bothered about Kargil. Operation VIJAY brought a semblance of balance to the deployment and response mechanism. First, 8 Mountain Division embedded itself in the Kargil sector where a single brigade was earlier located. Second, the raising of Headquarters 14 Corps for Ladakh ensured that the iconic 15 Corps now remains responsible only for the Valley (LoC, counter infiltration and counter insurgency). Perhaps that has helped tremendously in turning the tide of militancy/terror. With the Chinese getting more itchy and aggressive in Eastern Ladakh we now have a full division catering for that threat. So in sum we are now much more balanced in disposition with Siachen, Kargil and Eastern Ladakh the responsibility of 14 Corps.
In terms of intelligence, which was the big ticket failure in 1999 I can certify from experience that there is much greater care about the whole intelligence cycle ending with dissemination to the right quarters within the acceptable time frame. Measures to carry out surveillance of winter vacated areas through wide area surveillance and observation (WASO) missions by helicopters are executed with far greater vigor. There is a great deal of night surveillance equipment which was acquired on fast track and its availability has added effectiveness in the counter infiltration operations.
Yet, despite all this the feasibility of the adversary managing surprise is always live because it is militarily impossible to deploy manpower at every meter along the LoC. This may sound apologetic to the less informed but frankly any military mind would reinforce the unpredictability of operations at the LoC. The one warning the Army needs to heed is that the thermal imaging equipment which was acquired on fast track after Kargil is now at the end of its life cycle; it has been used beyond capacity. However, not much has been done to acquire replacements in adequate quantity. Perhaps this needs to be done on fast track again. The rotary wing support in such operations is never enough. No doubt, both the Army and Air Force allocate greater priority to J&K/ Northern Command because of the nature of operations, no complaints on this. However, this is at the cost of other sectors and frequent redeployment for disaster management every time a tragedy occurs; that is wasteful and avoidable. The faster the two Services and the MoD can get their act together for the acquisition of the elusive helicopters the greater will be the effect on operations and prevention of intelligence failures.
It must be added here that in dealing with Pakistan and its protégés the element of unpredictability is extremely high. As a force the Pakistan Army has high propensity for risk and its commanders have a reputation for outstanding initiation of conflict but terrible handling and direction towards termination. The outcome can usually be predicted as potential failure; as such when dealing with such an adversary the most bizarre actions can be expected along with unpredictability thus making intelligence assessments extremely challenging.
The Kargil Review Committee (KRC) made a plethora of recommendations, all of which are not possible to discuss within this space. However, those pertaining to personnel management have been largely achieved including reducing the age and service profile of Commanding Officers (COs). While the effect of this has been extremely positive in the field the overall management of select rank vacancies has upset the applecart of morale among different Arms and Services which needs to be revisited even as a court case is pending on the same. What has not been achieved and was never recommended by the KRC is the dire need for better management of senior ranks in the Army. General Officers are serving at higher ranks for far too short a period, insufficient to acquire experience and skills of higher defence management. Serving 33 years up to one star rank and only 6.5 to 7 years at two and three star ranks does not inspire confidence in the handling of higher direction of war. Brave efforts need to be made in this area. For information, the Pakistan Army’s General Officers are promoted at service levels six years less than ours. The officer shortage is improving but very slowly. The promotion to select rank at lower service levels is also resulting in officers getting overlooked for promotion earlier. The cascading effect is that there are lesser officers to serve frontline units and the cadre of overlooked/non-empanelled officers has bloated. Thus while strength of the Army’s officer cadre may enhance the low availability for field duties is resulting in a number of units being below even hard scale levels. Artificial satisfaction is achieved by keeping strength of units in field areas at above hard scales but the result is that frontline units in peace stations are undermanned. It is these units which have to mobilize for war at short notice, the units in field are already in near mobilized mode.
The KRC’s recommendations towards restructuring of the MoD to achieve integration with the three Services received only cosmetic attention leading to a one off action to create the HQ Integrated Defence Staff (IDS) which was supposedly half way house to full and final integration. The latter continues to elude and in the light of enhancing threats that the Nation faces it needs to be revisited at the earliest. Entry of uniformed officers into appointments of the MoD is now almost mandatory.
On the equipment and ammunition front the situation is apparently damning. While a new Defence Procurement Process is shortly to be announced there is very little time to translate the decisions of the Defence Acquisition Council (DAC) into action. The Army, in particular needs to revisit the entire concept of building expertise among its officers; longer tenures and repeat postings into equipment related appointments will speed up the processing of long pending cases but even more than that a higher level of trust is required to be reposed in the officers managing these appointments. On the ammunition side, the transparency of information has created a stir although the problem has existed for long. Imported ammunition is expensive and indigenously manufactured is prone to defects leading to high percentage of rejection. The only solution is quite obviously higher accountability of the ordnance factories and greater investment in imports. Both are extremely difficult challenges which will fester for some time. Decision makers will have to decide the risk they are willing to undertake by keeping the Army short of its minimum acceptable risk levels.
The picture is not that grim. No Army can remain at hundred percent levels of equipment, personnel and training. This is always work in progress. The Army’s top brass is competent and the Government appears sensitized to the needs but there is much more energy required in the field of equipment acquisition and some in personnel management. Competent leadership with longer tenures in appointments will definitely enhance the quality of decision making.
The nation needs to be aware and more informed and intellectual interaction is necessary in the public domain to keep our Armed Forces ticking and our adversaries wary.
Courtesy : http://www.ibnlive.com/blog/
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