Even though the respective military exercise held by Pakistan and India are about handling of respective offensive reserves, the message that emerges is that their employment is best avoided.
Whereas employing Armed Forces may appear to be an attractive idea to control the naxal menace, the adverse effects of their long term commitment, particularly of the Army, need to be understood.
The Indian armed forces appear to be driving defence budgets rather than a cold calculation of the country’s desire for ‘adequate’ military capability.
While limitation in aims set is acknowledged as the primary way of conflict limitation, the point lost sight of usually on the politico-military facet is war termination.
Adequacy or inadequacy of defence allocation largely lies in the manner it is spent keeping in view the defence requirements for meeting operational and strategic goals and to have the needed defence preparedness to deal with threats.
While the asymmetrical threat will have an effect on warfare at strategic, operational and tactical levels, the threat will be most dramatic at the operational level.
To prevent intelligence failures there is a need to incorporate the additional and fresh areas of intelligence interest brought on by the asymmetric and nuclear dimensions of future conflict.
Modernisation has been grossly inadequate in the field of command, control and communications systems that link the ‘shooters’ and ‘sensors’ together to achieve synergy through network centricity and effects-based operations.
The message from mock battles
Even though the respective military exercise held by Pakistan and India are about handling of respective offensive reserves, the message that emerges is that their employment is best avoided.