Despite India and China, both being Asian civilizations, they are, in fact, very different both culturally and historically. In China, "Coal men" is the racist nickname for Indians. During the colonial period, Sikh soldiers were called "A-Sir" in Wu dialect, but after a long time it became "A-san". Sikhs policemen wore red turbans, so the Chinese nickname for Indians became "red-headed, A-san" implying buttocks of monkeys. "Third brother" is another term used by the Chinese for Indians. It is a patronising reference to a "younger brother" in the Chinese world-view of India's place. The Chinese name for Indus River is ugly "tushui". "Tushui" originates from the Sanskrit name for the Moon, which is tied to the idea of rejuvenation and family reunion. Chinese media has said: Indian "beggar soldiers" in the mountains on the border, are quite annoying but using all of China's energy is not the solution. We don't need to hard work using our manpower, when we can offset it using technology to deal with them. The safety of Chinese soldiers is most important. After Japanese encroachment on China in 1915, and between 1917-1921, a sociopolitical reform took place in China, called the May Fourth Movement, also known as Wusi. This was a student movement that was directed toward national independence, emancipation of the individual through practicality in life, and anti-imperialist re-building of the Chinese society and culture. However, Liang Shuming, based on stereotypes, concluded that Indian culture was regressive, over religious and must be rejected by Chinese society completely, while Western culture was highly scientific, but became greedy and materialistic due to human suffering. He thought Chinese culture (like Confucian laws of human nature) gave balance to humans, and so China must bring change to the mindset in Western societies. "Xi Jinping thought" still reveres the teachings of Mao and Karl Marx, but it also links Mr. Xi to even older Chinese traditions. Mr. Xi regularly quotes ancient sages, stressing their teachings on obedience and order. China's Mo-Di, one of China’s first philosophers, judged all creative job's (like art, storytelling/theatre and music) as a negative utilitarianism. In ancient China, music was a trinity of arts which would be performed not simply as part of ceremonial rites, to worship ancestors and divinities, but also for entertainment at banquets to honour the powerful. In Mo-Di's view, the entire process involved in performing arts and composing music were useless, and it deprived social production of time and energy. He did not hate creative and aesthetic works, but rather saw no use for it in society, and therefore believed that people’s tax money should not go into artistic programs. He believed if someone listened to music daily, it means that they were slacking. There are only 3 things he believed that people worried about - food, clothes and rest. Xi called Karl Marx "the greatest thinker in human history." “Some people think that communism can be aspired to but never reached, or even think that it cannot be hoped for, cannot be envisioned, and is a complete illusion. . . . Facts have repeatedly told us that Marx and Engels’s analysis of the basic contradiction of capitalist society is not outdated. . . . Western anti-China forces conspire to overthrow the CCP, so the party must stamp out “false ideological trends,” including constitutional democracy, the notion that Western values are Universal, the concept of Civil Society, journalistic independence, challenges to the party’s version of history. We must not let down our guard.” China, since Mao, has a long history of creating trouble with its neighbouring countries. Mao called India a capitalist "lackey" and Indian PM Jawaharlal Nehru a "collaborator of imperialism." He decided 'to teach Nehru a lesson' in 1962, when he couldn't digest Pandit Nehru's rising global stature following his role as a leader of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) and other initiatives. Pandit Nehru first issued a map in 1950 showing the Aksai Chin area to be no-man's land. China does not believe in strategic vacuums, so China took advantage of India's total absence in Aksai Chin by sending its ground surveyors to survey such areas between 1950 & 1957. Only after this did China begin claiming territory. Panchsheel, which, contrary to public conception, was initiated by Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai and not Jawaharlal Nehru. It was "not about non-intervention in absolute terms, but about China demanding an end to India's special relationship with Tibet". Indian leadership has this wishful thinking that they can still convince the leadership in Communist China to make peace without India giving strategic obedience in favour of China. China, like Japan, has been predominantly a single race country, unlike the diversity in India (which China thinks is weak for national unity). Chinese Han (ethnic Chinese) having nothing in common with the natives of Tibet either ethnically or culturally or in terms of linguistics. Tibet was not ruled by the Chinese government prior to the 1950 invasion. The country maintained its own national flag, currency, stamps, passports and army and maintained diplomatic relations with neighbouring countries. China, after occupying the buffer state of Tibet, attacked the same locations in the traumatic 1962 War and took over Indian territories. India pushes back since CCP is the major threat to India's security as currently China physically occupies about 45,000 sq km of Indian territory. In Ladakh alone, China had taken control of 37,244 sq km. Mount Kailash (also called Meru) and ManaSarovar lake or Swan rimbonche territories are under the Communist Chinese control. It's the source of some of the Indus River, from which India gets its name. However, Indian policymakers have left it under Chinese control. India has records from Tibet, the Sikh rule over Ladakh, and British documents, however, China doesn't have any as the democratic Chinese government had to flee to Taiwan. This is why China keeps talking about international treaties being unequal with China. China also quotes the British treaty of 1890 when it suits them, as in the case of Doklam towards Sikkim. Ironically, the 17-Point Agreement (through which China pretends to have ‘liberated’ Tibet) was signed in 1951 was also unequal. Chinese communist Govt has categorically rejected the McMahon Line and does not recognise Kashmiri territories as separate from Xinjiang and Tibet. In fact, being part of famous old Silk route; Srinagar, Kargil, Gilgit-Baltistan and parts of Afghanistan has also been claimed as belonging to China. China has offered no coherent legal basis for its claims. As per international law, no claim can be pressed forward in the absence of documentation. India can never be seen again to lose its territory integrity to China. China’s arrogant rejection of the new map of Ladakh, when its external boundaries have not been changed. Chinese clearly wants that India to accept its new positions along the Ladakh area and is very reluctant to go back. If China questions India's right to change internal boundaries of Indian states, we should remind China about its revision of Tibet’s historical internal boundaries. China takes its cue from Pakistan, mistakenly views India's boldness, to push back at China, to be the work of the US behind the scene. Pakistan Army views Indian leadership's adherence to pacifism, makes it weak. Strategically, Pakistan helps China by keeping India permanently preoccupied on the Western border. The various terror outfits controlled by the Pakistan Army can also be deployed as mercenaries. The fact that Indian Army has been caught by surprise from 1962 to 2020, proves why Indian military was not prepared. A decision appears to have been taken around 2016 by the Chinese leadership core that Pakistan should be given a boost in military assistance, not only to hold its own against India but also to serve as a more effective brake on rapid development of capabilities by India. As a Chinese saying goes: "Kill with a borrowed knife." From the Chinese point of view, “stability” does not come from settling its border issues with India, but “dominance on the border and deterring Indian challenges.” Chinese negotiating style is to capture and sit until it wears out the patience of its adversaries. China communist Govt. only listens to strength and pretend to agree when it needs to buy time. Chinese's strategy after its disastrous 1979 invasion of Vietnam has been to subdue the competitor by coercion. China is focusing on building regional primacy as a springboard to global power, and it looks quite familiar to the road the United States itself once travelled. PLA has emphasized the development of its economic debt-traps, psychological warfare, social-media PR, and proxies. This increased reliance on military is not in the interest of either the armed forces of India nor the Indian public. Ironically, some veterans praised the Agnipath package while enjoying their own pension and perks. What about Police Force, their strength, pay, allowances and pensions? https://kaypius.com/2022/06/11/tour-of-duty-a-bad-idea-whose-time-has-come/ One Rank One Pension, or "same pension, for same rank, for same length of service, irrespective of the date of retirement", was an ad hoc enterprise. PM adopted it for short-term electoral gains. Its long-term cost is staggering: OROP’s annual bill exceeds funds allotted for modernisation. Last year, the five-year equaliser in OROP led to an increase of Rs 25,000 crore, which forced the government to appeal to the Supreme Court. The revenue account compared to capital is so heavily skewed in favour of the former that the government had to look at reducing manpower. Agnipath scheme is intended to kill two birds with one stone — reduce manpower and pension bills. Agniveer recruitment commenced in June 2022 with the intake of 40,000 soldiers, while 70,000 soldiers continued to retire. Ashok K Mehta "God and a soldier all people adore in time of war, but not before; And when war is over and all things are righted, God is neglected and an old soldier forgotten."
Prologue: Long before the Mongol invasion in 1237 to 1240 and the formation of the Russian Empire, the first raids by the Rus began in 860 against the Byzantine Empire. These raids went on until 1043. Peter the Great was also no stranger to raiding operations in wartime. Hundreds of years later, during the latter years of the Great Northern War, Russian galley fleets with thousands of raiders successfully attacked Sweden, including Gotland, Uppland, and the Stockholm archipelago. It was only in the second half of the 17th century, and as a consequence of incessant fighting among Poles, Muscovites, Ottoman Turks, Crimean Tatars, and Ukrainian Cossacks, that Muscovy annexed eastern Ukrainian territories and approached the Black Sea, thereby transforming Ukraine and the Ottoman realm into a region of strategic interest. Czarist Russia was dubbed “the prison of peoples” by the 19th-century French traveller Astolphe de Custine, a phrase later picked up by Lenin. It was as brutal an empire as any, colonizing, displacing and murdering the indigenous populations of north Caucasus, Crimea, Siberia and the lower Volga and repopulating these lands with Russian settlers. The 20th century was the bloodiest time in human history as a result of a disastrous combination of factors. The German invasion had created shortages of food in the cities. Peace, too, was desired, especially by the soldiers at the front, who lacked munitions. Above all, land, was desired by the peasants, who for 50 years had suffered from acute “land hunger.” Germany sent the exiled Lenin back to Russia. Lenin and Trotsk had lived in exile abroad because their views had brought them into conflict with the imperial government. Mensheviks, led by Martov, favoured a large, loosely organised democratic party whose members could agree to differ on many points. They were prepared to work with the liberals in Russia, and they had scruples about the use of violence. The Bolsheviks, led by Bolshevik Vladimir Lenin, were hardline revolutionaries. Lenin called his group ‘hards’ and his opponents ‘softs’. Lenin ushered in the long-time communist practice of manipulating ideology to obtain whatever was desired. Lenin created the slogan for a suffering populace: “peace, land, and bread.” Ironically, Lenin, who came from the intelligentsia and never did physical work, said he relished a good open fight instead of endless inconclusive talk. He survived, in part, by living off his mother’s funds. He was always raising funds and inciting class warfare across the Soviet Union. He imposed fixed grain prices at low rates, straining peasants who already were living on the margins. When the peasants began resisting, Lenin ordered government officials to torture them. Lenin, however, believed Stalin was too heavy-handed. In 1942, as powerful German armoured forces bypassed Stalingrad, the Russians realized that a counterstroke into the lengthy German flank would be more effective than moving forces far to the southeast to defend against German armour. The Red Army had its armoured raids, like the 24th Tank Corps raid on Tatsinskaya. This resulted in the complete encirclement and surrender of the German 6th Army, while powerful German tanks were abandoned far to the east from a lack of fuel and supplies. By 1943, the Germans lacked the resources to mount offensives. They found it easier to wait for the Russians to expose themselves with offensive thrusts, avoid their armoured spearheads, then counterattack into their exposed flanks to maul Russian rear area troops and roll up their spearheads from behind. Often described as Europe's deadliest conflicts since WW-2, the Third Balkans civil-wars led to the breakup of the Yugoslavia. It was marked by many war crimes, including genocide, crimes against humanity and rape. By 1996, Serbia and Montenegro hosted about 300,000 registered refugees from Croatia and 250,000 from Bosnia and Herzegovina, while an additional 15,000 persons from Macedonia and Slovenia were also registered as refugees. Over a million Bosnian Muslims and Croats were driven from their homes in ethnic cleansing. Serbs suffered too. One out of every eleven people were either refugees or displaced in Serbia by 1999. Not allowing Russia (who were eager for an alliance) to join NATO was “one of the worst mistakes in political history. It automatically put Russia and the West on a collision course. Putin would later famously say that the breakup of the Soviet Union “was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century.” The former Yugoslavia was a federation of 6 republics, that brought together Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia, Bosnian Muslims, Albanians, and others under a comparatively relaxed communist regime. After President Tito's death in 1980, tensions re-emerged. Calls for more autonomy within Yugoslavia by nationalist groups led in 1991 to declarations of independence in Croatia and Slovenia. The Serb-dominated Yugoslav army lashed out, first in Slovenia and then in Croatia. Bosnia, with a complex mix of Serbs, Muslims and Croats, was next to try for independence. International peace efforts to stop the war failed, the UN was humiliated and over 100,000 died. Soon, Croatia and Bosnia were fully independent. Slovenia and Macedonia had already gone. Montenegro left later. In 1999, Kosovo's ethnic Albanians fought Serbs in another brutal war to gain independence. After the collapse of the Soviet Union though, NATO began to redefine its purpose to ensure the democratization of newly post-communist republics, which the alliance considered crucial to guaranteeing a stable Europe. Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia were accepted in the 1999 and 2004 enlargement of NATO alliance. Poland also joined NATO in 1999, and much to Moscow’s dislike, NATO’s borders expanded farther into Eastern Europe. During the 2008 Bucharest Summit, NATO's backed the US anti-missile shield in in Poland and the Czech Republic. Croatia and Albania were invited to join the NATO alliance for regional stability. Georgia and Ukraine had also hoped to join the NATO but Russia opposed it. Only three months after the Bucharest Summit in 2008, Russia invaded two territories in Georgia on the pretext of defending the breakaway regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. After the pro-Russian president in Ukraine was ousted in 2014, Russia invaded key points in Eastern Ukraine and annexed the Crimean Peninsula. Russian military reforms sought to abandon the conscript-heavy Soviets system by consolidating formations and equipment, converting an unwieldy Soviet mobilization Army into a smaller standing force. Conscription saves a significant amount of money, but the continuing lack of a capable NCO corps inhibits tactical proficiency. Conscripts usually fill positions that require little training, such as drivers, cooks, labourers, or lower-level maintenance personnel. The Red Army's "hordes" were long gone and without an operational reserve, Russia's forces would actually be more brittle than NATO's in a sustained conflict. Russian NCO corps with long-serving soldiers has been difficult, so Russia's combat elements contain conscripts and contract ("enlisted professionals") who have several shortcomings due to the lack of experienced NCOs and many had very little training for combat. Also, one of the most unpopular moves was to shrink the size of the officer corps during peace years, as the Russian military saw its budget slashed by 80 percent. Russia had prioritized modernizing its ageing air & missile systems over the Russian army. However, advanced equipment, such as artillery, air-defense, engineers, or electronic warfare, to maneuver companies (motorized rifle or tank), still requires technically skilled manpower to operate and maintain. Properly trained and empowered NCOs enable a unit to react more quickly in a dynamic combat environment. However, 2-year conscription terms were considered insufficient time to train individuals to perform complex technical tasks, so officers had to perform duties that would normally be performed by NCOs in Western armies. Since this became an inefficient way of managing manpower, it was decided to create “warrant officer” position, recruited from conscripts who had completed their initial tours, primarily to maintain and operate advanced equipment. In the front line, many senior officers who show the junior officers how it was done were killed or badly wounded. Warrant officers relieve some of the technical and small unit burdens that are placed on officers, but are generally never well-regarded favourably by the officer corps, since the best conscripts, who wanted to continue their military service, go through military academies to become officers. In addition to technical positions, warrant officers served as platoon leaders for maintenance and supply units and filled positions similar to US first sergeants but with far less leadership roles. In general, contract servicemen fill “trigger puller” positions. Some of these warrant officers became contract NCOs ("enlisted professionals"), but there was little practical difference. The corruption expanded in Russian military expanded, leading to food shortages and even some starvation deaths among lower-ranking troops, as the size of the force shrank to over 70 percent. One report, quoted by the BBC in 2002, even alleged that senior soldiers were selling their juniors into prostitution. At least 15 soldiers died due to hazing in the first quarter of 2004, while the Russian Ministry of Defense’s own data listed suicide (much of it likely a result of hazing). These practices often involved theft, beatings, and humiliation. Hazing destroys two of the keys to military performance, cohesion and retention. Junior officers, who might at least be tempted to intervene in extreme cases of hazing, were focused on keeping their jobs, if not also moonlighting in another occupation just to survive. war on rocks: Russia has maintained a hybrid system of conscription and contract service to the present day. It has vacillated back and forth between desiring a completely professional enlisted force, and continuing with the current hybrid system, albeit with a greater percentage of contract NCOs ("enlisted professionals"). Russia regressed to a partial-mobilization force, hoping to have the best of both worlds: more forces and equipment, reduced staffing and cost, plus the ability to generate substantial combat power on short notice. The military sought to have a high-readiness force within the former Soviet approach of large formations requiring a degree of mobilization. The Russian military eventually came to adopt a force structure that could deploy as Battalion Tactical Groups (BTGs), or as the entire formation, such as a regiment or brigade. They were expected to have higher readiness in terms of equipment and manpower and be able to deploy on short notice. These formations were composed of infantry, armour, artillery, and supporting assets. In theory, this offered flexibility, but in practice, what such a military can do in a limited war, can’t necessarily be replicated in a complex, large-scale military operation. Consequently, a 3,500 sized combined-arms brigade might only have 2,500 men at peacetime, but when accounting for 30 percent of conscripts are likely to be in the unit, this meant that no more than 1,700 would be deployable. The gaps encouraged Russian military officials to engage in habitual forms of cooking the books. Russian military prioritized having more permanent readiness battalion tactical groups exclusively manned by contract soldiers and officers. The Russian military doesn’t have the numbers available to easily adjust or to rotate forces if a substantial amount of combat power gets tied down in a war. These are supposed to have between 800 service members, but as the official number of Battalion Tactical Groups (BTGs) was rapidly increasing, the number of troops serving under contract plateaued, and the annual draft figure has remained largely unchanged. It appears the Russian armed forces achieved their target by reducing the number of personnel in each battalion, including the troops number in each company. One of the previously identified weaknesses of such formations was that they lacked a sufficient number of staff to properly execute command and control. These formations were heavily weighted towards artillery, armour, support, while they decided to reduce the number of personnel for motorized rifle units by changing the table of organization. The new authorized strength for a motorized rifle company seems to be approximately 76 (instead of 112) as before, and just 22 (instead of 32) for platoons of 3 squads each. This means that many Russian motorized rifle squads only have enough soldiers to operate their vehicles, but without any dismount to fight in urban settings or seizing or holding terrain (three-attacker-to-defender force ratio). There were also personnel shortages within enablers to logistics. By bringing minimal infantry, motorized rifle battalions are suffering from the same vulnerabilities as tank units. Russian military likely would have been better off with fewer BTGs, but fully-manned BTGs. Russia is quite aware of the Western model of enlisted professionalization, but this model has been evaluated and rejected for use in Russia. Although the Russian military understands the institution in the US/West, they do not think it would be a good fit for the Russian military due to different military decision-making processes, histories, and social conventions. Russia does not want well-rounded enlisted leaders, they want narrowly-focused, technically competent, professional, enlisted soldiers.charles k. bartles https://www.southwestledger.news/news/fort-sill-academy-train-soldiers-how-defeat-threats-drones%14%10 U.S. Infantry Squad (when fighting with air-support or artillery cover) will have 12 soldiers during peacetime (15 soldiers only during wartime i.e. 4 X fire teams):- The All Rifle Squad consists of 3 x Fire Teams + 1 x Squad Leader, 1 x Asst. Squad Leader who is the Navigator, 1 x NEW Systems Operator (excluding Medic and Driver). The Army has an additional squad in each platoon, called the Infantry Weapons Squad. This squad has teams dedicated to the machine gun and man-portable missile/rocket support. Each Fire Team consists of 4 x Riflemen (includes 1 x Team Leader, 1 x Automatic Gunner, 1 x Light Machine Gunner, 1 x Scout-Sniper or Riflemen for "close combat" defence). 2 x (an Asst. Automatic Gunner and a Riflemen) are also Ammo carriers. An Army Squad uses a dedicated high explosive (HE) Grenadier in place of an Asst. Automatic Gunner. One member in each Squad will also be “designated sharpshooter” carrying a Limited Long-Range Sniper or Marksman Rifle (with suppressor). Sufficient Man-Portable rocket launcher (anti-armor, anti-personnel) is given with each Squad (also 1 ISR Mini Drone shared amongst the 3 teams). The Fire Team Leader typically carries the grenade launcher slung under his rifle. The Army companies can get mortar (mortarman = indirect fire infantryman), heavy machine gun, and man-portable missile/rocket support from the Weapons Company. 2024: The US Army is making significant investments in the force structure supporting integrated air and missile defense at the corps and division levels. New additions include: New version of surveillance, exploration, reconnaissance, targeting (SERT) mounted mast for border with integrated ground radar by Navantia Manoeuvre contact battles require communication of high-quality targetting data amongst different units. PLA's new 'rapid-mobility' Light Infantry Squad has 9 soldiers for active border (consists of 2 x asymmetrical fire teams): The 1 X Squad Leader's team has 1 X dedicated man-portable missile/rocket gunner (anti-armour), 1 x rifleman who is also deputy gunner, and 1 X rifleman for "close combat" defence. The 1 X Deputy Squad Leader's team (may have grenade launcher slung under his rifle) has 1 X dedicated Light Machine Gunner, 2 X riflemen (carrying extra ammos) and 1 X Operator/Driver (10-seater wheeled vehicle) who is also a rifleman. PLA's Motorized/Armoured Infantry Squad has 7 soldiers + 2 Operators/Drivers during peace time (consists of 2 x asymmetrical fire teams): The 1 X Squad Leader's team has 1 X designated Scout-Sniper carrying special penetrating ammos, 1 X dedicated Light Machine Gunner, 1 X rifleman (carrying extra ammos), and also a driver who typically doesn't dismount. The 1 X Deputy Squad Leader's team has 1 X dedicated high explosive (HE) Grenadier or dedicated man-portable missile/rocket gunner (anti-armour), 1 x rifleman who is also deputy grenadier/gunner, and also a driver who typically doesn't dismount. Building organizational structures within the Army is vital for doctrinal innovation. The US entered WW-II with the Army’s horse-bound 26th Cavalry Regiment engaging Japanese tanks during the Philippines campaign. By the end of the war, the Army had evolved into a competent and robust mechanized force. When the US entered the war, planners concluded that the U.S. would need over 200 infantry divisions and about 280 air combat groups to ultimately defeat the Axis powers. However, U.S. leadership knew that if they built so many infantry divisions, the manpower they would need to work the arsenal of democracy wouldn’t be there. They therefore made a conscious decision to hold the number of infantry divisions to no more than 90 while keeping the 280 air combat groups. The thinking was that a “heavy fisted air arm” would help make up for the lack of infantry parity with the Axis powers. The “90-division gamble” turned out to be a winner. In the 1950s, Eisenhower knew that having a “peacetime” standing army of that "90-division" was neither politically nor fiscally sustainable. Eisenhower’s New Look policy (or first offset doctrine or 1OS) relied on the US strategic nuclear triad arsenal for security. During the 1970s, the situation stagnated when the Soviets, after having achieved nuclear parity with the U.S. and then, quickly surpassed the US arsenal numerically and qualitatively. Soviet armored units in Europe significantly outnumbered those of NATO. The US and its NATO allies spent decades developing technologies and operational concepts, like Follow-on-Force-Attack (FOFA) within integrated battle, that leveraged Soviet weaknesses in mobilizing forces and projecting power across Europe. Army planners realized that they would only succeed if, once a breach was achieved, they could disrupt the enemy’s rear areas. As a result, throughout the Cold War, the U.S. never tried to match the Soviet Union tank for tank, plane for plane, or soldier for soldier. It instead sought joint maneuver to “offset” the potential adversary's advantages in attrition (tactical operational design that causes the cumulative destruction of the enemy’s material strength). Fast-forward twenty years. The operational concept that emerged in the 1970s and the 1980s, was the second offset (Air-Land battle) doctrine, also called the "holding strategy" by Robert O. Work. This really caught the Soviets’ attention, and the Soviets concluded the game results were accurate. They realized a conventional attack was not likely to succeed because NATO would be able to defeat their forces before they reached their planned penetration point. Soviet military theorists called a “military-technical revolution.” The second offset battle network had all the same characteristics of the British home air defense network in WW2, but it focused on the Air-Land battle. It was a high-tech period when the U.S. invested heavily to increase battlefield awareness (outfitting long-range sensor-shooter network like stealth & surveillance aircrafts with over the horizon technologies) and long-range strike capability (precision guided munitions, but it could be used only at line-of-sight ranges) deep behind enemy lines against Warsaw Pact first, second and third echelon forces (while reducing friendly-fire). The concept sought to disrupt the ability of the adversary to mobilize forces that would exploit breakthroughs along NATO’s defensive perimeter. There were lots of realistic force-on-force trainings. The key strategic mainstay of US strategy is to deter aggression. "The PRC has a robust and redundant IADS architecture over land areas (and within 556kms of its coast) that relies on an extensive early warning radar network, fighter aircraft, and a variety of SAM systems." Central to maneuver theory is the proposition that rapid attacks against isolated points of weakness can disorient the enemy, causing the fragmentation and systemic breakdown of the ability to resist or counterattack. This assumption appears inapplicable to addressing sophisticated A2/AD challenges. The decentralized command and control system required by maneuver theory would be unable to cope with the scale and interconnectedness of an advanced A2/AD network. The nature of a theater-sized advanced A2/AD — a network characterized by the mutual support and redundancy of many components – suggests that its wholesale collapse would be difficult to achieve. Maneuver concepts require tactical commanders to discover enemy weaknesses by reconnaissance pull. Tactical ISR platforms would soon become priority targets for a capable adversary defending itself against a maneuver operation. Against continental adversaries with the ability to exploit buried fiber-optic communications, generating “non-cooperative centers of gravity” seems a tall order. http://www.indiandefencereview.com/news/lac-impasse-and-army-itbp-spat/ https://newindian.in/govt-to-deploy-9400-itbp-troops-along-lac-in-coming-years/ The entire LAC is handled by the Western Theatre Command of the PLA. China's military budget now is an estimated $250 billion to $300 billion a year on its armed forces. Since China has both bigger defence budget and military industrial base, the three Indian armed services must agree to adopt integrated operations plan for contingency scenarios. Combined arms is the employment of two or more arms together in complementary ways. This allows each arm to exploit the strengths and protect the weaknesses of the others with which it is combined. For the CDS to focus exclusively on doctrines and theaterisation, CDS will need Vice-CDS and a range of Deputy CDSs, with one Chief of the Integrated Defence Staff responsible for capital procurement projects. India needs to start training officers together from junior command courses onwards, and to combine the 3 higher command courses into a single curriculum, under an integrated Joint Training Command under which all training establishments function. India too needs to create a Joint Logistics Command. "We're going to fight an enemy that can pretty much see the whole battlefield space [and electromagnetic signals] and has a magazine depth and range to hit anything. There's no place you can relax, rest or let your guard down. That means ground commanders will have to factor in scenarios in which some supplies will be unavailable." "It is hard enough to be joint, the difficulties in interoperability will be many times greater" ~ Indian Army Chief Gen MM Naravane in 2021. In sum, the Indian Army is divided into 6 regional commands and one training command. The Indian AirForce is divided into 5 regional commands and one training command. Indian Army and Indian AirForce have a separate training command. The Indian AirForce has a Maintenance command in addition. A Strategic Forces Command was also set up in 2003, which is responsible for the management and administration of the country's tactical and nuclear weapons stockpile. The Indian Navy is divided into three regional or geographic commands to safeguard the western and eastern seaboards. The 17 single-service commands that currently exist would be reorganization into just four theater commands, each with elements from all three services: The first command will be the “western theatre command” looking at Pakistan; while the second command will be "northern theatre command" focused on the entire border in China. A third, navy-heavy theatre, called the “maritime command” will be responsible for the security of the Indian Ocean Region (IOR) and Andaman & Nicobar Command (ANC) island air-defense command, would project power into the eastern Indian Ocean. Since both Indian and Pakistani military institutions spring from the same parent, both nations continue to employ the pedagogy they inherited from the British Commonwealth model. Both nation's military institutions are army-centric in their focus and teach an outdated ground doctrine that virtually all Western students thought was more suited to World War II than a 21st century battlefield. Both nation's military institutions are highly deficient in inculcating an appreciation for the roles of intelligence + combined arms OP with immediate closed air-support. And that is ironical, for a tri-service institution, supposedly committed to inculcating "jointmanship" in all three services. Pakistan Army's XI Corps (called Army Reserve Center) located in Pashtun-majority Peshawar, is responsible for covering the Khyber Pass against Soviets. The XI Corps command was the primary support and logistic base for the Taliban. After 9/11, it was involved fighting Al-Qaida for U.S.'s war on terror in Waziristan and the North-West Frontier Province of Pakistan. With the end of the Cold War, 9 Infantry Division of XI Corps had been reorientated to Gulteri in the eastern border, opposite to Dras sector in Kargil district of Ladakh in India. Here, the 9 Infantry Division of XI Corps, is under the Pakistan Army's X Corps located in Rawalpindi, which has four mountain divisions near India-Pakistan LoC had been reinforced with the three brigades that have moved into Skardu. Two paradigms in military theory are attrition and maneuver, preventing effective cooperation between segments of the enemy force. Manoeuvre positions forces to inflict attrition on the enemy, while attrition disrupts the enemy to enable manoeuvre. China's artillery modernization plan aims at developing an in-depth precision strike systems with integrated ISR, and control capabilities to operate in Taiwan and Tibet. India has a large inventory of Russian heavy armour. However, only using heavy armoured (in the absence of immediate supporting firepower by vertical envelope and light armoured unmanned vehicles) has become less useful in the battlefields due to proliferation of portable missiles. Russian armoured vehicles are among the best, but they have had trouble surviving against the threat of precision artillery and air strikes with long-range reconnaissance drone, as seen in Syria and UAE-supplied Chinese precision strike using drone spotters, as seen in Libya. Anti-radar seeker sub-munitions and smart loiter munitions are going to extend the range of PLA artillery and its lethality, thus altering the India's deterrence correlation in the future. Since the 90's, China has its own offset strategy against the U.S., for some means of asymmetrically through its PLA Rocket Force's missiles to attack U.S. kill-chain battle networks & sensors, compensating for PLA's disadvantage, particularly in a direct military competition. The best defense is to destroy the launch vehicle before it can fire. Similar tactics can be used against artillery and missiles units. “Kill the archer” is the term the Pentagon uses. China also relies entirely on satellite data-links (and line of sight radio link), that could be countered by Electronic warfare (jamming), which means high failure will result in an overall failure. This means defensive and offensive jammers and radars systems are important. Counter-reconnaissance capabilities will be key on the battlefield to frustrate Chinese scouting. Air power is the primary tool to achieve tactical gains in modern warfare. In the past, the Indian Army took the lead in any land battle with air-support, however, unlike China (which lacks modern fighter jet engines to carry out high-altitude, offensive ops), India's Air power arm is the most ready to play a decisive role in any offensive & defensive 'integrated' future conflict with China. The importance of Indian Army is greater, only when one needs boots on the ground. Fire without manoeuvre is useless; movement without fire is suicide. Russian forces manoeuvre to fire, while Western forces fire to manoeuvre. Shaping all phases of the fight. Establishing pace that the enemy cannot maintain, forcing the enemy not just problems, but a no-win dilemma. Striking at unexpected time and place, while holding the flank and denying area. The practice of 10/10/10 cycle format through 10 offensive plays, 10 defensive plays and 10 minutes of getting the hell out. French military has an intellectual tradition that stretches back at least to the 18th century. However, in 1940, France went to war having made the wrong bets about what the future would be like. The German invasion of France in 1940 knocked the French out of World War II in a month. The German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941 destroyed over 100 Soviet divisions and advanced to the gates of Moscow in a season. Operation Cobra in 1944 broke through German lines and retook most of metropolitan France in a month. The Israeli invasion of the Sinai in 1967 triumphed in just six days. The American counteroffensive in Operation Desert Storm in 1991 evicted the Iraqis from Kuwait in 100 hours of ground fighting. The 2020 Azerbaijani offensive in Nagorno-Karabakh drove the Armenians from the Aras River Valley. In the popular imagination, World War II replaced trench stalemate with a war of maneuver. But mid- and late-war offensives against properly prepared defenses commonly produced results that looked less like blitzkrieg and more like the slow, costly, grinding advance of the Hundred Days offensives of 1918. Undermanned, overextended and shallow positions suffer heavy losses and get quickly overrun, while deep, concealed and well-prepared positions (with viable supply lines) can be attacked sucessfully only by those that advanced with very heavy fire support. In fact, it encapsulates the modern history of land warfare. Concentrated, armor-heavy attackers at the Mareth Line in 1943, Kursk in 1943, Operations Epsom, Goodwood, or Market Garden in 1944, the Siegfried Line in 1944, or the Gothic Line in 1944-45 all failed to produce quick breakthroughs and devolved into slow, methodical slogs at best. Nor did this pattern end in 1945. Iraqi armored offensives bogged down against even moderately deep Iranian defenses at Khorramshahr and Abadan in 1980-81, and Iranian offensives failed to penetrate prepared Iraqi defenses in depth at Basra in 1987. More recently, the 1999 battle of Tsorona between Ethiopia and Eritrea, the Israeli invasion of South Lebanon in 2006, and Georgia’s invasion of South Ossetia in 2008. When defenses have been deep, supported by operational reserves and well-prepared at the front, quick blitzkrieg success has been all but impossible over more than a century of changing technology. Well-trained, astutely employed attackers with numerical superiority can take ground against such defenses, but slowly and at great cost. Offensive maneuver is apparently far from dead and successful breakthrough is still possible with demanding preperation and under the right conditions.Stephen Biddle, author of Military Power Explaining Victory and Defeat in Modern (Land) Battle. https://archive.org/details/caenanvilofvicto0000mcke/page/n5/mode/2up The Great Powers marched confidently into battle in 1914 prepared for previous wars, resulting in horrific casualties. The cognitive evolution to Competition with China must proceed through three steps: (1) acknowledging the limitations of the historical conceptualization of operational art and re-define operational art for today's strategic environment; (2) embracing the different warfare perspectives, specifically how China understand warfare; and (3) the military application, in China's "instrument of national power (DIME)", in US-China competition. In 1999, two PLA colonels, Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui wrote that, the "boundaries lying between the two worlds of war and non-war, of military and non-military, will be totally destroyed" so that even the "rules of war may need to be rewritten."
War is a blood sport. The military's purpose is not to kill people and break things but to break an adversary's spirit, the human will to fight (has no motivation), a very important factor that is routinely overlooked or misunderstood; and also cumulative destruction of the enemy's material strength and the critical support systems. PLA’s theory of victory is based on using precision strikes by PLA rocket force, to permanently disrupt, misdirect or destroy India Air force and Army’s critical operational architecture essential nodes and sensors (C3, space and firepower navigation capabilities), and asymmetric information dominance to be able to manipulate the perceptions of India's top decision-makers which will affect decisions and critical actions in the early stages of conflict. Indian leadership may not be able to handle cognitive overload and confusing narratives, which will adversely affect at strategic level. Military dictatorships are immune to this, but democracies are highly susceptible to this type of warfare. At this level, the troops may win the battle, but the war is lost. Whether operational art was first demonstrated by Napoleon, or in the US Civil War, is open for debate. However, it is widely acknowledged that it was interwar Soviet military theorists who developed the theory of operational art (or operativnoe iskusstvo). They were inspired by the Russian Revolution and guided by their experiences in the attritional struggles of the Great War, along with the maneuver campaigns of the Russian Civil War (1917–1922) and Polish-Soviet War (1919–1921). Soviet theorists like Mikhail Tukhachevsky sought to break the stalemate of positional warfare and restore mobility and maneuver to the battlefield. Wars are fought on three different levels:
The old US army's formula is METT-T: Mission objective, Enemy doctrines for peacetime & for wartime in order to understand enemy intention of their actions, Terrain to attack/defend, troops availability depending on the commander, and Time cycle for combat & for down-time. The Strategic guidelines direct the PLA to win in “Informatized Local Wars,” when the dominant mode of warfare is confrontation between “information-based systems-of-systems”. China makes a move, only after thinking it thoroughly. The purpose of the military is to defend the country (also used to advance national interests). PLA's operational system-of-systems, for bridging tactical actions & strategy, is composed of five sub-systems:
The purpose of defensive operations in forward areas is to deny enemy forces access to designated terrain, in order to buy specific time to create favourable conditions, for your forces to do counter-offensive operations. Offensive operations have 3 fundamental steps:
Offensive tactical operations have 4 types:
Attack tactic: The enemy MUST be pinned down. Small units MUST fire and move perfectly. This is Extremely important. If not conducted correctly, men will get cut-off and destroyed, and the problem is then compounded when other men stop firing to try to recover casualties. Then they also get killed in many cases and combat effectiveness of the entire unit is in danger of being lost. Counter-attack tactic: (Grab them by the belt buckle) We show very high determination. The closer we hug the enemy forces, the less effective the enemy artillery firepower becomes and make air support impracticable. We destroy combat strength and force them to withdraw. Russian and Chinese push waves of infantry into selected locations on the front lines, concentrating their armour and artillery forces to saturate the enemy's defences. "Each group has its own route and determination of where each fighter in each of the assault groups should be…the leaders receive the programme of their attack, and how he and each of his fighters should move through the points. That is, you don't need to think, you need to check the movement of your group on a tablet or smartphone." The US's DoD is moving away from airborne ISR assets (vulnerable to longer ranged air-to-air missiles), and moving into using unclassified data-links to control ISR satellite constellation which tracks moving targets in real-time, for better resiliency and sustainability. It hardly matters how precise new weapons are if you lack the ISR reach to find targets. How to change the equation of three-attacker-to-defender force ratio, when you don't have any non-organic indirect fire support? The solution has always been clear: Provide each squad (that has real-time ISR info and EW to locate & jam enemy tactical radio communications while protecting theirs by creating noise fog) with their own lethal weapons systems like "swarm" of loitering guided munitions to destroy in priority order: enemy light armoured vehicles, crew-served weapons, command and control locations, and then target groups of three or more combatants in trench line. US realized that EW and organic ISR are "essential on the modern battlefield." It's claimed that Ukraine consumed around 5,000 to 10,000 drones a month. Attackers start with a disadvantage because they do not have internal knowledge of the organization’s infrastructure, technologies, security processes, etc. but they can quickly gain the advantage because they only need to find one gap in the wall to bring an organization to its knees. The attack surface is constantly changing with new technologies. In other words, the brick wall moves constantly, and gaps can open up anywhere at any time. Attackers have realized this advantage, that’s why they’ve developed a stack of crafty reconnaissance methods, in an attempt to uncover assets and shadow it. The good news is that defenders can gain back an advantage by simply borrowing attacker recon methods to identify their own attack surface, augmenting their own field of vision, and beating the attackers at their own game. No defender can be stronger than its likely foe for infinitely many points, so the edge goes to the attacker. The attacker simply masses combat power at some point along the line, overwhelms the defenders, and punches through. Clausewitz’s remedy is to keep defence perimeters short, while using artillery to offset the mismatch between ground forces at a particular place and time. Think about the Ryukyu defensive line as a series of short interlocking cordons overshadowed by missiles fired from shore, sea, or aloft. That’s a workable operational design.
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