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January 16, 2011 |  | By Brig Gurmeet Kanwal | ||
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With personnel strength of approximately 1.1 million soldiers, the Indian army has performed remarkably well to keep the nation together through thick and thin for over six decades since independence. It is a first-rate army with large-scale operational commitments on border management and in counter-insurgency operations. However, many of the army’s weapons and equipment are obsolescent and need to be modernised. Lt Gen J P Singh, Deputy Chief of the Army Staff, said in a recent interview with the CLAWS Journal, “The critical capabilities that are being enhanced to meet challenges across the spectrum, include battlefield transparency, battlefield management systems, night-fighting capability, enhanced firepower, including terminally guided munitions, integrated manoeuvre capability to include self-propelled artillery, quick reaction surface-to-air missiles, the latest assault engineer equipment, tactical control systems, integral combat aviation support and network centricity.” While the army has drawn up elaborate plans for modernisation and qualitative upgradation of its capabilities, the pace of modernisation has been rather slow due to the lack of adequate funding support. India’s defence budget is pegged at less than 2.0 per cent of the GDP at present. According to Defence Minister A K Antony, "New procurements have commenced… but we are still lagging by 15 years.” Unless immediate measures are taken to speed up the pace of modernisation, the present quantitative military gap with China will soon become a qualitative gap as well. Also, the slender conventional edge that the Indian army enjoys over the Pakistan army will be eroded further as Pakistan is spending considerably large sums of money on its military modernisation under the garb of fighting radical extremism. Armour Modernisation Pakistan has acquired 320 T-80 UD tanks and is on course to add Al Khalid tanks that it has co-developed with China to its armour fleet. The Indian armour fleet is also being modernised gradually. The indigenously developed Arjun MBT has entered serial production to equip two regiments. 310 T-90S MBTs have been imported from Russia. In December 2007, a contract was signed for an additional 347 T-90 tanks to be assembled in India. A programme has been launched to modernise the 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 will upgrade the night fighting capabilities and fire control system of the tank. Approximately 1,700 T-72 M1s have been manufactured under license 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. Artillery and Air Defence: Lagging behind Despite the lessons learnt during the Kargil conflict of 1999, where artillery firepower had 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. The artillery needs large numbers of 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. The acquisition plan for these has suffered one setback after another. The artillery also must acquire large quantities of precision guided munitions (PGMs) for more accurate targeting in future battles. 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. 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. Infantry and Other Combat Arms 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 slow pace. These include the acquisition of shoulder-fired missiles, hand-held battlefield surveillance radars (BFSRs), and hand-held thermal imaging devices (HHTIs) for observation at night. Stand-alone 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. 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. Plans for the acquisition of a Tactical Communications System (TCS) and a Battlefield Management System (BMS) are not making much headway. Despite being the largest user of space, the army does not have a dedicated military satellite to bank on. Courtesy: The Indian Express, 15 January 2011 | ||||||||
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