INDIAN ARMY FORCE STRUCTURE, DEPL
AND
COMM INFRASTRUCTURE "If you know the enemy, and know yourself, your victory will not stand in doubt"
SUN TZU
Intro
1. Of all the factors influencing the accomplishment a msn, the en is undoubtedly the most challenging, dynamic and variable. One must remember that an en is always full of innovations and surprises for us and not static as we sometimes believe him to be. History provides us with many examples where comds came to grief because they either greatly neglected the en factor, or were content with knowing so little about the en that it amounted to ignorance.
2. Threat assessment is a basic function of the military planners but more often than not this has proved to be quite a challenge for the mil planners. The process of threat assessment not only reqs an in depth knowledge about en’s force structure, its doctrines and caps but also a great deal of imagination and foresightedness to look beyond the obvious and cut through the smokescreen created by elaborate deceptive measures and stratagems in order to identify its true intentions and design. Being such a tall order, it is thus not without reason that realistic and accurate threat assessment, has proved to be quite elusive in the history of warfare. If we critically review the history of mil disasters, we would invariably discover the faulty appreciation of the en to be a common denominator.
3. What is threat? It is the sum total of an opponent's caps and intentions. Whereas the en caps are readily definable, there is always a doubt about en's intentions. Therefore, it is sometimes argued that threat assessment should conc more on caps than intentions, because what the en can do, it will do.
4. Our traditional adversary, India, is the seventh largest and sec most populous country, with one of the largest armed forces in the world. She has assumed the status of a regional power; is aspiring to become a global power and is trying hard to secure a perm seat in the UNSC. In furtherance of her long term objs, she has forged a strat partnership with US while retaining her traditionally close ties with Russia. Of late a quantum leap in its relations with Israel and extensive coop in the fds of def has attained a lvl where it has the potential to pose a serious threat to conventional bal in the region. Notwithstanding, the current signs of rapprochement, one may not forget that India’s mi machine not only remains well organized and equipped to further her coercive diplomacy and hegemonic designs in the region but is also in the middle of a massive modernization drive through acquisition of force multipliers and other high tech sys at the cost of billions of dollars. Parallel to this, the process of raising of new fmns and addressing of critical imbals in her force structure also conts unabated. With this backdrop, I come to the aim of today’s lec, which is:-
5. Aim. To give you a broad picture of the Indian Army force structure, its depl and the comm infrastructure aval to her for op build up.
6. This lec will be covered in the seq as flashed:-
a. Indian Army force structure.
b. Depl of Indian Army.
c. Comm infrastructure for op build up.
7. With around 1.2 million men in uniform, Indian Army is org into five regional comds i.e. Northern, Western, Southern, Eastern and Central, a tri svc Strat Forces Comd (SFC), Andaman and Nicobar Comd (ANC) and Army Trg Comd (ARTRAC), each of which is comd by a Lt Gen. Northern, Western and Southern Comds are mainly resp for articulating both offn and def operations in the western theatre against Pakistan. However, keeping in view the existing force structure, India is constrained to emp upto two corps ex Eastern Comd for a meaningful offn effort. Besides emp of its fmns on offn role in western theatre, Eastern Comd, is also responsible for def of borders with China, Bangla Desh and Myanmar besides ctr insurgency duties in the restive NE. The Central Comd, loc in the heart of
