Indian armed forces unprepared for Chinese military

The Indian military is in a quagmire against the Chinese forces, which have, for all practical purposes, an upper hand in Ladakh. The military and political establishments of India have not become vocal against the Chinese and have turned to giving muted responses with unmistakable change of emphasis. Question arises why is the Indian military and political leaders dare not take the Chinese threat in the same vocal and brash manner as they have been challenging Pakistan, its armed forces and its intelligence agencies over the years.

The Indian analysts and commentators, however, did not have to look far. Hesitatingly, they have come up with the theory that the Indian armed forces over the last seven decades or so were geared up to fight against the much smaller but highly motivated and trained Pakistan armed forces and never thought about taking up arms against any other adversary, including China with whom they fought a war in 1962 and royally lost it. The analysts say the Indian top brass is stuck in hybrid, conventional and limited war concepts with Pakistan and has put all the eggs in one basket. It has carried on with these three concepts at staff levels and war colleges. In the Indian military dictionary, there are only these three concepts of war while the world, including Pakistan armed forces, have been talking about the fourth and fifth generation warfare and even beyond. The Indian generals, with confusion descended upon them, are facing massive problems when they try to come out of their shells. One Indian analyst says there are “...six dimensions of war that India must improve if it is to win the battle that it is facing with China, namely, cyber war, space war, electromagnetic spectrum war, light war (which includes non-nuclear electromagnetic pulse weapons & laser war) and invisible (Algorithm) war.” Algorithmic warfare is driven by systems powered with Artificial Intelligence (AI) that can control the weapon platforms, systems, operations and even tactics in a network centric battlefield.

Also, it is now understood in Indian military circles that Chinese military is forwarding its national objectives and thinks in strategic sense whereas the Indian military is operating in tactical domain with the prime objective to getting back some of the contentious area. The Indian interest is only getting the territory back and disengagement. Moreover, the Indians realise that their forces are no match for the Chinese in terms of weapons and training. It is estimated that China’s expenditure on its military has increased from 2.5 times that of India’s in 2010, to 3.7 times India’s in 2019 and they have technological superiority over India.

Bickering has already started in the Indian establishment, with the intelligence agencies blaming the military for not acting on timely information about the Chinese while the Indian military blaming the intelligence for failing to provide correct and timely info. At the same time, the Indian military is going on an urgent weapon buying spree with the Defence Acquisition Council approving 40,000 crore rupees weapon systems. These include Pinaka rocket system for the army, Astra Mk-I BVR Weapon System to be integrated with SU-30 Mk-I aircraft, 21 MiG-29s and 12 Su-30 jets to be bought from Russia and Long-Range Land Attack Cruise Missile Systems (LRLACM) for navy and air force, which are yet to be developed.