Modi will attend the meeting of Tractor The leaders, along with Australia’s Scott Morrison and Japan’s Yoshihide Suga at the White House on Friday, are taking steps for the biggest restructuring of India’s military since independence in 1947. The move to integrate the military, air force and navy – which now do little co-ordination – follows the US and UK working with Australia to place more nuclear-powered submarines in Asia-Pacific waters.
Last month, a newly created military affairs department ordered the Indian Army unit overseeing Pakistan’s border to prepare a plan for integration with the Navy and Air Force, according to officials familiar with the developments. That model will be replicated across the country, so the entire military is under a new operational structure by 2024, said officials, who asked not to be identified because of the rules for speaking to the media.
A more integrated Indian armed force would make it easier for the country to engage with the forces of the US and its allies in the event of conflict. A key aspect of the AUKUS partnership announced last week by the US, Australia and the UK involves interoperability across a range of defense sectors – something that India does not currently have within its own forces.
David Brewster, Senior Research Fellow at National Security, said, “Quad partners have previously found that they can exercise with only one Indian service at a time – for example, Navy but no Air Force or Air Force but Navy. No.” College of the Australian National University which wrote the book “India as an Asia Pacific Power”. “This seriously impedes collaboration when multiple operations will not be combined.”
In the US on Thursday, Modi held separate meetings with Morrison, Suga and US Vice President Kamala Harris ahead of the Quad meeting at the White House. In a tweet, his office referred to India’s “shared values” with the US and said cooperation is “gradually growing.”
For decades, Indian leaders kept military command and control divided to avoid coups that were once common in the neighborhood. While bureaucrats and military officials have resisted proposals for integration, which have been around since the 1990s, mostly due to turf wars, the current structure is proving to be a disadvantage in countering China, which in 2016 was at a standstill between the US and Australia. was transferred to the same model.
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Defense Ministry spokesman A. Bharat Bhushan Babu said, “The Indian Army is undergoing modernization to meet regional challenges and technological changes,” said Bharat Bhushan Babu, without giving further details about the plan. The Indian Navy, Army and Air Force did not immediately comment.
Officials said the reorganization would create at least four theater commands: one looking to Pakistan in the west, another focused on China in the east, a maritime command for the Indian Ocean region and an air defense command. He said that the disturbed northern part of Jammu and Kashmir will remain untouched for the time being.
The move is designed to allow India’s military to operate seamlessly on land, sea and in the air. Officials said theater commands will pool warships, patrol ships, troops and fighter jets, and work with other missile and gun regiments that have a network of ground radars to deal with threats along their disputed borders with China and Pakistan. Is.
While China has the largest standing army in the world with over 2.1 million soldiers, India is second with 1.2 million regular soldiers and a bloated ground force of 960,000 reserves, whose salaries and pensions absorb most of the defense budget. Is. Indian Army estimates that organizing with theaters will result in massive savings, cutting spending by nearly a third while concentrating power in a single office: Chairman of Joint Staff Committee.
“India’s tacit approach to training, planning and operations created an anomaly when dealing with other ‘modern’ armies,” said Anit Mukherjee, associate professor at the S Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore. “In the last five years, the challenges for the Indian Army have multiplied and it is an open question whether they are capable of meeting those challenges.”
Officials said the Indian Air Force is particularly opposed to the concept of multiple theaters, arguing that its scarce resources will be greatly diluted if it is not able to respond to threats in different parts of the country.
The three services still do not have a common secure communication network, which became apparent in 2019 when Indian Air Force jets fired missiles into Pakistan to destroy an alleged terror training camp in response to a suicide attack in Jammu and Kashmir. in which 40 soldiers were killed. . A senior official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said units of the Indian Army were put on alert, but they were not told why or what to expect.
While India’s military response to elected representatives, a tradition of political non-intervention, has also allowed conflicts to flourish between the three main services. It has also strengthened the military, which accounts for over 60% of total military spending, with a greater focus on land borders on building the capability to become a force in Indo-Pacific waters.
“The problem so far with India’s reorganization is the tendency to consolidate the military’s dominance over the defense force and a narrow focus on continental defence,” said Brewster of the Australian National University. “This could mean reducing the capability of the Indian armed forces around the Indo-Pacific region in collaboration with the Quad partners.”
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