Republic Day Defense Preparedness
Diphu January 28 2023: The state of defense preparedness. India, even on this Republic Day, continues to reel under the varied conditions of terrain and climatic vagaries of the international borders to defend.
“You do not win a war by killing yourself, but by killing a damn fool across the boundary: Winston Churchill.” Human resource counts alone about 98% of the components of war and designated as quite expendable in classic cases.
However, the time has arrived to provide force multipliers in the NBC war situations (Nuclear, Biological and Chemical). The skies are no longer easy to dominate … This is highly hostile even for the latest generation of stealth fighter aircraft.
“Anyone who loses in the sky loses the war quickly” (Anonymous).
North East Frontier Borders
Speaking about our North East Frontier borders with Chinese Tibet; the situation cannot be viewed in isolation from the territories of Bhutan and Sikkim. The areas held by our forces are approachable through areas with fragile geology and communication connecting throughout the McMahon Line is very tough.
The terrestrial connectivity that is being attempted to bridge the entire length of the Line is still bogged down with controversies, should it fall into the wrong hands! The Siachen, the Ladakh and the Pakistan borders as well the defense of the Maritime boundaries require specialized measures.
The varied fronts of possible war and armed conflicts are pointers to endless preparedness that India must undergo. On the western front, there is the vast sandy Thar Desert to the wetlands of the Kutch also known as the Great Rann of Kutch.
New Challenges
The tactics and the deployment of modern arms are specifically different. The emergence of Gujarat as a new economic centre; the Mumbai High offshore oilfields, the growth of Rajasthan as a new development centre; are very vulnerable as the western hostile boundary is not far away.
The last maritime war was fought in the 1971 Indo Pak war, in a condition compared to today as primordial. The blockade of East Pakistan by tactical use of the first Aircraft carrier INS Vikrant was quite commendable.
The use of intelligence agencies to stop over-flight of Pakistani Air Force using our Airspace was quite shocking; it drove the opposition to their knees.
The eastern front is represented by the weak chicken neck connectivity which is not more than 22 kilometers wide and 40 kilometers long. The Chinese can use multiple combinations and permutations of their attacks on this sector. Apart from all these, there are cyber wars and economic wars constantly trading blows with one another.
The use of the Missile Systems and their Nuclear Weapons Delivery Capability can be a deterrent in a war even to begin. Any country involved in war would lose the domestic resources of nature, finance and the human resource. So, we better watch out for the prosperity game of neighbors.
Republic Day is a day to remember and to be aware.
India military Republic Day. Image by lalitkumaraj7 from Pixabay
