s India's Cold Start Doctrine Destabilizing-Ravi Rikhye

 

 

Is India's Cold Start Doctrine Destabilizing?

 

Ravi Rikhye

 

One of historys greatest strategic thinkers

 

www.orbat.com

• Lots of people think so, but all the doctrine does is match Pakistan's capabilities to attack with 72-hours warning.

• Cold Start was initiated as an Indian strategic doctrine in the late 1990s when someone figured out that by the time the Indian Army mobilized (10-21 days), Pakistan would have reacted, and the front would be locked before a single shot was fired. So India decided it had to reorganize and rebase some formations to begin an attack in 72-hours.

• There's a lot of misunderstanding about a zero warning attack. Honestly, there is no such thing. Its not the easiest thing in the world to take between 650,000 soldiers (Pakistan) and 1.3-million soldiers (India) and to attack without the other side having the least indication.

• Its true that formations that are right up on the border can deploy individual battalions or regiments within four hours. But it takes time to cancel leaves and get people back from training courses, dump supplies forward, and perform reconnaissance to get an up-to-date picture of the enemy's deployment. It takes even longer to figure out where are his reserves. All this assumes that you are topped off and ready to go, which is not the case with any army. There's always parts and equipment that are not ready, batteries that are unavailable, the right mix of POL to be produced, stuff to be procured from overseas and so on. Sure, you can go to war without being topped off, but unless you're planning a long war - which neither India or Pakistan do - then you're going to have problems.

• India faces a unique problem on mobilization time versus Pakistan. In normal times, all Pakistan's army minus four divisions is based East of the Indus, and can reach its war positions in 72-hours. India is a much larger country, about five times the size of Pakistan. And also it relies on its China front formations to provide superiority in wartime. Because its formations are so widely dispersed, it really requires 21 days to get everyone to the start line - again, assuming you are topped off and have your feet against the starting blocks.

• India has very slowly been boosting its armor forces deployed close to the Pakistan border and shifting other cantonments closer. The operative words are "very slowly. It's more than 10 years since the doctrine was enunciated, and it will be at least 10 years more before the rearrangement of forces is made.

• The mechanics of Cold Start The doctrine requires India to attack with forces in place, in several armored/mechanized brigade sized battlegroups, eight is the number usually mentioned. These battlegroups are to punch holes in the Pakistani defenses, and infantry is supposed to widen the breaches. While this is happening, the three strike corps are being mobilized for the kill.

• A big hope of Cold Start is that the large number of breeches panics Pakistan into early commitment of its two two strike corps, so that when India does its big strike, there is little to oppose the Indian strike corps.

• But it takes two to tango Since even the US never seems able to anticipate that its strategy will be countered by the enemy, we're not going to beat-up the Indians for not seeing that Pakistan would react. Starting in 1999 itself, very shortly after Cold Start began to be established as a doctrine, Pakistan began the process of providing each of its four plains holding corps with an armored division to meet India's Cold Start - thus removing the necessity to deploy its strike corps, which remain in reserve to counter India's strike corps. Yes, Pakistan is very short of resources, and one of the four armored divisions has not yet formed. But it will be long before India is truly positioned for Cold Start.

• Cold Start is already countered and as such it is an obsolete doctrine before it was emplaced - "Cold Start, we hardly knew ye" and that sort of thing.

• To begin with CS should not have given anyone anxiety: all it was meant to do was to enable India to start a war within 72 hours of mobilization, which Pakistan has always had the theoretical capacity to do.

• But there is another, more fundamental problem India has always had a defensive, short-war strategy. For all the fancy talk about Cold Start, this remains true today. Its a matter of temperament rather than resources. For one thing, India is no longer short on resources. India spends just 2% of its current $1.4-trillion GDP on defense (by 2014 it will be $2-trillion GDP). There is no reason why India cannot in five years mechanize all its plain forces, allowing for rapid offensive operations. But truly, this is not going to happen in five, or in ten years. More like 20 years. And then there's unpleasant minor facts such as the bulk of India's tank regiments have no night fighting capability, which kinds ruins any commander's day if he's planning high-speed operations.

• The problem in 2001-2002 was not mobilization time as many seem to think. India mobilized to attack Pakistani terror camps after a terror group attacked the Indian Parliament in December 2001. Because India by now understands there is no such thing as a limited war with Pakistan, it basically had to be prepared for all-out war in the event Pakistan counter-escalated in response to the attack on terror camps. By about February, say 6-8 weeks later, all was in readiness. But then the politicians bugged out because they weren't prepared to deal with the idea that the war would escalate, and either India should have been ready for its last round with Pakistan, or best not to start. The politicians managed to get themselves a stiffer spine, so that around May-June India was ready to go with a revised plan, the original plan having been sussed out by Pakistan as time went on. But the pols again bugged out, and by around October, the Indian Army had to start redeploying to peace stations because you cannot keep your forces in the field month after month - your readiness starts to degrade.

• The US and Cold Start One of the great fantasies that Washington has engaged in for the last 15-years or so is that it has repeatedly stopped India and Pakistan from going to war. Sheer arrogant nonsense. Complete bosh. Too many cocktails. To have stopped India and Pakistan from going to war presumes that both sides wanted to fight. The only time when anyone has wanted to fight is in 1999, when for some reason Pakistan thought it could send its "freedom fighters" to occupy the heights above the vital road to Leh. That this "freedom fighter" strategy had not worked in two previous wars, 1947-48 and 1965, made no difference to Pakistan, which has stuffed itself on the self-deception that the Indians can't fight and won't fight.

• The US, of course, claims that it stopped India from retaliating in 1999 - India confined itself to recovering lost territory and did not escalate. Oddly, the US cannot provide one piece of evidence that India seriously considering expanding the war or that it had anything to do with that decision. And, please, let's not get into this "we have information we cant give you because you're not cleared". Sure. Editor does not know what "information" (think Austin Powers) has, but he knows what the Indians were up to.

• And all that happened is is that India half-heartedly trotted out its contingency plans for escalation, and the Government decided it didn't want to escalate. All that happened on the US side was US saying "please don't escalate", and assuming when India did not, the US was responsible. May as well say of the sun "I made it rise and I made it set".

• The reason India did not attack in the early 1990s when Pakistan was creating much trouble for India in Kashmir, or in 1999, or in 2001-2002, or in 1986-87 for that matter, is that you have this bunch of extreme cowards who run India (Its called a civilian government) and you have a military leadership that is so passive that if you called 911 for an ambulance, the EMTs would be unable to find a pulse (the Indian military leadership calls this constructional obedience to the civil power).

• What the Indians are best at is listening to someone sing their praises. President Obama is absolutely the right person to have gone to India (in line with our new commitment to balance the budget we wish he's booked the first-class part of a commercial airliner). President Obama is one of the finest producers of hot air the US has ever seen. And the Indians are the greatest consumers of hot air the world has ever seen.

• Obama has convinced the Indians they are a world power. Since he has anointed India, no need for the Indians to actually do anything except sit and bask in glory. They can't feed their malnourished (no shortage of food by the way, its lack of will to distribute it), they cant provide basic health and education to their people, but we're so great we're going to get a permanent seat on the UN Security Council. Oh, please!

• By the way, since like Debka,com we are into this Above Top Secret stuff, we'll share a little secret with the Indians. US has absolutely no intention of expending ANY political capital on helping India get a seat. Nor will China allow it. And if at some point India does get a seat, it will be alongside Brazil, South Africa, Germany, and Japan, and then the real powers will change the rules of the game so that they relegate other permanent members to second-class status. How do we know? Like Debka.com, we have top military and diplomatic sources in Washington! We can even tell you the brand of the President's toilet paper! You'll have to pay, of course.
  
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  http://www.scribd.com/doc/21693873/Indo-Pak-Wars-1947-71-A-STRATEGIC-AND-OPERATIONAL-ANALYSIS-BY-A-H-AMIN
  
  Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death."  --
  Albert Einstein !!!