The coming islamic partition of India and what can be salvaged

[G.Subramaniam]

Orbat



So how big is the Indian Army? The odd thing is that most people do not know the precise figure, and that includes your Editor. But it is certainly 1.3-million and increasing. People use a figure of 1.1-million which may have been true a couple of decades ago. That figure does not include, for example, the 70,000+ Rashtriya Rifles raised from the early 1990s as specialized counterinsurgency troops. They are called differently for legal and psychological reasons. The psychological reason is the Indian Army hates doing CI against its own people and has been clamoring for decades to be taken off this duty. The figure also does not include, for example, the latest raisings of at least 30,000 troops in two divisions. We say at least because no matter how economical you are, when you raise new divisions the support bases increases. Agreed, it is not in proportion. But some increase is inevitable. Also, formations totaling another 100,000 have been okayed, and more after that.



· When you take a close at the PLA, you wonder why it even has 1.25-million troops – if it really does. Public Enemy Number 1, Taiwan, is down to a handful of active brigades. Public Enemy Number 2, Russia, is down to 24 brigades for its entire army, the bulk of which is west of the Urals. There are no plans to teach Public Enemy Number 3, Vietnam, another lesson; particularly as Vietnamese had their own lessons to impart to the PLA. As for Public Enemy Number 4, the PLA has for decades known full well that the Indian Army is very large, the Chinese assessment is that because of psychological factors, the Indians are no threat. And to be perfectly honest with readers, the Chinese assessment has, up to now, been absolutely correct. An example: India’s permanent deployment against Tibet is 8 divisions, each larger than a PLA division. So how many divisions does China keep in Tibet? The equivalent of one, and even then its main job is internal security.



· On top of this, China after First Gulf has fallen into a swoon over high-tech warfare. It honestly, really, truly believes it no longer has to go head-to-head with mass armies. Intelligence, reconnaissance, electronics, airpower etc etc are supposed to be the decisive weapons. Much as Rumsfeld of the USA envisaged, the Chinese really believe that ground troops are now to seek and pin down the enemy, high-tech will take care of the rest. Well, if the Chinese want to delude themselves, far be it for us to argue. They might note the Indians believe in quantity AND quality, but that isn’t our point here. Because the PLA no longer sees corps, army, and army group type battles as a Good Thing, it has been cutting down its corps (armies in PLA parlance) to 3 and 4 brigades. So right or wrong, they don’t see the need for a large army anymore. And look, if they cut the PLA to half, they would still remain the world’s second biggest.



· When you take a casual look at the Indian Army, you see 36 divisions. Because the IA is not an expeditionary force, it does not need the huge number of support troops that, for example, the US requires. In World War II, US had 100,000 men (roughly) for each divisions. This number had not significantly fallen by Second Indochina. Today the US Army has 50,000 men per division, but of course this is misleading because of the very high number of contracters. They don’t quite bring the figure to 100,000 per division, but still. There is nothing wrong with this: the further you are from home base the more troops you need.



· But India makes do quite nicely on <30,000 men per division because all it does is protect India’s borders. You will now say: wait a minute, if it’s somewhere south of 30,000, then how come Editor is saying the manpower total is 1.3-million. Even including the CI troops. Should not the Indian total be around 1.1-million?



· Well, here’s where the Indians get a bit sneaky. In addition to the 36 divisions, they have a rather large number of independent brigades and many divisions have extra brigades. And they’ve started adding artillery divisions, replacing the old corps artillery of one brigade plus the occasional reinforcement from a handful of army level artillery brigades. Etc. etc. We can’t go into more detail, but really 1.3-million is a more realistic figure.



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Indian army needs to be deployed in every muslim majority city