Terrorism across the borders works for Bharat–in China, Sikkim Bhutan, Nepal, Lanka, and Pakistan. RAW is good at hiring and sending mercenaries to murder innocent civilians–as witnessed in Karachi last week.

• “No one should ever underestimate our capability and determination to foil any nefarious designs against the security of Pakistan,
• “None can dare rob us of nuclear arsenal”: General Hameed Gul
• After dramatic failure of “Cold Start Strategy” India comes up with cockamamy “96 hour Rapid Thrust” scheme
• India is behind Karachi blast: Imran Khan
• Proxy war in Afghanistan: Strategic depth vs Strategic clout.
• “This new doctrine along with the earlier restructuring of the Indian Command structure, particularly the operationalisation of South West Army Command (2005) has increased manifold threats to Pakistan. It has also enhanced Indian capacity for faster action, Prof. Khurshid Ahmad Jamat e Islami.
• Is Delhi preventing the 4th Battle of Panipat or instigating it?

But the war strategies in new NBC (Nuclear Biological, and Chemical—Pakistan’s as Nuclear power: 350 bombs) world don’t quiet seem to work for Delhi. The Hot War was a failure in the 90s during the reign of Zia Ul Haq. Then came the Hot Pursuit option which failed in Kashmir. Then foreign consultants were hired to invent the “Cold Start Strategy” (CSS). That  didn’t quite work on various occasions. Nuclear deterrence & Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) blunts Bharat’s Cold Start Strategy. Bharat was unable to cross into Pakistani territory.  Nukes: Don’t mess with us–Islamabad’s defiant rebuke to threats. Now the CSS has been reinvented and it is being called the “96-hour-Rapid-Thrust”. Army Chief General Deepak Kapoor’s  ”new” strategy calls for rapid movement across Pakistani rivers, and have a “chota peg” in Lahore Gymkhana, before the Paksitanis can say “Allah Ho Akbar”. The new Bharati strategy works as follows:

1) Super human Bharatis will be thus able to move across heavily mined terrain under the watchful eye of more than 200,000 soliders and satellites–without detection or resistance.

2) Neither Pakistan radars, nor the AWACs nor the half a million eyeballs will be able to see these superhuman Bharatis as they waltz across the border. The Pakistani hawks in the sky: Y-89 AWACS

3) During the hours that it takes to mobilize the Indian Army, the Pakistanis will be asleep, and will not get distrubed by the noise and movement of entire tanks divisions across the border. Pakistani made UAVs: Uqaab & Jasoos

4) For 96 hours, Pakistan will not fire a single Hataf and Shaeen missiles at the advancing menace. Pakistani defense based on missile nuclear deterrent. Hatf, Shaheen, Ghauri, Babar and Abdali are far more advanced then previously thought

5) According the this cock and bull theory, as the Bharatis advance, the Pakistani Air Force, mad up of up F-16s, Mirages, and JF-17 Thunders will not strike at the slow moving tanks and artillery. PAF: Nuclear armed deterrent to hegemony

6) According the doctrine, the Rapid Force will be able to “pulverize” the Pakistanis, and “evaporate” the Pakistani tank divisions like clouds. Pakistan’s 500 Al-Khalid tanks have been in production since 2001. Next generation tanks exported via IDEAS. The tanks and artillery will simply disappear into thin air allowing the advancing Rapid Thrust Force to got to the Gymkhanas and have “chota pegs”.

7) According to the Kapoor song and dance–Neither the swamps or Sir Creek, nor the deserts of Rajistan, nor the mountains of Kashmir will be problem for the super human Rapid Force. Pakistan’s 250 JF-17s, 50 F-16: Indias panicky “concern”

THE Indian army is now revising its five-year-old doctrine to effectively meet the challenges of a possible ‘two-front war’ with Pakistan and China, deal with asymmetric and fourth-generation warfare, enhance strategic reach and joint operations with IAF and navy.

Work on the new war doctrine – to reflect the reconfiguration of threat perceptions and security challenges – is already underway under the aegis of Shimla-based Army Training Command, headed by Lt-General AS Lamba, said sources, reported Times of India on Wednesday.

It comes in the backdrop of the 1.13-million strong army having practised – through several wargames over the last five years – its ‘proactive’ war strategy to mobilise fast and strike hard to pulverise the enemy.

This ‘cold start strategy’, under a NBC (nuclear-chemical-biological) overhang, emerged from the `harsh lessons’ learnt during Operation Parakram, where it took army’s strike formations almost a month to mobilise at the `border launch-pads’ after the December 2001 terrorist attack on Indian Parliament.

This gave ample opportunity to Pakistan to shore up its defences as well as adequate time to the international community, primarily the US, to intervene. The lack of clear directives from the then Indian government only made matters worse.

“A major leap in our approach to conduct of operations (since then) has been the successful firming-up of the cold start strategy (to be able to go to war promptly),” said Army Chief General Deepak Kapoor, at a closed-door seminar on Tuesday.

The plan now is to launch self-contained and highly-mobile ‘battle groups’, with Russian-origin T-90S tanks and upgraded T-72 M1 tanks at their core, adequately backed by air cover and artillery fire assaults, for rapid thrusts into enemy territory within 96 hours. India plans to end the war decisively within the first 96 hours forcing the other sides into a fast submission of ceasefire.

Delhi’s Cold Start Strategy frozen DOA (Dead on Arrival) Pakistani response to India’s Cold Start Strategy Neutralizing Delhi’s Surgical strikes Gen Kapoor identified five thrust areas that will drive the new doctrine. One, even as the Indian armed forces prepare for their primary task of conventional wars, they must also factor in the eventuality of ‘a two-front war’ breaking out.

1. In tune with this, after acquiring a greater offensive punch along the entire western front with Pakistan by the creation of a new South-Western Army Command in 2005, India is now taking steps – albeit belatedly – to strategically counter the stark military asymmetry with China in the eastern sector. There is now ‘a proportionate focus towards the western and northeastern fronts’, said Gen Kapoor.
2. Two, the Indian army needs to ‘optimise’ its capability to effectively counter ‘both military and non-military facets’ of asymmetric and sub-conventional threats like WMD terrorism, cyber warfare, electronic warfare and information warfare.
3. Three, the Indian armed forces have to substantially enhance their strategic reach and out-of-area capabilities to protect India’s geo-political interests stretching from Persian Gulf to Malacca Straits. “This would enable us to protect our island territories; as also give assistance to the littoral states in the Indian Ocean region,” said Gen Kapoor.
4. Four, interdependence and operational synergy among army, navy and IAF must become the essence of strategic planning and execution in future wars. “For this, joint operations, strategic and space-based capability, ballistic missile defence and amphibious, airborne and air-land operations must be addressed comprehensively,” he said.
5. And five, India must strive to achieve a technological edge over its adversaries. “Harnessing and exploitation of technology also includes integration of network centricity, decision-support systems, information warfare and electronic warfare into our operational plans,” he added.

Apart from analysing the evolving military strategy and doctrines of China and Pakistan, the Indian army is also studying the lessons learnt from the US-launched Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan in 2001 and Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003 and their relevance to India.

Agencies add: Indian External Affairs Minister SM Krishna on Wednesday said the India is ‘closely’ monitoring the sale of arms to Pakistan by China.

Along with the statement, also came the assurance that there was peace and tranquillity at India-China border. “All these developments are closely monitored by the Indian External Affairs Ministry, by the Defence Ministry and various other ministries and the Prime Minister. So, let us not get into yet another speculative area,” Indian Express quoted Krishna as saying.

India’s Cold War Strategy and the Pakistani Nuclear Response

Pakistani defense based upon Missle Nuclear deterrent Shaheed, Ghauri, Babar, & Abdali

Nuclear Armeggedon in South Asia: Analysis

He was replying to a query on China selling arms to Pakistan and if this would lead to an arms race in the region. China had recently sought to defend its sale of submarines and warships to Pakistan, contending that even India was seeking military equipment from US and Russia.

Maintaining that India desires to maintain peace and tranquillity along the Sino-India border, Krishna said “I have said and I would like to repeat again in the dying days of 2009 that India-China border is peaceful, they are tranquil. It is India’s desire to maintain peace and tranquillity at our borders and we will continue to do that.” Based on reports from Nation and Times of India

Hot War: A response to Cold Start

Pakistan is not Hizullah and Bharat is not Israel

Between the Devil & the Deep Sea–India’s vulnerability in the Malacca Straits & the Ariabian Sea

• The essence of the Cold Start doctrine is reorganising the army’s offensive power that resides in the three strike corps into eight smaller division-sized integrated battle groups (IBGs) consisting of armour and mechanised infantry and artillery, closely supported by helicopter gunships, air force and airborne troops (parachute and heliborne).
• The IBGs are to be positioned close to the border so that three to five are launched into Pakistan along different axes within 72 to 96 hours from the time mobilisation is ordered.
• Cold Start thus envisages rapid thrusts even when the defensive corps’ deployment is yet to be completed, and high-speed operations conducted day and night until the designated objectives are achieved
• The probable objective areas for Cold Start could be (1) Ravi-Chenab corridor from two directions, an IBG along Jammu-Sialkot-Daska axis and another across the Ravi to link up with the first IBG, and (2) in the south against Reti-Rahim Yar Khan-Kashmore complex.
• To counter Cold Start, the Pakistan Army will have to create more armour-dominated brigade-sized reserves from the existing resources if possible, and a more flexible military system and structure.
• For Pakistan the dimensions of time and space assume paramount importance as it lacks territorial depth, is opposed by a larger adversary and lacks the resources to fight a protracted war.
• The strategy of pre-emption is thus imposed on Pakistan in the same way it was imposed on Israel prior to the 1967 war.
• The fact that the Pakistani Army can occupy their wartime locations earlier than the Indian army confers on it the ability to pre-empt Cold Start;
• failure to do so could lead to firing of low-yield tactical warheads at IBGs as they cross the start line or even earlier
• Pakistani countermeasures to Cold Start Strategy–battle-ready nuclear weapons
• India said on Monday it is monitoring the situation following media reports suggesting Pakistan is allegedly digging tunnels in Sargodha district
• “We are attempting to establish the purpose of digging up such large tunnels,” an intelligence official was quoted as saying in the reports. “These clearly cannot be meant for transport as is obvious from the images available; they don’t lead on to roads,” he added.
• Delhi’s Cold Start Strategy Frozen DOA (Dead on Arrival)