Showing posts with label ARMED FORCES. Show all posts

Tuesday, April 18, 2017

LODGE A "FIR" AGAINST INDIAN ARMY

SOURCE:

http://www.defencenews.in/article.aspx?id=251603

VIEW FROM FROM PAKISTAN

LODGE

A "FIR"

AGAINST INDIAN ARMY

- Gen DigVictory Singh

"STATEMENT OF COMPLAIN IN FIR"

Indian Army Kills 8 Pakistani Soldiers as forces retaliate to ceasefire violation along LoC in Rajouri

Eight Pakistan Army soldier were killed and several injured as Indian Army retaliated to unprovoked ceasefire violation along the Line of Control (LoC) in Rajouri district of Jammu and Kashmir today.

Pakistan Army started heavy mortar shelling and firing at two Indian positions in Jhanger and Sher Makedi village near the LoC in Naushera, triggering of a gun duel, a defence official said.

"Pakistan Army initiated indiscriminate firing of small arms, automatics and mortars on Indian posts on the LoC in two villages of Naushera sector in Rajouri district at around 8 am. Indian Army posts are retaliating strongly and effectively," said Defence Ministry spokesman, Lt Col Manish Mehta.

According to the defence sources, mortar shell fired by the Indian Army fell into an Army camp across the border and Pakistan suffered maximum causality.

Pakistani helicopters and ambulances were seen from across the border to shift the injured and dead Pakistan Army soldiers to near by hospitals.

These areas normally remain calm but Pakistan is now using soft areas for infiltration of armed terrorists from old routes. The Pakistan Army is giving cover fire to terrorists so that they can infiltrate to kick-up violence in the border districts of Rajouri and Poonch, defence officials said.

Intelligence agencies have already alerted the Army and the state police that this summer will be hot and more than 100 terrorists are waiting on launching pads near Line of Control to cross over to the Indian side.

MADE IN PAKISTAN

ABP News showing videos showing our army soldiers beating Kashmiri youth actually shot in Pakistan. New high by ISPR.

Sunday, December 25, 2016

Selection of Army Chief a Sensitive Issue

SOURCE:
http://www.tribuneindia.com/news/comment/selection-of-army-chief-a-sensitive-issue/341704.html

RELATED

MUST READ

PART -I :-
http://bcvasundhra.blogspot.in/2016/12/the-army-chiefs-challenge.html

PART - II:-
http://bcvasundhra.blogspot.in/2016/12/arm-in-arm-institutions-like-army-are.html

PART - III:-
http://bcvasundhra.blogspot.in/2016/12/selection-of-army-chief-sensitive-issue.html

PART - IV:-
http://bcvasundhra.blogspot.in/2016/12/men-in-shadows-derailed-bakshis-chances.html

PART - V:-
http://bcvasundhra.blogspot.in/2016/12/india-coas-brewing-storm-in-teacup.html

Selection of Army Chief

a

Sensitive Issue

By

Dinesh Kumar

A civilian government’s prerogative to make appointments must be respected without a doubt. However, it is mandatory that it exercises judgement based solely on merit — without prejudice, lobbying or parochial considerations.

Lt Gen Bipin Rawat IT is a convention rather than a statutory requirement for the senior-most lieutenant general to be appointed as a Service Chief. Thus, the government has not committed any illegal act by appointing Lt General Bipin Rawat as the country's 27th Army Chief after superseding two lieutenant generals. On the contrary, it has exercised its prerogative in a democracy where civilian supremacy over the armed forces is paramount.

Yet, the decision has evoked much criticism among sections of retired Army officers who have attributed it to “political interference”, described it as a “bad precedent” and even predicted “the beginning of the end of an apolitical Army”. The government has defended the decision to appoint Lt General Rawat as the Army Chief by explaining the rationale in a generalised and generic expressions of he being “best suited” to deal with “emerging challenges, including a reorganised and restructured military force in the north (China), continuing terrorism and proxy war from the west (Pakistan) and the situation in the North- East.” The government has also highlighted Lt General Rawat's operational experience as an Infantry officer in counter-insurgency (CI) operations in Jammu and Kashmir and the north-eastern states and also along both the Line of Control (LoC) with Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir and Line of Actual Control (LAC) with Chinese-occupied Aksai Chin.

This explanation sounds reasonable when viewed in isolation but not necessarily when seen in a larger framework. The senior-most superseded officer, Lt General Praveen Bakshi, is currently heading the critical Eastern Command which is entrusted with defending India's borders with three countries - China, Myanmar and Bangladesh and also the territorial integrity of Bhutan. It is also entrusted with counter-insurgency operations in the north-eastern states. If he is considered “less experienced”, then how did Lt General Bakshi, an armoured corps officer, be assigned to head the Eastern Command which in 1971 spearheaded the liberation of East Pakistan in a landmark war with Pakistan?

In any case, considering the security environment in the country, most officers from the Army's three principal combat Arms — Infantry, Artillery and Armoured Corps — have had exposure to either or both the CI and LoC / LAC environment in some form or the other. For example, officers from the armoured corps and the artillery are known to serve in Rashtriya Rifles units that are tasked specifically with CI operations.Will all future Army Chiefs from now on be required to be from the infantry with operational experience in Jammu and Kashmir, is one of the many questions that the announcement raises.

This is not about discussing the merits or demerits of Lt Generals Rawat and Bakshi. Their names are incidental. Rather, the limited point here is that both these officers rose to become Army Commanders after obtaining equivalent experience during their career. There is little to suggest that one is more outstanding than the other. With both officers at par, should not the seniority convention have prevailed so as to keep the armed forces away from needless controversy?

As it is civil-military relations have of late come under considerable stress with the government mishandling the One Rank One Pension issue; doing little to address the anomalies of the Seventh Pay Commission,; downgrading mid-ranking military officers vis-a-vis their civilians counterparts in the Ministry of Defence;milking the retaliatory strikes across the Line of Controlfor political capital and, more recently, announcing the next Army and Air Force chief barely a fortnight prior.

There is nothing wrong in making a “deep selection” to appoint a highly capable officer as the Service Chief or a regional commander. Currently, all professional parameters being satisfactory, an officer's seniority (date of birth and date of commission) determines his appointment to top positions. Aware of their standing in the service list many, if not most, Service officers are known to take the careerist route and play safe. This does not always result in the best officer getting promotions and being assigned pivotal posts. As such there is need for the armed forces, particularly the Army, to seriously review its deteriorated internal health which includes the quality of leadership, politics and vendetta among the higher ranks, the subjective system of annual confidential reports that has led to considerable litigation and financial, moral and professional corruption.

A larger challenge is from the political executive of the day. Considering the nature of petty, partisan and corrupt politics prevalent in the country and how politicians are used to blatantly interfering with appointments of civilian bureaucrats and policemen, the credibility of the Indian politician is at a constant low. While many politicians in India may otherwise treat the armed forces with awe, barring some individuals they take little interest in understanding the armed forces in particular and national security in general. National security is not the exclusive preserve of the armed forces; it is multi-faceted and complex requiring serious study and understanding by the political executive which takes all final decision.

Hence, if 'deep selection' is to henceforth become a norm in selecting Service chiefs, the government will have to devise a criteria. While a civilian government's prerogative to make appointments must be respected, it is mandatory that it exercises judgement based solely on merit without prejudice, lobbying or parochial considerations. Political meddling with a potent and monolithic organisation like the army has the potential for inducing political ambition in its leadership.

The country can do without politicians trying to use an Army headed by “deep selected” pliable generals to exert influence. Surely that will mark the end to India's professional and apolitical instrument of last resort in a country where governance continues to be marked by political and administrative mismanagement even as security threats abound.

dkumar@tribunemail.com

Wednesday, June 1, 2016

पारेकर जी ज़रा धीरे चलना बड़े धोके हैं यह बाबू बिछाई माइन फील्ड में

SOURCE:
http://www.dailypioneer.com/columnists/oped/cutting-nose-to-spite-face.html

Related :

http://bcvasundhra.blogspot.in/2016/06/man-managementreducing-flab-in-armed.html

                    पारेकर जी  ज़रा धीरे चलना

                                    बड़े धोके हैं

                   यह बाबू बिछाई माइन फील्ड में

Babuji Dheere Chalna .
Bare Dhoke hain
ees BABU mine field mein

Cutting Nose to Spite Face

By

Deepak Sinha

Friday, 27 May 2016

To reduce revenue expenditure, look at civilians paid from Defence Estimates, not Services’s non-combat manpower

The Minister for Defence has recently announced the formation of an 11-member committee, led by Lieutenant General DB Shekatkar (Retd), to look into areas of overlap and convergence within the three Forces — the Indian Army, Navy and Air Force. The committee will also identify areas to “rationalise manpower”, examine possible areas of multi-tasking by troops and suggest ways to “optimise” combat potential by bringing in more technology instead of more boots.

This is to ensure that the burgeoning revenue expenditure, the monies spent on pay, allowances and pensions among other things, is brought under control so that more funds are available for capital expenditure, especially acquisition of modern weapon systems. As Bhartendu Kumar Singh of the Indian Defence Accounts Service points out, “The Accounts Branch of the Indian Air Force, for example, has 492 commissioned officers and 7,000 men catering to the pay matters of 1,60,000 officers and men in the Air Force. On a competitive note, the same can be provided by 300 people on the civilian side very easily.”

[ PLEASE RECHECK- The veterans of IAF are not dependant on CDA(PENSIONS) & are catered by the Accounts Branch of the Indian Air Force with the same existing strength. The strength of veterans when taken into consideration will make a qualitative difference. THIS IS A RUSE BY THE " CROOKED MANDARINS" for BUREAUCRATIC EMPIRE EMPIRE BUILDING.Remember that left to its own devices, the bureaucracy has no reason to cut back on its own reach or powers of arbitration, and this comes through very strongly in the functioning of the defence ministry, in particular. - Vasundhra ]

There can be no two opinions that such a detailed examination is necessary and must be undertaken periodically, except to suggest that the period of three months given to the Committee to complete its task seems grossly insufficient, if it is to do justice to this critical issue.

In fact, one may even suggest that by restricting this examination only to the military, the Defence Minister has not gone far enough.

The reasons for this are not far to seek. The MOD, for example, has sanctioned posts of 5,85,000 civilians, which is more than the active strength of the Pakistan Army.

The MOD spends more than Rs1,000 crore annually on pay, allowances and establishment of the Ministry of Finance personnel who are attached to it.

The civilian-manned Military Engineering Services spends nearly double the amount of the work it does on its own establishment costs.

The Defence Research and Development Organisation only utilizes 39 per cent of its budget on research and development while the remainder is spent on establishment costs.

The burgeoning pension bill, which is expected to touch Rs60,000 crore this year after taking into account the sanctioning of One-Rank-One-Pension, is another problem. While reduction of manpower will certainly go some way in controlling this issue, the fact is that the per capita expenditure on 25 lakh military veterans and their kin amounts to approximately Rs1.5 lakh annually, while the four lakh civilians paid from the defence pension budget receive an average of Rs5.38 lakh a year, which will shoot up astronomically as and when the Seventh Pay Commission report is implemented.

These examples show that priority needs to be given to reducing civilian manpower paid from Defence Estimates, before reducing non-combat manpower of the Services. The fact is that civilian pensions, despite catering to one-fifth the number of military pensioners, make for approximately 36 per cent of defence pensions — and given our difficulties in ensuring employment, even populism suggests it is better to reduce civilians who cost five times more than to reduce the military.

On the question capital expenditure being given pride of place in our defence budget to ensure our Forces are adequately equipped, the fact is that this issue is much more than just adequate budgeting. Between eight to 13 per cent of the funds marked for capital expenditure remains unutilised. For 2015-16, this was as high as 13.4 per cent, amounting to returning Rs11,505 crore. This should count as criminal negligence, given the poor state of our weapons and equipment, on the part of those within the military [ read MOD ] responsible for procurement.

And this is where the issue gets complicated. The Government always shows its ‘firm commitment’ to national security by allotting adequate funds to the MoD but then manipulates the budget to cater to unforeseen situations. The Finance Minister cannot touch revenue allotments as those are fully committed but, with the active connivance of the MoD (Finance), he takes full advantage of the capital allotment to meet unexpected expenses. All bureaucratic measures are put to good use to delay or derail the procurement process, resulting in vast amounts remaining unspent.

Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar is known for his intelligence and clarity of thought but like one of his earlier predecessors, Krishna Menon, he too may find his reputation dented somewhat, if he looks at issues through blinkers and acts in haste. It makes little sense to cut off your nose to spite your face. To start with, instead of setting up new committees, he will do well to implement the report of the Naresh Chandra Committee and the recommendations of the Group of Ministers of AB Vajpayee Government. [ read KARGIL report by Dr Subramanayam ]

(The writer is a military veteran and consultant with the Observer Research

CDS [ PCOSC ] : IT IS A "MOCKERY" OF THE MILITARY SCIENTIFIC SYSTEM

      NARESH CHANDRA COMMITTEE REPORT MILITARILY CAN BE SUMARISED IN ONE WORD

                                  IT IS A "MOCKERY"
                                                  OF
                    THE MILITARY SCIENTIFIC SYSTEM

Saturday, April 9, 2016

Govt Set to Give Permanent Status to Top Post in Indian Military

By

Shishir Gupta

The Narendra Modi government is set to create a post of permanent chairman, chiefs of staff committee (COSC) — a four-star officer who will be the single-point military adviser to the Centre — four years after a recommendation by the Naresh Chandra task force on higher defence reforms.

Top government sources confirmed to Hindustan Times that the process of appointment of chairman, COSC, would begin after Modi’s in-principle approval next week. It is understood that a presentation on higher defence reforms and future air power planning will be made before the PM on April 12. The proposal has already been vetted by the cabinet secretary, national security adviser and defence minister.

“Once the presentation is cleared by the Prime Minister, a formal proposal will be moved for approval in the cabinet committee on security (CCS). The entire exercise should be over in a couple of months,” a senior official said.

The government envisages the permanent chairman to have a two-year tenure and equivalence in rank and protocol with the army, navy and air force chiefs of staff.

Selected on the basis of merit and from any of the three arms, the officer will be responsible for all military hardware acquisition processes, tri-service command in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, cyber command, special forces, and for inculcating “jointmanship” within the forces for optimum utilisation of resources.

A single- point military adviser’s post in the form of chief of defence staff was proposed by the K Subrahmanyam Committee set up by the Atal Bihari Vajpayee gover nment after the 1999 Kargil war.

In 2011, the UPA regime revisited higher defence reforms under a committee led by former cabinet secretary Naresh Chandra. The committee, which submitted its report in 2012, recommended a watered down version of the CDS and called it the PCOSC (permanent chairman of the COSC).

“The whole idea behind appointing a PCOSC is to break down silos within armed forces and create synergy in the fighting force. The problem with the existing separate military headquarters is that there is a turf war between the three wings with each seeing things with its own perspective and requirement,” a senior official said.

(Source- Hindustan Times)

Wednesday, May 13, 2015

Cost Disease in China's Military

SOURCE:
http://thediplomat.com/2015/05/chinas-military-and-cost-disease/

Cost Disease in China's Military

The headline figures showing China’s growing military spending are misleading.

Peter E. Robertson

Image Credit: REUTERS/Bobby Yip

for The Diplomat

May 13, 2015

China’s economic rise means that the world’s largest army now also has the resources of the world’s second largest economy. The security implications of this are discussed in the U.S. Department of Defence’s latest report, [ http://www.defense.gov/pubs/2014_DoD_China_Report.pdf ]

which highlights not only the sheer growth of China’s military, but also its sustainability. Although China still spends less on its military [ http://www.voxeu.org/article/mismeasuring-china-s-military-spending ] than the United States spends on its own defense forces, China’s far higher economic growth suggests it will be able to catch-up rapidly, with relatively little economic burden. This contrasts with America’s economic malaise and raises questions over the credibility of the U.S. security guarantees to Western Pacific allies and its pivot to Asia.[http://thediplomat.com/2014/03/beijing-and-washingtons-defense-budgets-a-tale-of-two-cities/ ]

But the economics of growth are not quite so simple. Though China’s economy is indeed growing rapidly, this doesn’t mean you can get more of everything at the same rate. Some things become much more affordable, but other things may become more expensive. In particular, wages tend to rise rapidly and this affects costs in institutions that employ a lot of labour – like the People’s Liberation Army (PLA).

Thus, China’s military is likely to be suffering from what economists call “cost disease.” [http://www.economist.com/node/21563714] Rising wage rates mean it will face increasingly large claims on its budget, just to maintain the same number of personnel. Hence, a greater budget is required to supply the same level of services. If not, then the sector will be squeezed in real terms.

Anecdotal evidence that this is happening in China’s military can be gleaned from China’s defence White Papers. While opaque and incomplete, these nevertheless emphasise the need for increasing spending on social security, salaries and allowances to keep track with per capita incomes in the rest of the economy. As an example, defence analyst Dennis Blasko

[   http://www.uscpf.org/v2/defensestudies.html ]

                                            or

[ http://www.uscpf.org/v2/pdf/defensereport.pdf ]

and his co-authors suggested that, in 2006, salary and pension and other labour cost increases may have accounted for half of the entire increase in the military budget.

A sense of the impact of rising wages can also be gained from the graph below, which shows the growth in manufacturing sector wages and in military spending in China and the United States. While China’s military spending is growing much more rapidly than that of the U.S., China has also had much faster wage growth. Thus, much of China’s faster spending growth may just reflect larger wage cost increases.

Symptoms and Causes of Cost Disease

Cost disease is usually associated with service sectors in wealthy countries, such as health care, or with countries undergoing resource booms, where it is known as Dutch Disease. In China, however, the cause of cost disease is the rapid productivity growth in the manufacturing sector.

This productivity growth raises the demand for labour and drives up wages. But it also directly reduces manufacturing costs. On balance, therefore, manufacturing prices remain stable with wage cost push being offset by productivity improvements.

For China’s military sector things are different. It is faced with the same increasing wages on the cost side, but does not necessarily benefit from the manufacturing productivity boom. Thus, the rate of cost increase experienced by the military sector exceeds the economy-wide average rate.

To counter this, the government could increase the military’s share of the budget. But China’s military budget has been a fairly constant fraction of its GDP, suggesting it has been squeezed. Thus the real growth rate of military spending, that is the spending after adjusting for price increases, is likely to be slower than conventionally thought. Likewise the gap between real military spending growth in China and the U.S. should be much smaller than the gap in nominal military spending growth

Measuring Cost Disease

Unfortunately the usual method of adjusting military spending for price increases does not capture this effect. For example over the last 15 years China’s defense spending grew at approximately 14 percent a year, while military spending in the U.S. grew at approximately 5 percent per year. This implies a rather large difference in the growth rate of spending of 8.8 percentage points per year. But these are nominal spending rates and need to be adjusted for increasing prices.

The size of the adjustment for inflation then depends on which measure of inflation is used. The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) uses [ http://www.sipri.org/research/armaments/milex/milex_database/copy_of_sources_methods ] the consumer price index (CPI). But the growth in the CPI is the same in the U.S. and China, about 2 percent per year. This implies that adjusting for inflation makes no difference to the estimated rate of catch-up.

Alternatively inflation can be measured [http://www.andrewerickson.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/China-Quarterly_Demystifying-Chinas-Defence-Spending_Liff-Erickson_201312.pdf ] with the GDP deflator. By this measure China’s inflation rate is 2 percentage points higher than America’s, which reduces the real growth gap significantly from 8.8 to 6.8 percentage points per year.

But if there is cost disease, the rate of inflation facing the military will be higher than the economy-wide average. Since both the CPI index and the GDP deflator are economy-wide averages, they will lead to underestimates of military inflation and overestimates of the real growth rate.

The best index to use would be a price deflator for the defense sector. Unfortunately China does not provide this data.

Nevertheless, using some publicly available data and economic theory, it is possible to calculate
[http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10242694.2015.1033895?journalCode=gdpe20 ]

                                                                        OR

[   http://www.business.uwa.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0009/2385783/13-32-Measuring-Hard-Power-Chinas-Economic-Growth-and-Military-Capacity.pdf ]   a relative military cost (RMC) index for China and the United States. This uses data on input prices for operations, personnel and equipment, and the expenditure shares of these budget headings, to construct an index of the relative cost of producing military services in each country.

Using this method, I found that the rate of cost increase in China’s military exceeded that of the United States by as much 3.6 percentage points per year over the decade 2000-2010. Consequently, rather than China growing 8.8 percent per year faster than the United States, the RMC index suggests a real growth gap closer to 5 percent per year.

This approach uses very limited data and shouldn’t be considered definitive. But it suggests that the economic burden of rapid military growth on the Chinese economy is much larger than generally thought.

Looking to the future, as long China is growing rapidly, the real relative cost of providing defence services is likely to grow as well. Moreover as China’s urban-rural migration rates slow, the rate of wage growth is likely to increase. Hence, though it is not chronic, the symptoms of cost disease may worsen before they get better.

Military Growth and Perceptions

Needless to say, exaggerating China’s real military spending growth is undesirable in the current climate of rising Asian military spending. China’s military rise is already triggering an escalation in territorial disputes, particularly in the East and South China Seas, [  http://thediplomat.com/2015/04/us-blasts-chinas-great-wall-of-sand-in-the-south-china-sea/ ], and Singapore,[ http://thediplomat.com/2015/03/singapores-defense-budget-climbs-5-7-percent/ ] India [ http://thediplomat.com/2015/03/is-indias-defense-budget-adequate/ ] and Japan [http://thediplomat.com/2015/01/japan-approves-largest-ever-defense-budget/ ] have all announced substantial increases in defence budgets. Thus, a careful analysis of the underlying costs and real growth of China’s military, and understanding the impact of rising wages on costs, is important for maintaining an appropriate perspective on China’s expansion.

In addition, however, rising wage costs also help explain China’s military modernization. [  http://www.defense.gov/pubs/2014_DoD_China_Report.pdf ]         While many aspects of China’s military transformation will reflect strategic decisions, they will also be influenced by price changes that accompany economic growth. One way the military can mitigate cost disease is to substitute away from labour towards equipment. Thus the PLA has reduced its armed forces from 2.5 to 2.3 million since 2000. As wages in China rise toward the same levels as those in the United States, we should expect it’s military to look more like America’s in terms of its relative use of equipment and soldiers.

So while it is possible to see modernization entirely in strategic terms, some aspects of this process will reflect simple economic choices as well.

China’s Peaceful Rise

Concerns about China’s intentions are intensified by the lack of transparency surrounding its growing military capabilities. The usual assumption is that China wishes to “bide its time and its strengths.” But by obscuring the details of its military budget, the only thing China appears to be hiding are cost blowouts.

This may also be a strategic decision as well. But double-digit growth rates in military spending create an image [ https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/china/2014-10-09/not-so-empty-talk ] problem for a country that claims to want a peaceful rise. China could therefore do much to allay fears, without revealing any strengths, by being more forthcoming in it budget reporting. In the absence of that, we can help China to help itself, by more careful scrutiny of the economic data and better appreciation of the challenges of managing rapid growth.

Peter Robertson is professor of Economics and the University of Western Australia and has been a visiting Scholar at the University of Otago, The University of British Columbia, Rutgers University and The University of Oxford. His keys areas of research are economic growth, development and international trade, especially for Asian economies. He is the co-author of Measuring Hard Power: China’s Growth and Military Capacity (forthcoming). The author gratefully acknowledges the hospitality of St Anthony’s College, Oxford and the CSAE, Oxford University.

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