COAS Gen Bajwa intends to cut army strength of 5,38,000 substantially over next 5 years

[blueazure]

Then we can use the savings to make 1 Corps (Multan) with it's single armoured Div and 2 Inf Divs into a fully mechanised corps and II Corps (Mangla) with it's single armoured Div and single inf Div into a fully mechansied corps. If we even have enough tanks maybe add a armoured Div to XXXI Corps at Bahalpur, thereby giving Pak Army 3 fully armoured/mech corps that can manouvre.

the only place for tanks will be rawalpindi army museum -- soon

 

[JX-1]

the only place for tanks will be rawalpindi army museum -- soon

You will always have an armoured vehicle which can make nearby enemy vehicles go boom.

 

[PanzerKiel]

Then we can use the savings to make 1 Corps (Multan) with it's single armoured Div and 2 Inf Divs into a fully mechanised corps and II Corps (Mangla) with it's single armoured Div and single inf Div into a fully mechansied corps. If we even have enough tanks maybe add a armoured Div to XXXI Corps at Bahalpur, thereby giving Pak Army 3 fully armoured/mech corps that can manouvre.

Correction please...1 Corps is at Mangla, 2 is at Multan.

XXXI is already heavily mechanized, while V Corps is more than 70 % mechanized.

 

[White privilege]

X Corps is responsible for looking after almost 800 kms of difficult mountainous terrain, which is disputed as well.

XII Corps is solely responsible for Balochistan, alone...that is 2500 kms of international border and coastline only.....couple this with the fact that area wise, Balochistan is 44 % is the WHOLE Pakistan.

And both these Corps are looking after highly volatile areas of Pakistan.

Does the downsizing means you will be retired early as well??

 

[PanzerKiel]

Does the downsizing means you will be retired early as well??

In that case, would give me more time for write-ups....maybe some books as well....would miss the action though.

Does the downsizing means you will be retired early as well??

...flip side....i will be out of a job....really it scares me alot....if today my job is terminated, where will i go? Gives me nightmares.

 

[blueazure]

You will always have an armoured vehicle which can make nearby enemy vehicles go boom.

my frined, you are totally out of touch with modern weapons, esp ukraine conflict

entire armored brigades of the russian military have been wiped out and the Ukrainians didnt use a single tank to do that


1. javelin missile
2. stugna P
3. smart munitions arty
4. kamikaze drones .
5. TB2

In that case, would give me more time for write-ups....maybe some books as well....would miss the action though.


...flip side....i will be out of a job....really it scares me alot....if today my job is terminated, where will i go? Gives me nightmares.

panzer kiel - are u assessing the ukr 2022 conflict ? esp the utter annihilation of ru armored forces ?

https://www.reddit.com/r/UkraineWarVideoReport/comments/tvlj4k

 

[White privilege]

....would miss the action though.

Yeah nothing beats standing a post for a largely oblivious nation.That sense of giving, makes you float.

 

[PanzerKiel]

panzer kiel - are u assessing the ukr 2022 conflict ? esp the utter annihilation of ru armored forces ?

Have to...its part of my job afterall.

Yeah nothing beats standing a post for a largely oblivious nation.That sense of giving, makes you float.

...pure satisfaction, nothing else.....icing on the cake, you despatched more than a dozen as well.....

 

[Pappa Alpha]

does Pakistan have loitering munitions?

 

[Vapnope]

I think some people who are not aware of this term think that cut comes as a stand alone act and it really affects the war fighting capability of the army.

People who are aware of the lean organization can understand that lean concept is employed gradually with capacity enhancement being the first step. Then comes the job enhancement and job enlargement which is supported with automation, compact technologies and processes which essentially help you to be more effective and remove the manpower intensive processes.

We may have some issues with Gen Bajwa's policies but here he is making an very good point. Cases in point are India's and China's modernization where head count is being reduced.

 

[Sayfullah]

Russia vs Ukraine example is being used wrongly by people. Russia only committed a small bit of its army in Ukraine. Ukraine has more manpower then Russians far more manpower they probably out number Russians 5:1 even. Russians had max of 190k troops built up near Ukraine before the invasion whereas Ukraine including its army, reserves and volunteers had close to a million men and after making it mandatory for every man to fight and accepting foreign fighters that number would have gone up a lot.

What is Russia getting massacred in Ukraine?
Russians Battalion Tactical Groups are high tech high quality combined arms battalions something people here are basically advocating for because those BTG’s include the best tanks, ifv’s, apc’s and artillery. Why are they getting massacred by Ukrainians? BECAUSE THEY LACK ENOUGH INFANTRY. Russians made their BTG’s keeping a war with NATO in mind so they only have 200 very very well equipped infantrymen per Battalion Tactical Group. These infantrymen have the best of best equipment yet their getting slaughtered because it’s not enough infantry especially when that many vehicles are involved.

Pakistan’s goal is Kashmir.

To capture peaks you need a massive superiority in number of troops vs the defender. You can have the most modern and well equipped soldiers but they’ll get slaughtered while tryna capture peaks if you don’t outnumber the defenders heavily. Tech goes out the window when your fighting on loc to capture a dominating peak. What matters there is numbers not tech because even with all those fancy helmets and bullet proof vests your soldiers will still get massacred if they don’t heavily outnumber the defenders.

Also you need many soldiers in the ground to man posts on loc. “concentrate well equipped soldiers in one place” would be a good strategy if we had excellent infrastructure along loc. Up north it takes many hours to go from one city to another and the roads are small two lane roads. Try sending a division worth of troops from Rawalpindi to muzzaffarabad by road and you’ll see how long it takes. Pakistan doesn’t even have that many helicopters to rapidly transfer troops from one place to another and even if it builds better infrastructure and acquires equipment to rapidly transfer troops, you’ll already have wasted more money then more troops cost.

If Pakistan was to attack even Jammu, you can have super high tech equipment and well trained and equipped troops BUT if you lack numbers you’ll get massacred like Russian are in Ukraine. Russians BTG’s lack adequate infantrymen which is the reason their getting massacred. For example, Pakistan cuts down troops, even has the best of best tanks in the world and attacks Jammu, how do you plan on holding on to any gains without heavy numbers of infantry? Firepower and mobility is good UNLESS you want to occupy a territory. WE CLAIM KASHMIR AS OUR JUGULAR VEIN. How can we hold on to any gains made in J&K without tons on infantry?

If Pakistan becomes a truly defensive force waiting for the enemy to attack first and fight in its own territory only then Allah Hi Hafiz hai Pakistan ka. If you give Indians the time to build up their troops and attack when their ready at their time of choosing and bring the fight to your territory, your asking to be destroyed. People would say “what about Ukraine” but at what cost is Ukraine resisting? Ukraine half of it is destroyed. Russia is intact. Do you want Pakistan to suffer Ukraine level destruction. Would you rather Pakistan be fighting defensive tryna save Karachi or Pakistan fighting offensive tryna capture Ahmedabad? Do you want the front lines to be on the outskirts of Lahore or on the outskirts of Amritsar?

And if anyone says “war with india won’t happen”, your seriously living under a rock. India is run by radical terrorists who daily make remarks on wanting to occupy our land. Indians got bold enough to first claim surgical strike in 2016 then actually drop bombs in Pakistan in 2019 then shoot a nuclear capable super sonic cruise missile at us in 2022.
Indians misadventures will never stop.
Indians firing brahmos at us shows rouge elements deeply infiltrated it so they can start a war.
Even a politically motivated move like balakot which wasn’t with the intention to start a war, can start a war. Imagine if the bombs did hit a madressa with 300 + kids in it, what do you think Pakistan would do?
Imagine if Indians did go ahead with their planned missile strike on us after 27 Feb or imagine Pakistan shoot down enough of their fighters to start a war.
You can tech tech tech all you want but after the first few days of war tech goes out the window. After the first few days of war, you’ll go back to improvising with the low tech stuff you have and it’ll rely on how much man power you have physically to win the war.
Even in Russia Ukraine war we see Russian now resorting to have pickup trucks with hmg’s mounted on them.
If soldiers are in a trench it won’t matter if their wearing a good helmet or not but what will matter is if enough men are manning the trench.
Pak army infantry already have the anti tank, anti aircraft, and anti personal weapons needed to fight it’s not like we lack atgms or manpads or machine guns that we can’t afford .

The insurgencies Pakistan is facing, you can’t get rid of those by lowering troops but making them high tech only. Americans learned this and said them self you need a ratio of 1:10 if you want to fight an insurgency. North and south Waziristan combined have a population of around 1.2 million. That means ideal number of troops there should be 120 000. Can we afford to downsize at a time when TTP have launched their first ever spring offensive against Pak Army? Give soldiers mraps, bullet proof vests etc but that won’t change shit. What happened to Americans in Afghanistan? Taliban simply used bigger ieds and would ambush the soldiers when least expected. In insurgencies you will take casualties many casualties it doesn’t matter how well equipped your troops army many will still be killed. You need numbers to crush insurgencies.
In Balochistan you need boots on the ground to man check posts. We need check posts in Balochistan to monitor road networks or else terrorists would move freely in Balochistan. You need boots on the ground so terrorists don’t occupy any territory. Do you want to go back to pre 2014 era where terrorists in Pakistan occupied territory? Baitullah declared Islamic Emirate in waziristan during his time. If you have a well equipped but small number of troops, they’ll do operations in waziristan but won’t be able to have a proper presence there so terrorists will re occupy the area and your operations will be useless. In Afghanistan didn’t Taliban simply let US and its allied soldiers do operations in areas, patrol areas and do whatever? They would allow this them re occupy the area. US had no real control of majority of the country because they didn’t have enough boots on ground to have a physical presence in many areas of the country at once. Taliban would literally wait it out till Americans left an area then go back in. Do people want the same to happen to waziristan? TTP who were fighting are well aware of Taliban’s successful tactics and will surely use them against us.
Now people can say “seal the borders”. It takes troops to seal the border no matter how much tech you have no matter what surveillance systems you have you still need many tens of thousands even hundreds of thousands of troops to physically man the border and set in border posts to keep terrorists out.
And “raising more police” or any other units would defeat the very purpose of lowering the number of army.

We can all dream of un corrupt police and politicians to fix issues so army won’t be needed in these areas to fight insurgencies but like I said we can only dream of that happening. ITS MORE LIKELY OUR ECONOMY WILL SIGNIFICANTLY GET BETTER THEN THE ABOVE HAPPENING.

What we need is to strengthen our economy. Instead of wasting time begging for peace with india, set down with all stakeholders in Pakistan, call gold Pakistani financial advisors from all over the world and make a plan on how to pay off loans and improve economy.
Instead of these “security conferences” we need economic conferences to help our economy.
Instead of army losing hope in our economy, it should play its part and produce security in places like Balochistan so investment can flow into Balochistan.

Army can’t even provide proper security to big businesses who want to set up in Balochistan then complain our economy is bad.

 

[Sayfullah]

Cases in point are India's and China's modernization where head count is being reduced.

They can afford to we can’t
Their troops far outnumbered their main adversaries troops. We are outnumbered already by our adversary.
China doesn’t need to fight any insurgencies and india doesn’t have to fight any insurgencies at the level we do.
Chinas infrastructure is very good and their troop transport capability is good they can easily move around a lot of their troops in a short amount of time.
Our infrastructure is shit and dreaming about ours being built at the level Chinas infrastructure is on lac for example is dreaming for a miracle which will never happen.
China doesn’t need to worry about a ground war. Against india their border is all mountainous so l their current strategy is fine.
India still outnumbers us in manpower and will continue to as well as having a larger airforce and bigger budget to buy more equipment to fight us. They can afford downsizing since we’re their only real enemy. Against China it’ll never be a big war only skirmishes at max for india.

Modern armies operate this way. Smaller but heavily armed and trained. Local insurgencies need to be dealt by a reformed police.

I’m assuming by modern armies you mean European and usa. None of them have a 8x bigger enemy ready to invade them. None of them need to fear a ground war in their country. All of them are also protected by nato. None of them face the level of insurgency we do.
Reformed police is a more unlikely dream then improving economy. Also, usa learned the hard way that you need a 1:10 ratio while fighting an insurgency. Now do the math we need 1:10 ratio in Balochistan and waziristan to crush the insurgency.

 

[The Terminator]

By downsizing, I think he mean reallocation of resources/personal.

Pakistan has many paramilitary forces- Frontier corp, Punjab Rangers, Sindh Rangers, etc...

It would make sense for Pak to reduce army size to around 480k which is 70k less than today. All paramilitary forces can be combined into a National Guard/Gendarmerie similar to Turkey/Most western nations. If one looks at Urkaine their territorial defence brigades have been very effective.

While decreasing the size of the regular army, Pak should proactively increase the number of SSG. 5k SSG is not enough in todays warfare were SSG are the tip of the spear and would be most likely involved behind enemy lines and also night operations which can significantly demoralize the enemy. Thus I strongly believe SSG size needs to be increased to 20-30k Minimum. We have the population and resources.

Lastly we should sett up a National Rapid Action Battalion group similar to Bangladesh for internal riots/protests. We cannot always use our army for these situations as they are not trained for this. The RAB personel initially can be sources from the Frontier corp special forces and SSG, while slowly increasing their numbers to around 10-20k.

In all whatever personal the PA would lose would simply be reallocated to new structures-

1. Unified National Guard
2. Increased funding/personal for SSG
3. Formation of a Rapid Action Battalion for internal riots.

Increasing the size of the SOF inevitably drops it's quality as well. There's LCB to bridge the gap between SSG and the normal infantry.

 

[Sayfullah]

Downsizing occurs if current war has ended and there is no foreseen war in recent future.

Exactly. For anything it looks like the insurgencies in Pakistan are getting stronger by the day. TTP has launched its first ever spring offensive for this month of Ramadan and called it Al Badr. They’ve already done a number of attacks under it. It’s only a matter of time bla/blf start attacking our check posts as well. Afghanistan is ruled by Taliban and many Taliban factions are pro ttp. TTP can easily cross border legally thats how bad our security is. ISKP growing ever so stronger in the region and ISPP has many many supporters in Pakistan. It’s only a matter of time we’ll be facing a major counter insurgency war again.
Ttp, iskp, ispp, bla, blf all have Taliban tactics to learn from. Just wait until the enemy leaves the area and re occupy it. With lower number of troops we can’t have a physical presence always in many areas at once which will be heavily exploited by our enemies.

 

[The Terminator]

But still I wouldn't support the military's downsizing when we are already outnumbered a lot, lengthy borders and don't have the luxury of geographical depth. Maybe Bajwa thinking of small lethal force for defense and Nukes as insurance policy against large scale losses!