I haven't seen or heard of any improvement in the readiness. It is something that is out of mind so my knowledge might be dated.
Not sure what the military did since Kargil to improve on their fighting unit readiness. Also how I found out is not important.
The report on the weaknesses in some of the Corps was identified a few years prior to Kargil. The military did jack all - and then Kargil showed glaring weaknesses. When one of the Corp's was asked to move to battle positions and establish fighting formations, they had a very hard time to muster the appropriate complements. Gear was not working, not properly maintained, and unit mobility ground-down again and again. What was found was completely contradictory to earlier assessments versus reality on the ground.
I hope things have improved. I sincerely do.
I mean no offense, but You haven’t seen or heard of it because you’re not supposed to. “How I found out is not important” to me means that maybe you have not found out at all (about recent developments that is, things during and before Kargil are rather public now, as I’m sure todays developments will be a decade down the line).
I only ask that question because the source of such information can change its nature a lot. I digress though, you could very well have your trusted sources, I’m not doubting that.
The military has fought a 15 year long constant war since Kargil ended, they were forced to increase readiness Wether they wanted to or not, by 2016 even artillery and armored units had done rounds in battlefields as infantry regiments, and I already gave you examples of the standoffs in 2000s and 2019.
Readiness Is directly proportional to experience, if a regiment has deployed before, it knows how to deploy again. But even more so, it is directly proportional to the economic state of the country, I already highlighted how in my precious post, it is not a static thing, right now, with our economic state, you can connect the dots…
That being said, the number of exercises, especially cross-force exercises (PAF-PA) went up substantially due to lessors learned from the failure at Kargil. Kargil to me was so much more than a readiness failure anyways, it was a geo strategic failure, we all know how United the civil-military admin was over it.
While I do agree that the shortcomings were obvious before Kargil, I don’t think they were (at least not entirely) ignored. while on the outside it may seem like the forces do not have a shortage of funds due to their seemingly constant weapon purchases, those funds are sourced through long term loans, the money needed for the military to maintain a readiness level is always,
always in short supply and will remain as such, and by extension some corps will never attain the same readiness level as others. Some regiments in the PA use modern trucks, others are still using trucks that are two, three, four decades old. Some regiments use modern tanks, others are still using tanks from the 60s. Even with perfect logistics, supply, movement and tactics, we can’t expect one to be as ready, mobile and capable as the other. That’s why I think some minor downsizing needs to be considered, or at least no expansion until everyone can achieve a near equal readiness level (yes, the PA has been constantly expanding, even in the last few years)
That’s a worldwide thing too, not just limited to Pakistan, even the US has its fair share of such issues with their seemingly endless budget. As I said, things are worst across the border, even during Kargil this was very apparent and Indian defense circles talk about it to this day. By no means is that justification for low readiness on our side, but it’s an indication of how problems like these are prevalent even with much larger budgets. A perfect war has never been fought, least of all by a nation as poor and divided (on the administrative level, civil-military leadership, where everyone has their own agenda) as Pakistan.