Should Countries with Large Armed Forces look for War?

[Joe Shearer]

You touched one aspect. And yes, it will have political opposition but that will fall off as public rallies behind..

Other is timidity - institutional cowardice. @Joe Shearer hinted at it but later retracted his post.

As a nation we suffer from old wounds which have perhaps healed superficially but still ache when try to run..

What was that?

Oh, now I remember.

I originally thought that the suggestion was to put these penny packets on our own borders, a provocation that had led to very bad consequences earlier. Then I realised that the general idea was to put detachments in other countries, to fight other wars, and I deleted my post.

 

[Spectre]

Why Iran, when we can make use of bases in Afghanistan?

Come to think of it, I wonder if this was the whole reason for India signing the LEMO with the Americans! India military can now use US bases around the world, including the Bagram Air base. With a friendly government in Kabul, this shouldn't be a problem at all.

Base in Afghanistan is risky

- Pervasive infiltration by Taliban.
- Mercenary nature of ANA
- Incompetence of ANA

Security of the base would require lot of resources which can be done away with in Iran or in C. Asian countries bordering Afghanistan

What was that?

Simple 1962.

 

[ebrahym]

Two points

- They dont need to be based in Afghan. That is the beauty of Afghanistan. There are neighboring countries who are friendly to us which would provide us bases.

- Repercussions of not doing it is that we face them in Kashmir - next decade or so. Better to fight them and kill them in their homes. If some survive, they would be busy fighting ANA and IA

@Roybot - We can use Iran as a base. Russia is doing so for Syria, Iranians are against Talis so why not?

with all due respect having airbases in Tajikistan is not gonna be enough
cuz sooner or later they are gonna kick IA out as they border China and are gaining much from it
about Iran
it seems unlikely you see it will also force Pakistan to "Enter" Gulf
others like turkemenistan and krgyzystan
I want you to understand that its not only Indian foreign policy at work
i have read many Indians and most of them are like "we will this and that"
noe ofcourse those are amatures but you already have bases in tajikistan and must focus on keeping them open as it is highly unlikely in future

 

[GURU DUTT]

Investment in large armed forces serves three objectives:-

1. Deterrence
2. Expansion either politically or geographically
3. Internal Security

China - It used it's enormous investment in it's defense Industries to expand geographically by claiming and holding on to large territories in SCS and elsewhere occasionally successfully.

Russia - Did it to expand into Ukraine and Georgia

USA - It has been consistently furthering it's Eco-geo-political objectives in ME and Asia on the back of it's armed forces since it's inception in one form or other

Europe - Mainly concerned with internal security and Deterrence hence we see investment going down.

Gulf/KSA/UAE - We saw expansionist mind set in Yemen which has since been scaled back after losses

Coming to India - Can we justify investments just on the basis of deterrence which can be achieved non conventionally? Or should we take baby steps so that the cost of training, risk of expiry of platforms and consumables without usage, salaries etc which are inevitable in such a large armed forces do not form just a sunk portion of our budget with no returns? Or can we utilize it to expand our geo-political foot prints in the region. Not straight out territorial gains but to perhaps support and further the regimes favorable to us.

Pakistan - Perhaps has gained maximum bang for the buck though not w/o block back. Afghanistan and Kashmir are the two prime examples of them using their armed forces to successfully contest and contain a much larger adversary. Presence in Gulf on the other hand has given them considerable economic dividends.

@PARIKRAMA

thing is WAR is the only thing that brings peace and there can be no peace without fear of WAR cause when al might gave humans brains and power to talk and and make tools he also gave us lust , greed and trecherry and we ever since are at WAR with our own kind = humans no other spieces does it better than us

now as per topic of the thread yes countries with large armed forces keep looking to make war look at the history of man kind

 

[Spectre]

with all due respect having airbases in Tajikistan is not gonna be enough
cuz sooner or later they are gonna kick IA out as they border China and are gaining much from it
about Iran
it seems unlikely you see it will also force Pakistan to "Enter" Gulf
others like turkemenistan and krgyzystan
I want you to understand that its not only Indian foreign policy at work
i have read many Indians and most of them are like "we will this and that"
noe ofcourse those are amatures but you already have bases in tajikistan and must focus on keeping them open as it is highly unlikely in future

That is your assumption - without any data points. I can assume Pigs will fly..thats plausible but not probable.

 

[PARIKRAMA]

Why Iran, when we can make use of bases in Afghanistan?

Come to think of it, I wonder if this was the whole reason for India signing the LEMO with the Americans! Indian military can now use US bases around the world, which includes the Bagram Air base if am not wrong. With a friendly government in Kabul, this shouldn't be a problem at all.

@PARIKRAMA

Believe me a Afghanistan base has risks but then if we get a common base its not a bad idea.. Yes LEMOA opens up the door to much more.. In fact having a foothold in Afghanistan also helps us provide cover to our Chabhar port investment as well.. And mix a ACC there and you get a potent mix.. Let Mig 29K carry out some missions in ISIS targets, LCA or MKI or Jags doing Precision Bombing in Tali territory and voila we get a much better live experience and do a proper force projection

You touched one aspect. And yes, it will have political opposition but that will fall off as public rallies behind..

Its not so easy.. The gullible masses of India does not understand the truth and believes in blatant lies..An off topic rant but pls check everybody talks about J&K ppl who are dead and injured.. Anyone knows how many policemen, forces died or are injured with critical injury numbers... The same political class talks about pellet guns but negates Stones, molotovs and such weapons.. Of course its outside this thread so will stop the rant.. But its a hint of our hypocrisy and opportunistic tendencies.

Base in Afghanistan is risky

- Pervasive infiltration by Taliban.
- Mercenary nature of ANA
- Incompetence of ANA

Security of the base would require lot of resources which can be done away with in Iran or in C. Asian countries bordering Afghanistan

True but we need experience there as well. Look tomo situations will have scenarios where bases will face extreme dangers and yet we need mission sorties as well.. Lets not cower away. when we are doing force projections lets safeguard our assets and bomb the hell out of all such threats,, Base security be handled by our own forces.. lets deploy SAM and AAs and fortify it with helos to give close support as well.. Send in the Arjuns and showcase some field performance..

 

[A_Poster]

Two points

- They dont need to be based in Afghan. That is the beauty of Afghanistan. There are neighboring countries who are friendly to us which would provide us bases.

- Repercussions of not doing it is that we face them in Kashmir - next decade or so. Better to fight them and kill them in their homes. If some survive, they would be busy fighting ANA and IA

@Roybot - We can use Iran as a base. Russia is doing so for Syria, Iranians are against Talis so why not?

Iran would not allow us a base. Our relations with them are not THAT good, and Pakistan is their neighbour.

You have been advocating that we should use our military aggressively because we have a lot of spare capacity. Fine. But you are overlooking the fact that we do not manufacture our own weapons thus any war would impose prohibitive costs on us.

US spent over $3 Trillion in Iraq, but that is only an accounting wizardry. The $3Trillion it spent went back into its own economy along with trillions that it got from its arab allies and revenue from oil. In contrast to this, any money we spent on wars atm would be net outflow from our economy.

Unless we built up our MIC, we could not fight wars in economical manner as any spending would represent net outflow, rather than a stimulus to our economy.


+ Bombing some goat molesters in mountain of Helmand would not provide out pilots with experience to fight against proper airforces. For that multilateral exercises are much better, followed by participation in a proper war as an ally of either US or Russia. I concur that our security forced need some real battlefield experience, with Navy needing it most in naval aviation, but that would not come from fighting retarded sandel wearing terrorists. For that we should engage in proper wars, and they are feasible (and safe) only as ally of one of the two superpowers.

 

[Spectre]

Believe me a Afghanistan base has risks but then if we get a common base its not a bad idea.. Yes LEMOA opens up the door to much more.. In fact having a foothold in Afghanistan also helps us provide cover to our Chabhar port investment as well.. And mix a ACC there and you get a potent mix.. Let Mig 29K carry out some missions in ISIS targets, LCA or MKI or Jags doing Precision Bombing in Tali territory and voila we get a much better live experience and do a proper force projection


Its not so easy.. The gullible masses of India does not understand the truth and believes in blatant lies..An off topic rant but pls check everybody talks about J&K ppl who are dead and injured.. Anyone knows how many policemen, forces died or are injured with critical injury numbers... The same political class talks about pellet guns but negates Stones, molotovs and such weapons.. Of course its outside this thread so will stop the rant.. But its a hint of our hypocrisy and opportunistic tendencies.


True but we need experience there as well. Look tomo situations will have scenarios where bases will face extreme dangers and yet we need mission sorties as well.. Lets not cower away. when we are doing force projections lets safeguard our assets and bomb the hell out of all such threats,, Base security be handled by our own forces.. lets deploy SAM and AAs and fortify it with helos to give close support as well.. Send in the Arjuns and showcase some field performance..

Believe me a Afghanistan base has risks but then if we get a common base its not a bad idea.. Yes LEMOA opens up the door to much more.. In fact having a foothold in Afghanistan also helps us provide cover to our Chabhar port investment as well.. And mix a ACC there and you get a potent mix.. Let Mig 29K carry out some missions in ISIS targets, LCA or MKI or Jags doing Precision Bombing in Tali territory and voila we get a much better live experience and do a proper force projection


Its not so easy.. The gullible masses of India does not understand the truth and believes in blatant lies..An off topic rant but pls check everybody talks about J&K ppl who are dead and injured.. Anyone knows how many policemen, forces died or are injured with critical injury numbers... The same political class talks about pellet guns but negates Stones, molotovs and such weapons.. Of course its outside this thread so will stop the rant.. But its a hint of our hypocrisy and opportunistic tendencies.


True but we need experience there as well. Look tomo situations will have scenarios where bases will face extreme dangers and yet we need mission sorties as well.. Lets not cower away. when we are doing force projections lets safeguard our assets and bomb the hell out of all such threats,, Base security be handled by our own forces.. lets deploy SAM and AAs and fortify it with helos to give close support as well.. Send in the Arjuns and showcase some field performance..

Good but then i feel like I am day dreaming, question posted in OP was rhetorical because AS you stated somewhere - we dont have the political will nor the national fortitude required to take such endeavors even if they would cost us less than some of our giant internal exercises do.

Iran would not allow us a base. Our relations with them are not THAT good, and Pakistan is their neighbour.

You have been advocating that we should use our military aggressively because we have a lot of spare capacity. Fine. But you are overlooking the fact that we do not manufacture our own weapons thus any war would impose prohibitive costs on us.

US spent over $3 Trillion in Iraq, but that is only an accounting wizardry. The $3Trillion it spent went back into its own economy along with trillions that it got from its arab allies and revenue from oil. In contrast to this, any money we spent on wars atm would be net outflow from our economy.

Unless we built up our MIC, we could not fight wars in economical manner as any spending would represent net outflow, rather than a stimulus to our economy.


+ Bombing some goat molesters in mountain of Helmand would not provide out pilots with experience to fight against proper airforces. For that multilateral exercises are much better, followed by participation in a proper war as an ally of either US or Russia. I concur that our security forced need some real battlefield experience, with Navy needing it most in naval aviation, but that would not come from fighting retarded sandel wearing terrorists. For that we should engage in proper wars, and they are feasible (and safe) only as ally of one of the two superpowers.

Valid points - but what you assume is perfected (A2G) may not be so.

As for A2A, that is improbable due to deterrence factor. I am talking about plucking a low hanging fruit. n

 

[ebrahym]

without any data points

sir the data points you want
and data points stated might be different though

 

[PARIKRAMA]

Good but then i feel like I am day dreaming, question posted in OP was rhetorical because you stated somewhere - we dont have the political will nor the national fortitude required to take such endeavors even if they would cost us less than some of our giant internal exercises do.

Well Sadly i am not the PM nor i am DM so such a will and guidance is not mattering to the ones who actually take a call.. Yes exercise cost versus actual deployment will show case such issues favouring later..

A food for thought really.. We can provide 4 Mi helos.. if we can do that than why not a bit more than that...

@A_Poster
A small question.. How about our own MIC developed weapons only for Afghanistan.. say lets start with Tejas 2 in numbers, few LCHs, missiles like Nag, Helina, LGBs like Sudharshan, SAMs like Akash, Tanks like Arjuns etc..How about Pinaka...

I am proposing a field trial in a hostile condition where real threats exist.. say a pure A2G campaign mode..

So lets roll out and showcase our indigenous products performance on the field outside India..

True there is no credible A2A threats except shoulder fired missiles..


++
I know i am saying is rhetoric but i am just trying to consider possible scenarios and what benefits such a thing derives for our own forces and MICs.. May be orders for LCH, Arjuns and missiles.. Is not that great for our MICs?

 

[A_Poster]

Are we extracting any strategic gains from the presence of aircrafts, navy, armor outside of deterrence?

The strategic gains that conventional superiority provide is is of flexibility, and ability to defend oneself from small scale aggression and indulge in them. Conventional superiority/deterrence in my opinion is a much superior form of power than nuclear deterrence. Only disadvantage being that you need to replenish conventional superiority continuously, while with nukes you could relax once you had them.

Nukes ,when both parties have them, have zero utility unless your existence is threatened. What would you do if China or Pakistan nibble small territory (a reverse cold start)? Threaten to use nukes!

Also theoretically we could project power using out conventional military, but not a nuclear deterrence. Suppose if someone like Idi Amin starts a genocide against people of Indian origin and we want to stop him, what good would our nuclear deterrence do in that situation?

Valid points - but what you assume is perfected (A2G) may not be so.


As for A2A, that is improbable due to deterrence factor. I am talking about plucking a low hanging fruit. n

That is not a low hanging fruit, but a fruit lying in dirt.

There is very little to gain in experience by bombing undefended talibunny targets. It is a retarded version of what we do in Rajasthan twice a year.

In proper war, we would have to bomb our enemy in face of opposition's CAPs, EW measures, and SAM network. Bombing cave trolls in tora bora is not going to prepare us for real war.

 

[ebrahym]

Believe me a Afghanistan base has risks but then if we get a common base its not a bad idea.. Yes LEMOA opens up the door to much more.. In fact having a foothold in Afghanistan also helps us provide cover to our Chabhar port investment as well.. And mix a ACC there and you get a potent mix.. Let Mig 29K carry out some missions in ISIS targets, LCA or MKI or Jags doing Precision Bombing in Tali territory and voila we get a much better live experience and do a proper force projection

Iran would not allow us a base.

dont know why all of you are overlooking your own bases in Tajikistan
i think if allowed to be expanded
they are more than a asset noy only in Afghanistan but effectively against Pakistan

 

[MilSpec]

Investment in large armed forces serves three objectives:-

1. Deterrence
2. Expansion either politically or geographically
3. Internal Security

China - It used it's enormous investment in it's defense Industries to expand geographically by claiming and holding on to large territories in SCS and elsewhere occasionally successfully.

Russia - Did it to expand into Ukraine and Georgia

USA - It has been consistently furthering it's Eco-geo-political objectives in ME and Asia on the back of it's armed forces since it's inception in one form or other

Europe - Mainly concerned with internal security and Deterrence hence we see investment going down.

Gulf/KSA/UAE - We saw expansionist mind set in Yemen which has since been scaled back after losses

Coming to India - Can we justify investments just on the basis of deterrence which can be achieved non conventionally? Or should we take baby steps so that the cost of training, risk of expiry of platforms and consumables without usage, salaries etc which are inevitable in such a large armed forces do not form just a sunk portion of our budget with no returns? Or can we utilize it to expand our geo-political foot prints in the region. Not straight out territorial gains but to perhaps support and further the regimes favorable to us.

Pakistan - Perhaps has gained maximum bang for the buck though not w/o blow back. Afghanistan and Kashmir are the two prime examples of them using their armed forces to successfully contest and contain a much larger adversary. Presence in Gulf on the other hand has given them considerable economic dividends.

@PARIKRAMA

Countries with large armed forces should be capable of fighting wars, not go look for one.

No two states are the same, and similarly the challenges they face are different too. China's present comes from a ideological revolution that stood against imperial excesses deeply rooted in communism, Russia's present state is a product of it's Soviet beginnings and it's involvement in the two World Wars. USA today was shaped by the outcomes of the WWII and it's continuous progress to become the undisputed global super power. India's situation too is unique, it's burden of imperial subjugation, it's unique non-violent freedom movement along with the revolutionary aspects that simmered beneath (Which has been whitewashed imo in the history books), the asymmetrical challenge it faced since day 1 from it's formation and finally the evolving security paradigms of today's world, has shaped it's military outlook.

For India, the objectives of it's military forces is defined; defense of India and it's interest. And the military although at a painfully slow pace; Is moving towards it's long term strategic goals with the caveat of technological innovation often moving these goals and strategies out forward.

 

[A_Poster]

Well Sadly i am not the PM nor i am DM so such a will and guidance is not mattering to the ones who actually take a call.. Yes exercise cost versus actual deployment will show case such issues favouring later..

A food for thought really.. We can provide 4 Mi helos.. if we can do that than why not a bit more than that...

@A_Poster
A small question.. How about our own MIC developed weapons only for Afghanistan.. say lets start with Tejas 2 in numbers, few LCHs, missiles like Nag, Helina, LGBs like Sudharshan, SAMs like Akash, Tanks like Arjuns etc..How about Pinaka...

I am proposing a field trial in a hostile condition where real threats exist.. say a pure A2G campaign mode..

So lets roll out and showcase our indigenous products performance on the field outside India..

True there is no credible A2A threats except shoulder fired missiles..


++
I know i am saying is rhetoric but i am just trying to consider possible scenarios and what benefits such a thing derives for our own forces and MICs.. May be orders for LCH, Arjuns and missiles.. Is not that great for our MICs?

We could, but the problem is that we would have to pay for ANA usage. It is not bad if Afghans are efficient, but if recent history is anything to go by, our equipment has more chances of rusting in some junkyard, if our own personals are not operating and maintaining them.

Your suggestion has merit. We should try to build our MIC around what we have which could be exported. If we do that for Afghanistan, we should send our people for manning them. For this, we need to confirm that TAliban is really hostile to us. From what I have heard, GoI has back channel contacts with Taliban too so we should gauge their loyalty to Pakistan before making them our outright enemy.

 

[A_Poster]

dont know if you are trolling or actually stupid
Pakistan did what was in their best interest
Pakistan created Nuke on US aid???
right under the largest and most expensive espionage network
Israel recieves biggest Military aid
are they dependent on it???

Neither am I trolling, nor am I stupid. The case of Pakistan sending its soldiers as mercenaries in defence of Arabs was provided as an example of using your military for diplomatic purpose. In response to it I state the truth that Pakistanis are 'kiray ke tattu' for Arabs and are treated as such. You people are treated as expendable meat shield (apart from the fact that a part of your population is more loyal to Saudis than Pakistan) is because Arabs know that you need their money to finance your military as you have non-existent MIC, and you would turn to them for alms if you have war with India (again because you need foreign exchange to buy weapons) hence for them your soldiers are like any other of numerous South-Asian slaves they buy every year to work for them.

Had Pakistan got an MIC like Russia (or even China), whole Arab-Pakistan military cooperation dynamics would have been different.


I was advocating against India acting like Pakistan. If we start interfering in other country's affairs militarily ,without developing a credible MIC, we would become a butt of jokes.