I don't think we are incompetent , but definitely are highly bureaucratic. We carry the same British Army ethos wherein the command of chain is extremely important and no foot soldier/mid rank level soldier can take independent decisions according to the situation. With the ever evolving strategies in the modern battlefield, we have failed to keep up(my belief).
Also a lot of corruption/ misaligned priorities as well in our army, wherein we will buy a 100 million Apache helicopter, but won't provide basic modern battle kits to our foot soldiers. We still seem to have WWII era battle rifles/ military uniform, even we have more than $70 billion budget, and at the end of every financial year we return 1000s of cr of money back to finance ministry, because we couldn't exhaust it.
Good insight, a lot of the budget goes to taking care of the soldiers and their families. The American military I came into had to increase its budget by 50-100% to sustain the fights across the Middle East. You can either have bullets or bread, unless you print your own money like the US does but sooner or later the bill will come.
I don't think we are incompetent , but definitely are highly bureaucratic. We carry the same British Army ethos wherein the command of chain is extremely important and no foot soldier/mid rank level soldier can take independent decisions according to the situation. With the ever evolving strategies in the modern battlefield, we have failed to keep up(my belief).
Also a lot of corruption/ misaligned priorities as well in our army, wherein we will buy a 100 million Apache helicopter, but won't provide basic modern battle kits to our foot soldiers. We still seem to have WWII era battle rifles/ military uniform, even we have more than $70 billion budget, and at the end of every financial year we return 1000s of cr of money back to finance ministry, because we couldn't exhaust it.
I mean culturally the SA folks aren’t aggressive. Pakistanis are tad bit more aggressive given our history (invasions after invasions through the west borders which added to the nature).
Indians were smart to concentrate on the economy. Only thing I will add is 40 years of having superpowers on the doorsteps will impact your growth rate especially when you’re involved in an intense proxy war. I think rightfully so, the GHQ placed the NATO and US as a higher threat that needed to be taken care of.