LeDarthPlanet

For democracies, especially countries like India, things like armed forces reforms, indigenous R&D tilt, theaterization can all happen only by and during a war. Massive reforms during peacetime is just not possible. Nobody thinks and acts with intent or the seriousness needed to push through. Then question comes down to are we actually preparing for a war or defer a war. The current reading(and as openly said by the candid Manohar Parrikar) is that we prepare to deter a war and not to fight a war. Which means kinetic action and battlefield realities at larger scale are less likely to happen. Which leads us back to the point, if we are deferring a war why even undergo reforms?! An India specific version of a theatre command structure, C&C, force accretion and indigenous MIC gets forged during war as we are forced to iterate on the fly. Countries that did such deep reforms do with the mindset that they are going to be at war soon. We don’t have such assumptions. We are the country that conduct diplomacy at military to military level using n Flag meetings along the LAC. We are a country who awarded the Corps commander and the Military Intelligence chief who got surprised by massive Chinese buildup along LAC with a Param Vishisht Seva Medal. We are the country that after having depended heavily on US satellite images throughout 2020-2023 LAC standoff haven’t launched enough satellites to own our intelligence capabilities. Bcos we are never preparing for a war. We are upgrading at a lower amplitude on various formations from anecdotal learnings from the Ukraine war and Op Sindhoor. Just to keep up the deterrence. Only a war, where C&C issues crop up and threaten a front, where a realization dawns that more men on the border without adequate tech is a liability where a foreign dependence virtually kills a capability after first few days will make everyone who is willfully ignorant today to acknowledge the deficiencies in the current system.