Operational Deficiencies in India’s Defense Preparedness: Deterrence Compromised

Abstract

India faces a hostile geo-strategic environment of having two adversarial nuclear neighbors on her western and northern borders, namely Pakistan and China who share a collusive military partnership aimed at stultifying India’s rise as a pre eminent Asian power. The Kargil conflict of 1999, fought after the overt nuclear weaponization of India and Pakistan exposed India’s blunted conventional military capability in light of critical deficiencies of artillery, precision guided munitions as well as night vision devices. Despite confronting multiple crises relating to national security during the last fifteen years, successive governments have displayed perilous apathy regarding the urgently needed modernization of our armed forces. This article tries to analyze the security ramifications arising out of this neglect and the need to undertake sustained and meaningful defense reforms in view of our serious threat perceptions which must factor in the possibility of having to simultaneously fight a ‘two-front’ war in the near future.