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In fact, they should be gendarmerie; but a special kind of gendarmerie. A gendarmerie recruited from the highest education levels available in the market, one that stresses working with the people in a democratic way, more than lurid, SWAT team Hollywood movie re-enactments; one that is trained...

This bit confused me. I don't understand.

Excellent point, excellent illustration why getting into counter-insurgency is harmful for state armed forces. That way forward was how the late CDS Rawat wrecked the Indian Army's focus. We really need to re-visit our basics. Considering the flags you display, have you come across Robert...

Even more important is to attach education, health care and law enforcement elements with them, because one of the signs of an insurgency winning is the gradual abandonment of the institutions, structures and processes built up by the state, to shift over to a more readily accessible one (or a...

IMO, it shouldn't even be light infantry. Given a choice, I would use combinations of gendarmerie, carefully distinguished from the armed forces, so as to ensure that the armed forces do not get into counter-insurgency ways of thinking, and so that arms, ammunition, equipment, methods all can be...

You know what that means. Let it happen, sez I.

True, but that is not a substitute for firing these at an enemy vehicle that can fire back at you. I think the Carl Gustaf is a more 'trusted' weapon to Indian Army operators. Good news, but let's let it happen.

If you ask me, there should be four different types of formation at root level itself. We need to walk away from the one formation fights all stereotyped doctrine.

Belt and braces will do it. It is certainly useful to do this as a regular practice; the Pakistan Army supplements its regular formations with LAT (Light Anti-Tank) teams and at a higher level, with HAT (Heavy Anti-Tank) teams reporting direct to the higher formation leadership. They have...

So far, we have identified a vehicle that can be used as an independent scout or reconnaissance vehicle, that has sufficient armour to withstand at minimum artillery shrapnel, or 12.7 mm machine gun fire, available as either a wheeled or a tracked vehicle. If these are configured to carry 10...

With this in mind, we need to look at why and how a tank might be used, or a tank-substitute might be used, in order to draw out the specs from these use situations. That is what we are doing.

Again, yes and no. Yes, logistics management is a constraint in this case, not a causal factor. That means that we need a tank because of operational requirements, but it is the logistical constraint that makes us look for a light tank. Operationally a beast of 65 mt is fine; logistically it...

Some glimmerings of a doctrine-driven vehicle now begin to emerge. At this point, do things look a little clearer? I've paused to check that this is making sense.

Neither here nor there. If it has to hurt an opposing MBT, and not fight intermediate actions with similarly protected and equipped armoured cars, IFVs or APCs, it has to be 105 mm or 120 mm; if the target is to be opposing infantry, then an automatic 20mm/40mm/60mm cannon is best. Why not both...

The fourth is of fire-power. This is the heart-breaking dilemma that will only grow.

Here, we have several concepts jostling for mind-space. On the one hand, there is the atavistic look-back at what the British called the LRDG - the Long Range Desert Groups, basically Tommies on light four wheel drives looping around the southern flank of both sets of combatants in the desert...

Sure, you are making sense, but the answer to "What is it India needs, a mix of light and medium tanks?" is "Well, yes. And no!" Bear with me while I plough through an earlier post, that should be of interest to you as well.

Yes, this approach has a fractionally higher chance of success, but can't get away from the balancing of firepower, protection and agility. The trouble is that two of these can be achieved at a time, in any design, never all three. Protection, of course, is the joker in the pack.

I agree that having proved that a certain type of vehicle has a suddenly increased vulnerability is a great occasion to put a greater emphasis on it. Now it is possible to brew even MBTs using drones. Right, let's see what drones do with lighter armour than MBTs. Perfect logic.