India seems to be moving towards an offensive outlook towards its Asian neighbour, with the Indian Army Chief going on record on Friday about having strike capability in the mountains.
From having a defensive policy towards China, India seems to be moving towards an offensive outlook towards its Asian neighbour, with the Indian Army Chief going on record on Friday about having strike capability in the mountains, and that Indian patrols also transgressed into the Chinese territory perceived as their border by Beijing.
A day after India registered her protest with Beijing about unacceptability of visas being stapled for Arunachal Pradesh residents, army chief general VK Singh, on the eve of the 62nd Army Day, said in his annual press conference that, “There are various threats in the plains as well as in the mountains. An expert group has been studying since last year the feasibility of synergising the Indian Army’s strike elements in a better manner for functional efficiency and the proposal would soon go to the ministry for approval.
"We are critically examining how our headquarters function, to speed up decision making and for functional efficiency, we plan to transform the army into a lethal, agile and networked force to meet future challenges.” Based on the study’s inputs, this year the test beds will try out the concepts of the study.
The chief spoke about transforming the army from a threat-based force to a capability-based force. The Indian Army is looking at relocating, restructuring, reorganising of the headquarters including army headquarters, flattening the command structure, and theatrisation of combat support, to augment the army’s capacity of response.
General Singh said about stapled visas, that China has always perceived Arunachal Pradesh as south Tibet.
Specifically denying that there would be a mountain strike corps, General Singh said that there would be strike capability in the mountains to respond.
There are three strike corps in the Indian army today, the 21, 1 and 2 Corps, all of which would be brought under one command and control.
They are all in the plains and deserts, mostly overlooking Pakistan, but there is no strike corps in the mountains overlooking China.
About border talks, Singh said that there were confidence building measures (CBMs) in place between both countries, but a timeframe was difficult to point at to sort out the border dispute as it was in the political and diplomatic domain.
Brahmos Block-3+ version was successfully tested last month, establishing the supersonic cruise missile’s mountain warfare capability.
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