Deterrence is best gained by acquiring military strength. Diplomacy is also more tactical, when your strength is visible. In this conversation, anchored by channel Bharat Shakti, we reproduce extracts, clearly spelling out the success and the learning from the recent 4-day confrontation.
Editor-in-Chief Nitin A Gokhale and Editors Brig S K Chatterji (Retd) and Surya Gangadharan sat down with three retired military stalwarts, Vice Adm Anil Chopra, Lt Gen Raj Shukla and Air Marshal Ravi Kapoor to analyse India’s response to the barbaric massacre in Pahalgam.
Nitin A Gokhale: Operation Sindoor has been a success with India’s clear-cut victory in the air battle as well as in defending India’s own space and territory to the incoming Pakistani threats. India’s air superiority as well as its control of the escalatory nature of such an operation was very evident through those four days that shook Pakistan. But to get details of the planning of the operation, the objectives, the execution and then analyse what went wrong, what could have been better, and what absolutely went right, we got together a stellar panel of defence experts who were stalwarts in their own field having commanded large body of troops risen through the ranks and become three stars in Army Navy and Air Force their expertise their knowledge, their experience all came together in this edition of Bharat Shakti Dialogues.
Nitin A Gokhale: First up, Admiral Chopra if I can ask you what’s your immediate takeaway one week after operation Sindoor?
Vice Admiral Anil Chopra (Retd.): I think it was a successful operation. A strong and professional response to a heinous act of terror. It was required. There was considerable public outrage in the country. But more than that, we called the nuclear bluff. We negated the longstanding policy of strategic restraint, and we set a whole new strategy into play.
Nitin A Gokhale: General Raj Shukla, your take.
Lt Gen Raj Shukla: This was an overwhelming success. I cannot think in recent times of a similar military success. It is also a seminal moment for Indian statecraft. You see how all the levers, diplomacy, the military, sensors, shooters, even the information was far better than Balakot. This tells us what? That for a long time we have been punching below our weight. If you punch to your weight, we can do so much more. The third point is calling the nuclear bluff. There are always red lines, but who will determine the red lines? We will. And whole generalship and statecraft is to employ your forces and keep it short off the red lines. This is what we have done.
And the second point is that for Pakistan, the manner in which it was working was terror as a low-cost option. Now, terror is a high-cost option. Do you want to fund that next group, abet that next group? Or you want to face the wrath of India’s conventional might? And even though I’m an army man, I will say this was the Air Force’s war. Air power and AD have come together. I never thought our AD wall could be so strong. It has surprised me beyond measure.
And the last point I want to say, this is the punch line. India has rediscovered the utility of force. We always thought that force was not usable. In such a brilliant fashion, having said that, it is a moment of great celebration but introspection because we have many weaknesses and preparation for the greater challenges that lie ahead.
Air Marshal Ravi Kapoor (Retd.): The overall round up in my opinion is the kind of surprise the nation achieved. That is the first and most important thing. You see how we have built it up from 2016. Uri, then Balakot, and this time. Did Pakistan ever expect this? No. Second is the whole of the nation approach. That means everybody knew what is to be done. And everything is working in a very, very precise manner. Third is earlier, Pakistan was drawing the red lines. This time we have drawn the red lines, which is a major difference. Now the buck stops at them. You know, they are on the defensive and not us on the defensive. So, this is a complete change in the doctrine, from being a defensive doctrine to being an offensive doctrine. And lastly, since I am from the Air Force, I would say this is a perfect example of anti-access area denial, utilization of air power in a completely network-centric environment.
Nitin A Gokhale: I think, interesting that you use the anti-access area denial term which is normally used in the naval parlance.
Vice Admiral Anil Chopra (Retd.): One of the things we’ll have to be concerned about is to find the correct balance between restraint and between going offensive. And I think we have the maturity in the system now to be able to find this balance. And in the short four-day conflict, we managed to do a hell of a lot. We not only took out their terrorist camps, we also managed the AD, we hit their airfields.
Surya Gangadharan: The Prime Minister’s enunciation of three key pillars – decisive retaliation, no nuclear backmail, and no distinguishing between the sponsors of terror and the terrorists. Is this the new war fighting doctrine? What is it?
Lt Gen Raj Shukla: We have to see it in context. So, after this Parakram 26/11 phase, see what was the national mood? The national mood was captured by one leader who said, not an eye for an eye, not a tooth for a tooth, for an eye, both the eyes for a tooth, the whole jaw. Now was this the national move? It was. And one more thing, another politician mocked the Air Force. I heard it with my own ears. And now the last point, the professional advice, Mr. KPS Gill. I read it now, but it’s amazing wisdom. He says, you’ll never win that war on terror merely by chasing terrorists. We were doing it for two decades. He said, you’ll win it by overwhelming the adversary. In that sense, the Prime Minister is right. It is peculiar to this strategically obtuse leadership of Pakistan, not in the largest sense, but they are strategically obtuse.
Air Marshal Ravi Kapoor (Retd.): You know what has happened is it is not an overnight thing which is taking place, it’s not. It’s an evolutionary process and this evolution primarily, I think started way back in 2016, but I think got stopped after Balakot. It again started on 22nd April. This you know the number of meetings that have taken place between the political leadership and the military leadership provided the confidence to the political leadership that today India is ready to take on any of these challenges or they can be tasked to deliver in the shortest possible time. And that also emanates from the fact that our overall intelligence-based process is way more refined than it was.
Operation Sindhur is ongoing, in my opinion it has to be a 24-7, 365 days a year with specific capabilities and specific assets earmarked to respond in the shortest possible time.
Vice Admiral Anil Chopra (Retd.): So, I think people are pretty clear what a terrorist attack is. But it should be left ambiguous and open to us how we wish to interpret any future attack in our own way. And I think that’s an important point, but the fact that we have adopted this doctrine is a good thing.
It is something which will make the adversary think many times and as the Air Marshal said, whilst it is difficult to keep operational readiness going for days on end, select forces of the Indian Armed Forces could be made available on a 365, 24-7 basis for an instant attack.
Lt Gen Raj Shukla: This is interesting. How do you define a terror act? So, it’s impossible to define. See today it’s my view, that our neighborhood is even a bigger challenge than Israel. Look at China, Bangladesh, the seas. So, as our foreign policy gets muscular, the instrument of force has to be kept in highest levels of readiness. If you take it to theater commands, you will get higher readiness and lethality……………………….
The second issue I want to say, what was very significant was, for the first time in the terror spectrum, you expanded to Punjab. It is extremely significant.
Air Marshal Ravi Kapoor (Retd.): What was our first statement? That this is a mature, restrained, proportionate response and in the same domain. Non-escalatory, in the same domain. They did a terror attack, we countered the terror attack. They did a military response, we countered the military response. The only thing is, the intensity of the counter attack was way more than what they were expecting.
Vice Admiral Anil Chopra (Retd.): But clearly, we won’t be so restrained in the military targets next time around because one of the wonderful articulations stemming out of Sindoor is we have blurred the line between the terrorists and the military and therefore, the military now becomes objects of terror. And therefore, if you have to respond now to a terror attack, you are well within all the adjectives used applied to military targets, because they are terrorist networks. In fact, they went panicking to the Americans only after Nur Khan.
Nitin A Gokhale: What about the Navy because there is very little talked about the navy’s role in this?
Vice Admiral Anil Chopra (Retd.): The Navy is deployed almost instantly in any sort of situation where hostilities may be forthcoming. And they’re deployed in their areas from where they can launch hostilities immediately. But you must remember that the Navy’s battle space is international in nature.
The Navy fights on sea, under the sea, and above the sea, but in international waters. And therefore, the Navies are always the last in the escalatory ladder, because when you bring in the navy, you are more or less admitting it’s a full-fledged war. Because when the navy strikes, it is not going to strike only the submarines and ships of the adversary, but invariably it will strike the ports and there will be collateral civilian and commercial damage and this takes the war to a different level.
And of course, immediately, neutral shipping and commercial shipping and trade in those waters gets affected, massive impact and therefore I think all nations, and certainly the more stable ones, think of bringing in the navies only when we are pretty sure we want to go into an all-out conflict.
And therefore, it’s a good thing to have waiting, restraint, poised, and ready for instant attack. So those are a few of the considerations which have to be brought into thinking before you pitch in your ships and submarines into the battle.
And I think in this particular operation, we had the Navy constantly and instantly ready. And had this gone on for a little more time, it would perhaps have been a little different, had they not sought the ceasefire. But truth be told, I think the maritime operations in the Arabian Sea, will always be a factor that Pakistan in particular will have to take into account before crossing certain red lines.
Brig S K Chatterji (Retd): Did we have enough aircrafts and air craft carriers? How do you handle the situation?
Vice Admiral Anil Chopra (Retd.): We have a certain number of ships, a certain number of aircraft which are public knowledge. The Navy also underlines all the time, which I’m sure you know, that one third of its ships are normally under refits, what we call maintenance. And therefore, from naval force levels, you can easily deduce that about two-thirds of them would be available at any point for operations. That’s why the Navy has been working on this three aircraft carrier projection like the Air Force works on a 45 squadron Air Force, because we understand that when push comes to shove, we must have adequate platforms and aircraft on it. I’d like to say here, Nitin, that I think the biggest lesson of Sindoor is that we must focus on our capacity and capability building in the conventional realm with a passion which has not been shown for some time.
Surya Gangadharan: I’m just wondering, this conflict, is it the face of future war? Have you got a taste of it?
Air Marshal Ravi Kapoor (Retd.): So, the way Pakistan started it with the drone warfare. But I would believe five years down the line, you will see another change. The character of war is changing so rapidly. And yesterday I think or today, I heard in the media that China is fast tracking J35s to Pakistan. And so, J35s coming to Pakistan will be a complete different ball game. So this is the newer character of war. This is the future of warfare. The only thing I would say is that Pakistan, because it fights on borrowed equipment, which is so diverse that it finds it very difficult to integrate. That is the biggest challenge. But another adversary, probably China, which produces its own equipment, has its own system, and has improved in the multi domain operations, will be a different kettle of fish. But yes, drones will play a major role in future war, but it does not mean that other contemporary and roles of the military will go away.
Lt Gen Raj Shukla: See, this is really important. I am making this point that we need to secure our otherwise inevitable rise. Our rise is going to be there. The only thing that can wreck it is a national security reversal. In what sense? What Admiral Chopra is saying, thus far what are we doing? Our diplomacy doesn’t ride on force. There is first a deterrence breakdown on the LOC and the diplomacy comes to rescue it. What if we had a strong military?
The military would give diplomacy leverage, so a larger sense of statecraft. You’re talking of technology. The first strike we did on the first night, if it was with unmanned platforms? So exactly, now you have to invest in it.
Army, for years it has been evident to me that the first response for a terror condition cannot be armament based. What do we do with our strike force? It is a difficult question. If I was the chief, it is impossible to change it. That mindset has to be changed. If we just understand and can do this, we will be, you know, streets ahead. Let me just offer a thought for maritime. It is a flying cop decision. One way is we have told the Pakistanis, listen, what have we done for you is just 15-20%. If we want to unleash it, you are gone.
That’s one messaging. The other is, in sort of war situations, which we are all doing, the US uses its Navy on a day-to-day basis. From the sea they engage land targets. Why is it escalatory? I cannot understand.
Kargil, somebody I respect greatly, Air Commander Jasjeet Singh argued that air power will be escalatory. And he argued that air power will escalate to nuclear. Air power has proved to be battle winning. So, our understanding of all these don’t have to be stereotyped. So, the first thing the MOD needs is cross pollination.
You need strategic minds from outside who can question the generals. Then we will be ahead of the curves strategically and technologically. Also, this is the time to invest 4% to 5% of GDP on defense. We must invest in deterrence so that we don’t need to war fight.
Vice Admiral Anil Chopra (Retd.): We don’t have the required levels of deterrence that we should have. And it should be apparent to everyone that anything that you put in into instruments of force will always be a positive spin-off for everything including the economy. But our debates need to get a little more mature, a little less infantile.
At the moment, on the maritime front, we have clear superiority. They are getting ships from China and Turkey and submarines. They may or may not catch up, but it’s doubtful that Pakistan would have the ability because the Navy is an expensive service. It takes a strong economic power to build a good Navy. And I think we have reached that place. It should be a matter of pride that we now have the economic power to build and fashion a Navy which, like he says, is an instrument of state policy which can be used in peacetime and in crisis situation all the time and without the attendant juvenile sort of debates.
Nitin A Gokhale: Also let us talk about AD – Air Defense. I was pleasantly surprised like he was and I think I am sure all of us are. So, what has changed in the AD and how did it work so beautifully?
Air Marshal Ravi Kapoor (Retd.): I remember, I would not say one decade back, but little lesser than that. I will be very honest, brutally honest. Nobody would talk to each other in the services? Yeah. So, there would be that, okay, we have our plans, you have your plans, we will do what we want to do. But I think swift retort changed that. In 2019.
When Pakistan came in and they dropped the weapons, whether they hit the target or they did not hit the target is another matter and I don’t think that is for discussion. But what it changed was that we realized that we have to be integrated in terms of air defense. What we also realized was that with the limited budget that we had, we could not buy many new equipment. We also realized that there was no other choice but to maintain the legacy equipment or to upgrade it. Basically, the difference comes when we talk about legacy equipment. Most of the legacy equipment worked on those valve principles. You cannot integrate valves to a digital system. And so, you had to upgrade it to a digital system.
Secondly, you had to get some additions to make it useful in night operations. So, there was this indigenous effort to digitize them, to get them on the same grid and Akash Teer which Army implemented made another difference which connected everything to the IACCS. And so it provided us a much better frontage, a much better depth and a much better density of air defense at various levels.
Next thing is the capability. The capability came further up with a better quality of radars and signal processing which was integrated with these systems. When we combined all these three, we found that from a drone which is coming at say 50 meters to a drone which comes at 25,000 feet to a missile which is coming from about 4, 5, 6 kilometers higher and coming down and an aircraft which is 150 kilometers, you could take on everything. And the best part of it was that you had the option of keeping your aircraft which are now involved in air defense to a role where it is a choice that you can make later but it doesn’t become your primary thing. So, it gave you so much of freedom to operate this air defence in a synergized manner where you could parallelly take on targets which were appearing and the freedom was always available with the person on the ground to take on targets.
Lt Gen Raj Shukla: All this happened primarily because of the institution of the CDS or in a large measure because of this. I have great faith in structural corrections and cultural corrections. I will give you one example. Theatre commands, if you have one integrated commander looking at the western theatre and also in a quasi diplomatic way, for example, the eastern theatre command should be looking at Bangladesh, Myanmar, there are military threats as they emanate now. That is one. Two, just see cultural.
Lesson of Ukraine is innovation. In the defense corridors if I see PSUs appearing, I am not happy. I want to see start-ups there. The future is start-ups. But today the PSUs have great power. Unless the start-ups are encouraged, those corridors will be like a Silicon Valley. They will give you AI and all that stuff.
Air Marshal Ravi Kapoor (Retd.): One thing if I can just jump in, you know this theatre command thing. I think this operation Sindoor is a great example on rethinking the theatre commands, on their structure. Because if you see with this government, there were I think 40-50 meetings. Every day we saw the chiefs and CDS there, can we afford a theatre commander to come and brief every day?
Surya Gangadharan: I want to ask about China. It is a close partner of Pakistan, much of his weapons come from there. Do you expect the next round could be with the bigger player?
Vice Admiral Anil Chopra (Retd.): That’s in the realm of conjecture, so I wouldn’t hazard a guess. But there is absolutely no doubt that China, from its present stance, is an adversary, doesn’t have our interests certainly at heart, is with Pakistan as far as Pakistan is concerned, but is also against us in global fora and is also engaged in many activities all along India’s southern rim and our neighborhood. Their actions, despite our measured responses, are not one that would be called friendly by any means.
So, to answer your question, I would say the same thing that I said for Pakistan. The only real way out is to have deterrent capability to the degree that, he would think twice before the military adventure. And there is no doubt after this Sindoor that we have a two-front problem. Some would say more than that, two and a half, three. And you can’t sort it out purely by diplomacy. Your diplomacy will work better when you have a bigger stick in your hand. Build up your capabilities, your capacities with a passion, both on the northern frontier in the air and at sea. The flank of decision, would be on the maritime front. Because, because whichever way you look at it, China is vulnerable in the Indian Ocean because of geography and because of dependence. In human affairs, when you are dependent, you’re vulnerable. And if we have the wherewithal, we can take advantage of the vulnerability.
