Indian Army News and Discussion

[aaaditya]

hello fellow forumers,

I was wanting to ask a few questions pertaining to the Indian tanks & the IAF. I've noticed if im not mistaken(and do correct me if im wrong) that the Indian army has alot of different types of tanks from T-72's, to T-90's to domestic. I was wanting to ask on how is India able to support all this since different tanks need diffrent parts and maintenance(like doesnt it get confusing? for parts and maintenance in general )

And the same thing for the IAF(which has too many differnt types of aircraft of various manufactures) ?

Thank you

indian army uses to types of tanks those of russian design like the t56,t72 and the t90 of which the t56 has been retired ,the t72 which forms the bulk of the indian armoured forces is being upgraded and the t90 which is intended to progressively replace the t72's.these are the tanks of the russian design.

the vaijayanta which is based on the british vickers design has been retired from active service and is being maintained in reserves,while the more modern arjun main battle tank is in limited service,arjun is facing some logistical problems due to its imported components,however efforts are being taken to indigenise it completely,these two tanks are influenced by the european design philosophy.

 

[Wagner243]

thanks for explaining

 

[aayiliam]

I have heard the news that India and Russia together are developing a next gen tank. Any news of the same? Moreover what do u guys feel that India should look for in the next gen tanks? will we be having a hi - lo mix in tanks as we have in aircrafts?

 

[kay_man]

I have heard the news that India and Russia together are developing a next gen tank. Any news of the same? Moreover what do u guys feel that India should look for in the next gen tanks? will we be having a hi - lo mix in tanks as we have in aircrafts?

It is called the FMBT programme and will be a derivative of the russian T-95 mbt.
And yes , there will be a high-low mix of tanks as well.
the FMBT and the T-90s.
And Yes , India requires a FMBT. This is one of the reasons why army is reluctant to induct Arjun MBT. The FMBT is set to be inducted by 2015, till then army will settle for the T-90s which costs around 1/2 as much as the Arjun MK1

 

[riksavage]

I can't help but surmise looking at the proposed modernization (in conjunction with Russian manufacturers) is reinforcing the notion that India must maintain a large standing army along the lines of what NATO and the Warsaw Pact had at the height of the cold-war. The threat to India, like that to other Democracies comes from asymmetrical groups similar to what we are seeing in Mumbai right now. How much of the Indian Governments defence budget is being allocated to the strengthening of the internal security infrastructure to allow for the rapid containment and neutralization of urban terrorism. India has suffered 63 bombings in the last six moths and according to a leading Washington think tank suffers the third amount of terrorist attacks after Iraq / Afghanistan. Regardless of where these attacks are likely planned (Pakistan / Bangladesh) the actual point of initiation is in large urban areas. With the exception of rural Maoist Naxalite activity, this is likely to remain the case for sometime. Buying new MBT's, AFV's and fighters is not going to stop this problem from growing.

I would of thought greater focus (strategic planning and funding) would have been placed on establishing a more effective counter terrorist infrastructure capable of playing a more micro role within the separate districts of India. The local police resources appeared (subjective view) poorly equipped and ill prepared to contain what was/is happening in Mumbai until the tier one 'Black Cat' assets arrived on the scene (six-hours after the initial contact).

I think this event will prove pivotal and we will see a change of focus, the powers that be will be galvanized to modernize the domestic anti-terrorist command, control and response infrastructure.

I also note that forensic teams from the UK and US are currently in transit to provide investigative assistance.

Thoughts?

 

[Eeshaan]

I can't help but surmise looking at the proposed modernization (in conjunction with Russian manufacturers) is reinforcing the notion that India must maintain a large standing army along the lines of what NATO and the Warsaw Pact had at the height of the cold-war. The threat to India, like that to other Democracies comes from asymmetrical groups similar to what we are seeing in Mumbai right now. How much of the Indian Governments defence budget is being allocated to the strengthening of the internal security infrastructure to allow for the rapid containment and neutralization of urban terrorism. India has suffered 63 bombings in the last six moths and according to a leading Washington think tank suffers the third amount of terrorist attacks after Iraq / Afghanistan. Regardless of where these attacks are likely planned (Pakistan / Bangladesh) the actual point of initiation is in large urban areas. With the exception of rural Maoist Naxalite activity, this is likely to remain the case for sometime. Buying new MBT's, AFV's and fighters is not going to stop this problem from growing.

I would of thought greater focus (strategic planning and funding) would have been placed on establishing a more effective counter terrorist infrastructure capable of playing a more micro role within the separate districts of India. The local police resources appeared (subjective view) poorly equipped and ill prepared to contain what was/is happening in Mumbai until the tier one 'Black Cat' assets arrived on the scene (six-hours after the initial contact).

I think this event will prove pivotal and we will see a change of focus, the powers that be will be galvanized to modernize the domestic anti-terrorist command, control and response infrastructure.

I also note that forensic teams from the UK and US are currently in transit to provide investigative assistance.

Thoughts?

I think you said it 100% accurately there, Riksavage. I couldn't have summarised the situation any better myself. I'm Indian myself, and I wish the best for my country's people and it's defense forces, but we all can see that Mumbai was caught COMPLETELY unaware there.

I hate to say it, but in my opinion, before we strengthen our conventional forces, we should be prepared in the unconventional sense as well. Although our NSG is considered the best equipped & trained counter-terrorist force in Asia, it will take alot more ( planning, funding and TRAINING ) for our country to be prepared to easily tackle the threats from within our borders ( although this threat seems to have emerged from outside the nation).

Our special forces are well-trained and equipped, but we need to train and equip our police force to be a more professional force & capable of tackling these kinds of situations. And especially the equipment. Sorry to say this, but I was shocked to see that while the terrorists were armed with Kalashnikov-type weapons, police officers were seen running arond on national TV with very outdated weaponry ( please correct me if I'm wrong, but I think I saw most of them carrying WW2-era rifles )

I have no intention of turning this into a political discussion or to go into petty details, but many people are claiming that this is our 9/11. And yes, it sure seems like that was a pivotal moment which will surely result in some serious thoughts towards our country's internal security. And any international assistance in training and development of these capabilities should be welcomed by our government, this is my frank opinion.
Sorry about my limited knowledge about India's defense forces, but this opinion is something I have had to mention today.

Just in : 5 hostages were found dead in the Chabad House Jewish Centre. That adds to the casualties of this incident bringing the casualty count up to 155.
http://edition.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2008/news/mumbai.attacks/
Terrible news indeed.

 

[Eeshaan]

Sorry for the double post, but due to my limited knowledge on the Indian defense forces, I have a few questions to ask :

Is the NSG capable of conducting it's operations at night ? is their night-fighting gear at-par with that of western nations ? Are their helicopter pilots and helicopters equipped with Night Vision gears and trained to conduct operations in darkness like US Special Forces, SAS etc. ? If so, then why weren't the rescue operations in the hotels & the Jewish centre conducted at night ?

I mean no insult/offense towards anyone, i just want to know the reason for the timing of their rescue operations in Mumbai.

 

[Iam]

Sorry for the double post, but due to my limited knowledge on the Indian defense forces, I have a few questions to ask :

Is the NSG capable of conducting it's operations at night ? is their night-fighting gear at-par with that of western nations ? Are their helicopter pilots and helicopters equipped with Night Vision gears and trained to conduct operations in darkness like US Special Forces, SAS etc. ? If so, then why weren't the rescue operations in the hotels & the Jewish centre conducted at night ?

I mean no insult/offense towards anyone, i just want to know the reason for the timing of their rescue operations in Mumbai.

On a scale of operations such as this, only a trained eye can see the differences between the forces employed. Judging from the pictures from an outside prespective you can only deduce that there are atleast 7-8 (if not more) security agencies working in tandem. Given the pictures are from a peperazzi perspective the security service/personnel on the periphery of operations are simply guarding (securing ) the premises. The actual operations (strike force ) are carried out by very few/handful special operations personnel ( do not know what they are called in India ), who not only have the capabilites that you comment, but also probably may never know what those capabilties are.

As you rightly pointed out the police are using WW2 wears, may be those need to be swapped with some decent Indian made Ak's. (which I think the Indians could afford )

 

[OPSSG]

Is the NSG capable of conducting it's operations at night ? is their night-fighting gear at-par with that of western nations ?

Are their helicopter pilots and helicopters equipped with Night Vision gears and trained to conduct operations in darkness like US Special Forces, SAS etc. ? If so, then why weren't the rescue operations in the hotels & the Jewish centre conducted at night ?

1. I'm sure that most elite units around the world, including the Indian counter-terrorist teams (CT-Teams), are equipped with NVGs. Certainly, given the scale of the attacks at multiple sites, the gathering of accurate intelligence to facilitate multiple assaults on multiple large sites (with hundreds or rooms to clear in the case of the Mumbai hotels) would present an intelligence nightmare.

2. I don't think the Indian CT-Teams had the luxury of waiting for nightfall, given that the terrorists at the Jewish centre - were there to kill as many members of the Indian Jewish community as possible. In the past, CT-Teams had some time to prepare and gather intelligence (during the negotiation phase - lasting hours or days). This was not the case in Mumbai.

3. For more information on India's CT Teams:

See this Sky news TV report on India's "Black Cats", the Garud and the Marcos.

4. Thanks to the past successful hostage rescues by CT-Teams (like the SAS and the SOF) - the current terrorists have adopted specific tactics to foil rescues, including:

(i) trying to blend in with the hostages during the assault phase; and
(ii) setting up booby traps to foil the CT Team - in their rescue attempt,

hence you need accurate intelligence on their numbers and exact location.

5. In Singapore's 1991 SQ 117 hijacking incident, we were lucky to able to obtain relevant intelligence on the 4 terrorists from Pakistan before the assault. Hence, the SOF were able to rescue all passengers and crew from the hijacked SQ 117.

6. In a hostage situation, the security corridor established is a multi-layer, multi-agency concept, with the media being kept outside the outer most layer. The security forces at the outer most layer, are the ones with the oldest weapons (because, they are there for crowd control and traffic management).

7. Having served in the military in the past and having used NVGs, I would say that NVGs have certain specific weaknesses. Besides, using a black-out to launch an assault, tells the terrorists that an assault is imminent (we certainly don't want to give them any advance warning).

8. I'm from Singapore and all services of our armed forces conduct regular exercises with the Indian armed forces (including Exercise Agni Warrior just concluded in October 2008) - so we have a healthy respect for their capability. Singapore’s Foreign Ministry has also said 28—year—old Lo Hwei Yen, a Singaporean held hostage in one of the Mumbai hotels, has been killed. So my thoughts go out to her family and the other families who have loved ones killed or injured at this time.

 

[riksavage]

Most modern CT teams when deploying to an incident will first establish a safe location to set-up their equipment and briefing / intelligence cell. The sniper teams will then deploy to gather intelligence whilst the ground commanders prepare two options:

1. Emergency Response – Ready in one hour (shit or bust option)
2. The deliberate option – Coordinated assault dictated by the CT Team, not the terrorists.

Looking at the news footage I can’t help but believe option one was used.

The most important asset you have will be information received from the outer-cordon (hopefully in place when the CT team arrives) and your own sniper team pairs. Looking at some of the snipers deployed they lacked modern communication equipment, which meant any information being fed-back to the command and control centre may have been limited or non-existent. This lack of good comms would have further compounded any coordinated sniper shoot immediately before, or at the time of the assault to target identified terrorists seen through windows / open doors etc.

I can see the entire CT structure being changed following this incident.

 

[funtz]

I can't help but surmise looking at the proposed modernization (in conjunction with Russian manufacturers) is reinforcing the notion that India must maintain a large standing army along the lines of what NATO and the Warsaw Pact had at the height of the cold-war.

The threat to India, like that to other Democracies comes from asymmetrical groups similar to what we are seeing in Mumbai right now.

How much of the Indian Governments defence budget is being allocated to the strengthening of the internal security infrastructure to allow for the rapid containment and neutralization of urban terrorism. India has suffered 63 bombings in the last six moths and according to a leading Washington think tank suffers the third amount of terrorist attacks after Iraq / Afghanistan. Regardless of where these attacks are likely planned (Pakistan / Bangladesh) the actual point of initiation is in large urban areas.

With the exception of rural Maoist Naxalite activity, this is likely to remain the case for sometime. Buying new MBT's, AFV's and fighters is not going to stop this problem from growing.

I would of thought greater focus (strategic planning and funding) would have been placed on establishing a more effective counter terrorist infrastructure capable of playing a more micro role within the separate districts of India. The local police resources appeared (subjective view) poorly equipped and ill prepared to contain what was/is happening in Mumbai until the tier one 'Black Cat' assets arrived on the scene (six-hours after the initial contact).

I think this event will prove pivotal and we will see a change of focus, the powers that be will be galvanized to modernize the domestic anti-terrorist command, control and response infrastructure.

I also note that forensic teams from the UK and US are currently in transit to provide investigative assistance.

Thoughts?

Forensic teams from UK and US are not invited, neither will they be accepted to step into the situation, if they are being offered by these nations i suppose its another insult on a grieving nation, or just something the media reported.

A huge NSG team airlifted from Delhi, available ones were not enough, they are the ones trained for this work, and they had to go in with tremendous confusion about the number of hostages, their location, and the number of terrorits, nothing was clear, this was not a plane, this involved two of the biggest and most filled up hotels in Mumbai, and a house with just two entry/exit points (one on the roof and one on the ground) with no news about the number of people in the building or their location.

Locals were not equipped or trained to carryout operations against such trained supplied and motivated terrorists, with such precise intelligence.

No one saw this coming, i suppose as you say now the strength of the NSG will have to be increased many folds, with enough resources to be distributed across the nation and become mobile as soon as any news comes in.

However what can they really do, the solutions seem to point towards a nation turned into a fotress,

that all said, really nothing is clear right now, we have to wait before saying things, speculation based on random news bites will never be correct.

 

[riksavage]

The UK teams are already in-country, this is due to the fact that some of the suspected terrorists in custody are UK born. This is called intelligence sharing, it's not meant as an insult, the former are looking for any evidence, which may lead to arrests back in the UK.

 

[Eeshaan]

Thanks alot for the info, OPSSG & Iam. That cleared alot of questions

And yes, a forensic team from UK is here to help look for any sort of evidence.
In my opinion ANY AND ALL foreign help is welcome here. Terrorism and Al-Quaeda arent domestic/regional issues anymore that don't warrant international cooperation.

Like Riksavage just pointed out, our nation may have to change it's entire CT structure. The size of the NSG & it's capabilities will have to be increased manyfold.

In my opinion, on November 25th, India took a dive headfirst deep into the international community fighting the war on terror. Now terrorism is not an internal affair in our country anymore. We are a world player in this now, just like USA, UK etc. And for our nation's police forces to develop the means to combat these threats effectively, help from the international community is more than welcome and in no way an insult.

 

[macman]

included the T-95 FMBT, the FICV (to be made available in three versions: one for the ground forces, one for airborne forces, and an amphibious variant for naval infantry), a tracked 155mm/52-cal field artillery howitzer and its ammunition resupply vehicle, a vehicle housing a turret-mounted rifled-bore 120mm breech-loading mortar, an armoured recovery vehicle, an armoured bridge layer, and a vehicle that will be able to house a variety of turret-mounted air-defence weapons, ranging from high-velocity rapid-fire twin 30mm cannons to E-SHORADS missiles and their related target acquisition/target engagement radars and optronic fire-control systems.

Could see this kind of program starting up, & a modular system to keep down operating & manufacturing costs is an excellent idea...
But apart from the T-95, don't see the Russian's needing anything else in the near future.
They've already got a lot of very good self-propelled artillery & rocket systems, quite a lot of decent support vehicles, & plenty of APC's.
Quite a lot of it is dated, but is it worth launching a complete new line or just upgrade their older stuff?

The Indian's have a lot more use for it - maybe it will be one of those Russia-India programs that start off with mostly Indian orders, & the Russian's gradually phase out their older BMP's & support vehicles 7-9 years down the track.

If they're going to develop the T-95 anyway, might not be such a bad idea going the whole hog in development from the start, especially if they've got the Indian's picking up half the cost...

 

[nevidimka]

Looks like the terror outbreak is escalating into an army conflict. troops heading towards border is always not a good news.
Today I feel sad for the people of India and their anger towards these cowards and their cowardly act.

http://in.news.yahoo.com/137/20081129/738/tnl-pakistan-to-move-troops-if-indian-te.html

Interesting news i've read is that, the terrorists let the Russian nationals walk free from the Taj after checking thier passports and travel documents.

 

[OPSSG]

(i) ... really nothing is clear right now... speculation based on random news bites will never be correct.

(ii) Locals were not equipped or trained to carryout operations against such trained supplied and motivated terrorists, with such precise intelligence.

Agreed.

Time Magazine
The Mumbai operation that killed more than 150 people over two days in the heart of India's commercial capital marks the emergence of an unprecedented hybrid of terror tactics...

"This is essentially a small army sent into the heart of society with orders to kill and keep killing as long as possible. And they're technically capable of creating a lot of damage and death before they can be killed. So this is more like terrorism fused with insurgency and guerilla warfare."

I'll like to start this discussion with Time Magazine's summary, which is an accurate description of the nature of the Mumbai attack.

riksavage has suggested that a change in India's entire CT structure is necessary.

funtz and others elsewhere have suggested that the solution is increasing the numbers and equipment of the Indian security forces.

i suppose as you say now the strength of the NSG will have to be increased many folds...

"The Hindu" Newspaper has chosen to blame the Indian hotel industry.

However, I don't think a knee jerk reaction of the above sort is useful (Change is necessary - but perhaps at a much deeper level than conventional solutions).

Here's why (I can list 5 reasons on the top of my head):

1. Even if the hotels had much, much better security - the attack would have taken place in Mumbai - it would just take place at a "shopping centre" or some other soft target.

2. To harden every Indian city against a small army sent into the heart of society with orders to kill and keep killing as long as possible - is impossible. However, India can:

(a) improve the response time of all CT Teams;

(b) change the ratio of assault gp and intelligence gp in CT Team composition:

For example, a more balanced CT Team may need to include:
(i) an assault gp (a force of more than 100),
(ii) a military intelligence battalion (a force of more than 800),
(iii) a bomb disposal team (a force of more than 25); and
(iv) a chemical warfare team (a force of more than 50)

(c) improve the technology deployed with the CT Teams; and

(d) improve the capabilities of the first responders in each city (part of which is to give police better weapons).

3. The most effective response - is not even more intelligence (whilst this attack can be recognized as an intelligence failure). Part of the solution must be more intelligence coupled with better processing of the intelligence gathered. Some of these efforts - would require the fusion of HUMIT and technology.

4. Quite a few laws also need to be changed, so that police and military intelligence agencies can work together to foil such groups - at the planning and recce stage.

5. Port security monitoring needs to be improved. This cannot be achieved by increased manning levels alone. It needs to be a "system wide" type of response to improve the following:

(a) radar monitoring (and the management) of every port needs to be improved;

(b) databases for ship movement must be established and kept up to date;

(c) customs corruption must be addressed; and

(d) more effective coast guard/navy patrols with proper C4I technologies and surveillance equipment.

 

[swerve]

The UK teams are already in-country, this is due to the fact that some of the suspected terrorists in custody are UK born.

I believe this was a false rumour. The Indian authorities have stated that only one terrorist was captured alive, & have identified him as Pakistani.

 

[riksavage]

Correct, after intial reports were proved wrong there remains no evidence that UK nationals wre involved. However UK counter-terrorism / forensic officers are in-country

 

[webmaster]

What kind of weapons were the terrorists carrying? MP6? Does Indian army/military have such weapon?

 

[gf0012-aust]

What kind of weapons were the terrorists carrying? MP6? Does Indian army/military have such weapon?

There are comments that they were carrying MP5's. Some of them can be seen to carry folding stock '47's. I couldn't see the image close enough to work out whether it was an AK or SKS derivative though. (they have different stampings even though they look the same - and up close it becomes obvious)