In Land military equipment, there are no solutions, only trade-offs: countries outside the military top-tier find themselves with strategic equations they need to figure out, when shaping their forces. A very small handful of countries have the luxury of wishful thinking and unlimited hardware spending. For most others, though, securing their territory is a complex business which involves striking the right balance between ruggedness and sophistication, and another between sovereignty and cost-effectiveness. India, with its two long and hot borders with Pakistan and China, is up against this choice right now.
A strategic choice nearly every country must make
A microscopic share of the near- 200 countries in the world have lavish military budgets, either because their economy is so flourishing that they can afford it, or because they stretch their military budgets way above par. In short, this category encompasses the United States, and only to a certain extent China, Russia, and a very few Western European countries. This financial abundance (which remains relative for all nations besides the US) affords them a comfortable strategic deadlock with on-par players and immense domination over the rest. These nations therefore hold arsenals which contain ever-modernizing nuclear warheads, large-scale robotic systems, space weapons, hypersonic weapons, or all of the above, at various development stages, or even directed-energy weapons, at experimental level. But for the great majority of countries, building an effective defense apparatus is not a matter of snapping one’s fingers: it involves a generous amount of judgement, acumen and astuteness. For them, it is a matter of finding the right balance between four main parameters, to form an effective and coherent strategy: scalability, territory control, cost effectiveness and independence.
Choosing what to put the money on
Every country needs a trump card. For a few countries, nuclear deterrence is the one. Other countries have their own: Germany holds a deadly combination of heavy armor and mechanized infantry, as does Israel. Russia, on the other hand, on top of its nuclear arsenal, has fearsome aviation and electronic warfare. This will place them on the level of their main opponents and form the main line of conventional deterrence. Should deterrence fail, these assets need to be fully operational and reliable. For the most part, most armies will focus on one “area of excellence”, designed to be the backbone of their warring strategy and the main repellent for potential attackers, articulated within a relevant strategy. Needless to say, the might of their military force doesn’t only apply to battlefields, as nations will be judged on this very scale by their diplomatic counterparts. As a means of illustration, the very select club of nations which possess nuclear warheads or aircraft-carriers benefit from additional and beneficial standing within diplomatic channels. Many wars have been terminated on the simple demand from one nation which possessed one of these super-weapons. However, one such high-tech toy is never enough and needs to be supported by more sturdy, if less shiny, military hardware.
These high-tech “trump cards’’ are, in essence, expensive and precious. A national defense plan worth its salt therefore needs to complement them with more affordable and bulky military means – a series of conventional units, which can interoperate, and will make the “beef” of military muscle.
Nations rely on gradual response strategies, and therefore need to be able to increase military by small increments, before pulling out the big guns. Quite often, the use of intermediate military potential is precisely designed to avoid going to extremes.
Intermediate and numerous military equipment will enable the long-lasting control of territory, deep into its reality and whatever its geographic configuration. No territory is truly controlled until boots come onto the ground.
There is a reasonable cost per unit, which will enable redundancy and resilience. Accountants tend to shy away from redundancies, considering for instance that artillery units are not needed, as long as ships can fire from their even bigger guns, deep inland. Naturally, commanders disagree, and tend to greatly appreciate redundancies which ensure continuity of service during battle.
Finally, countries may desire to increase home-based military production, in order to decrease strategic dependence. The increase of domestic military production has the effect on the producing country of transferring mid- to high-tier technology. This, in turn, will place the producing country in the very select club of nations which are able to independently create their own defense. The natural consequence of this situation will be their supplying of neighboring and allied countries, and the ensuing increase of their diplomatic influence.
The current state of global affairs follows, in its most part, the following simple layout. On the one hand, naval and air forces group together with their cost, reliance on high-tech and constant innovation, and their strategic stance. They both lean on the side of soft power: their mere existence is enough for a country to throw its weight around. They give their nation a global standing, due to their capacity to project large military forces at considerable distances. They are seen as “technical deterrence” and their constant technical improvement aims to equal or overtake the technical excellence of opponents and counterparts. A long story short, growing sophistication tends to become their central characteristic, over time.
Land forces, on the other hand, hold the noblesse, if they lack the heavy funding and the nifty toys. Based above all on the human factor, they have historically been the decisive factor and embodied the reality of outcomes. Their number and morale will be the factors in the equation of their excellence, more than their technicality will ever be. Naturally, the sophistication of their equipment will nonetheless matter greatly, and ground soldiers rely on true and tested kit, as their lives and performance depend on it. A balance is therefore sought between the weapon systems and the human systems. The duo must be durable and resilient, and it must be affordable and relevant.
India at the crossroad
Should we take the interesting example of India, which is restructuring its forces, with an established ambition to build domestically, we would see two main risks, each of which lying in the extremes of the spectrum of possibilities. India could go for a rugged, low-tech and cheap army. Either an upgrade based on 80s-era equipment, or new designs based on that same technology, would enable the multiplication of units at a low price and easily-attainable domestic production. But these units would be so far behind, technologically speaking, that the little money spent would be wasted in the face of what their modern counterparts can display. This would yield quantity over quality, and would have a disastrous effect on morale, given that troops would know that the choice to equip them poorly was deliberate (poor equipment leading to poor morale is often quoted as a main factor to the blitz collapse of the Iraqi army). In fact, several neighboring countries have advanced military equipment (namely China’s rocket force) which immediately invalidates India’s option to turn to the military flea market.
The opposite mistake would be to engage in a “Future Combat System” of its own, which is to say in a bottomless pit of questionable strategic relevance. Some innovations are relevant, and some are just expensive gimmicks. It is still too early to tell whether the latest technological jumps aiming to revolutionize warfare into the network-centric era are foolish endeavors or actual steps forward. Going overboard with a high-tech strategy runs the risk of losing touch with terrestrial and effective action. The US has, on occasions, fallen into this groundhog hole, namely with the extremely expensive and yet-to-be-proven XM 2001 Crusader. Defense specialist Stephen Rodriguez writes on the matter: “Secretary Rumsfeld cancelled the program in 2002 after spending $2,000,000,000, making it one of the first RMA-era programs to dissolve. Ironically, many of the Crusader technologies were incorporated in the FCS family of XM1203 Non-Line of Sight (NLOS) cannons, which were subsequently cancelled as well.” But even if these obscenely expensive military programs are worth their salt, their resulting products would only supply India with fancy toys to display, would do little to increase their long-term standing and deplete their capacity to acquire simpler equipment in a sufficient number to yield a strategic advantage.
India has historically shared tense rapport with Pakistan, since their respective inceptions, and recent clashes with China has highlighted the PLA’s new military capacities. The motto “si vis pacem, para bellum” applies also in Asia, and in the case of India, preparing for a war that would involve such huge demographic numbers with a strategy mainly based on small and high-tech units, is obviously off the table. China counts 2 million military, and Pakistan 650 000.
This makes a strong and numerous conventional force a must-have for India.
In military matters, tech does count. An increase in speed, range, stealth, or even adaptability can give one warring faction a decisive edge over the other. Better still, the capacity to integrate numerous and potent capacities, in one integral system which reaches objectives and counters all types of threats homogeneously, will surely be a must-have for major military forces, in the years to come. But going overboard with technological ambitions will lead straight to acquiring a small amount of fragile toys with little or no actual use on the battlefield.
Slightly simpler, more rugged and reliable options will give a long lasting advantage in a strategic or operational setting, and the possibility to acquire, for the same price, enough units to form an actual military force.
– The writer is a defence and security industry consultant having varied experience working with medium and large companies majorly in European market. The views expressed are personal and do not necessarily reflect the views of Raksha Anirveda
