Rethink Over Mountain Strike Corps

NEW DELHI - July 9, 2015 - PRLog -- According to an item published in the latest issue of Indian Military Review Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar recently declared that there was "an urgent need for some downsizing in areas which are not of operational importance" due to budgetary constraints.

Giving details, the new issue of Indian Military Review, published from New Delhi  reported that Parrikar said that he had imposed just a "temporary, not permanent, freeze" on the ongoing raising of the mountain strike corps (MSC), the 17 Corps, which the Army feels is critical for acquiring the "requisite deterrence" against China along the 4,057-km Line of Actual Control (LAC).

The previous UPA regime had approved the raising of the 17 Corps, with 90,274 soldiers, at a cost of Rs 64,678 crore over seven years. "I agree the MSC is a necessity. I have not cancelled it. But I have put a temporary stop to it.

"It's downsizing of the plan, not the MSC itself. The 37,000 troops already inducted need infrastructure, arms and equipment, which are currently being drawn from our reserves since the previous government made no arrangements," he said.

After the review to make the Army a leaner and meaner force, the government will reconsider the entire MSC plan. "The freeze will remain until I can make arrangements to address its needs. I will first make financial provisions and then come back for completion of the task," he added.

"The previous government had estimated it will cost Rs 88,000 crore and will have 70,000 soldiers. I have frozen the cost at Rs 38,000 crore over next eight years. It will consist of 35,000 men. The Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS) had cleared the original proposal, but where is the money? Rs 88,000 crore is the army's revenue budget. The CCS kept clearing projects worth Rs 50,000 crore to Rs 1,00,000 crore but where is the actual money? So you have to be selective," Parrikar said in an interview to a newspaper.

It was in January 2014 that the Army had kicked off the raising of the 17 Corps – which is supposed to have its permanent headquarters in Panagarh (West Bengal) – to build "quick-reaction ground offensive capabilities" against China.

With two new infantry divisions geared for high-altitude warfare as well as armoured, artillery, air defence, engineer brigades spread from Ladakh to Sikkim, the 17 Corps was slated to be fully in place by 2018-2019. As of now, one division and its associated units have been raised, with a couple of T-72 tank regiments also being placed in Ladakh as well as Sikkim.

China's Paradigm Shift in Infrastructure

The move for two strike corps for the mountains can be traced back to Gen Krishna Rao, who took over as Army Chief in 1981. Until then, the shock and awe induced by the tactical defeat of 1962 had helped spread a defensive-defence mindset that felt that we should leave the last 30-40 kms of our border areas completely undeveloped to avoid giving an axis of advance to China. This reduced India to a pathetically reactive and overly defensive posture that was unviable. It would ensure sizeable loss of territory in any future conflict with China. Only a capability to launch a riposte can force an attacker to recoil and reduce the overall territory lost or, at the very least, make compensatory gains elsewhere that could force the enemy to pull back. It is this riposte capability that will get delayed, which could be dangerous in the next war with China. Planning can not purely be based on the hope that it will never happen.

China has gone into a major overdrive to improve its logistical infrastructure in Tibet. It has pushed a standard gauge railway line to Lhasa, pushed in the oil pipeline, upgraded its three highways to class-50 standard and built five major airfields to fly in its airborne divisions. Where China used to take two years to build up a high force level of 22 divisions, China can now build up to 30 divisions in just one month. That has been the scale of the paradigm shift in Chinese mobilistaion capabilities in Tibet.

It was only in 2007, after a series of high media profile Chinese intrusions and encroachments that India woke up to the urgent need to put in place infrastructure to support military operations on our far flung borders with China. Alarmed by the Chinese build up of capabilities in Tibet, India was forced to raise two additional divisons for the defence of Arunachal Pradesh. In its media tirades, China repeatedly raised the issue of Tawang and Southern Tibet. Worried over the prospects of a sudden Chinese offensive to take Arunachal Pradesh, the Indian army now revived the concept of a mountain strike corps to create a minimal riposte capabilitiy.

The raising of the strike corps was delayed for two years as the Navy and Air Force were pointedly asked if they could better use these resources. It is to the credit of the then Air force and Navy Chiefs that they put national interests above parochial single service considerations and the raising of the strike corps commenced at long last in 2014-15. The most amazing fact is that some of those pro-China military apologists have wormed their way back into the inner sanctums of the new dispensation and have again exerted pressure behind the scenes to once more try and delay and derail the raising of this strike corps.

The Americans, since the Sri-Lanka intervention in 1987, have been telling India to leave Afghanistan and inner Asia to Pakistan and focus on the IOR instead. We are being asked to look towards the South China Sea. This will suit the Pacific Command of the USA and the American Navy admirably. Will it suit us? Can any Govt in New Delhi live down the loss of Arunachal Pradesh and Ladakh a second time? Yes the Indian Navy must be strengthened, but not at the cost of a badly needed riposte capability in the Himalayas. It is not an either or equation and it is anti-national to frame the thesis in these exclusionary terms. The structure and composition of these two mountain strike corps can be debated – not their dire necessity.

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