March Past by Indian Army
The last decade has been a disorienting period for the Indian Army. While land borders with Pakistan and China remain unsettled, the Army’s core competency—conventional land warfare—has been increasingly constrained by the maturation of Pakistani nuclear capabilities and Indian leaders’ prioritisation of stability. While much-publicised ground raids into Myanmar and Pakistan have put the Army at the heart of conventional deterrence, supplanting the Air Force as the presumptive instrument of first resort, these operations have employed a small and atypical subset of the organisation, and cannot yet be said to have had strategic effects. Modernisation in the combat arms has been slow and halting, with growing competition for resources from the capital-hungry Navy and Air Force. Despite unquestioned civilian supremacy, civil-military relations have grown more acrimonious, tensions between veterans and the government have grown, and intra-Army disputes over promotions and appointments have spilt over into the courts.[1] What does the future hold for the Army, what are its challenges, and how can it best address them?
Priority missions
Barring a breakthrough in diplomacy with Pakistan or a fundamental change in Beijing’s view of New Delhi, primary threats will remain insurgency and terrorist activity, Kargil-like efforts to revise borders or control of territory, and conventional military attacks arising from other scenarios such as a Pakistani ground response to Indian air strikes. The Army’s priorities will therefore remain territorial defence, conventional deterrence, and counterinsurgency. The most significant changes to the Army’s doctrine and structure—the evolution of a “proactive” strategy colloquially known as Cold Start, and the raising of a mountain strike corps—have been driven by the second of these. However, the recent decision to have an infantry general supersede two mechanised forces’ officers in the appointment of army chief indicates the continued importance of counterinsurgency to political leaders, not least during what could be a long phase of unrest in Kashmir.[2] It is likely that these will remain the priority missions for the foreseeable future.
Secondary missions
In addition to these three central missions, the Army increasingly faces a wider set of secondary tasks. In December 2015, Prime Minister Narendra Modi told the Combined Commanders Conference that “our responsibilities are no longer confined to our borders and coastlines. They extend to our interests and citizens, spread across a world of widespread and unpredictable risks”.[3] The Army lags behind the other services in its embrace of out-of-area operations, but a growing Chinese presence in the Indian Ocean littoral, particularly Pakistan and Djibouti, may increase the salience of amphibious and other expeditionary forces. Other secondary tasks include humanitarian and disaster relief (HADR), which has acquired an overt element of regional competition and international prestige, and which includes large-scale evacuation of Indian nationals from unstable areas. Again, these secondary missions will likely remain stable over the next decade.
India’s way of war
India, informed by history, has shunned formal military alliances and is likely to continue doing so. India is highly likely to fight alone in its border wars. However, India’s growing defence partnership with US, its deepening interest in the security order in the Western Pacific, and its self-identity as a “net security provider” mean that the Indian Army is called upon to play a role in a future military coalition. India’s heavy involvement with UN peacekeeping operations provides some experience in this regard.[4]
| Priority | Threats/interests | Example |
| Higher priority | ||
| Territorial defence | Revision of borders | Kargil |
| Conventional deterrence | Terrorism, conventional war | Post-Uri strikes |
| Counterinsurgency | Insurgency, terrorism | J&K, Assam |
| Lower priority | ||
| HADR | Regional influence | Op. Maitri (Nepal) |
| Out-of-area operations | Regional influence, peacekeeping | MONUSCO (Congo) |
Force structure
What is the Army’s current force structure, and what might that force look like in the coming years?
Core skills
Both modern warfare and its political context are changing. Military technology is rendering the battlefield more transparent, units and platforms are better networked (but also more vulnerable), and norms against large-scale conventional warfare are driving the use of hybrid, less overt methods of coercion and compellence. At the same time, the fundamentals of land warfare have not changed.
Stephen Biddle has shown that military capability depends ultimately on proficiency with cover, concealment, dispersion, suppression, small-unit independent manoeuvre, and combined arms.[5] Caitlin Talmadge argues that these skills require merit-based promotion, rigorous and frequent training, and decentralised, unified, and clear command.[6] The Indian Army enjoys considerable autonomy in these areas, with the exception of mid-level and senior promotions.[7] However, a shortage of over 9,000 officers is likely to impact the quality of junior leadership.[8] Recent reductions of officers’ status relative to civilian counterparts, along with rising private sector salaries, may compound this problem.[9] Building out an augmented quality force structure, however, takes significant time and it is likely that the current structure of the Indian Army will persist for the next decade.
In addition to these core skills, the Indian Army also requires sufficient numbers and quality of arms in core combat branches: infantry, artillery, and armour. Each of these areas is undergoing a belated, gradual, and uneven process of modernisation. This has significant implications for the Army’s future operational capacity.
Infantry
Infantry modernisation began over a decade ago with the ‘Future Infantry Soldiers As a System’ (F-INSAS) scheme for lighter and better-equipped forces, has since broken up into separate parts for equipment and communication.[10] Progress has been extremely slow. Bulletproof jackets approved in 2009 arrived only seven years later, in late 2016, leaving the Army to operate with half the required quantity in the interim.[11] The Defence Research and Development Organisation’s (DRDO) $7-8 billion replacement carbine and assault rifle programme has been beset with problems such as delayed trials, slow negotiations, and cost overruns.[12] DRDO’s latest effort, the Excalibur, is being “provisionally” inducted[13] but has been widely criticised[14] and, according to a senior Indian Army official, “does not have any future”.[15] In 2014, senior Army officers described infantry modernisation as “delayed by six to seven years”, almost exclusively because of the Army’s inability to formulate qualitative requirements (QR).[16] If these institutional failings at the Army, ministry, and governmental levels go unaddressed, infantry capabilities are likely to remain an issue of concern into the 2020s. This is especially concerning because the rate of Pakistan and, particularly, Chinese infantry modernisation is quite significant.
Artillery
India has only a tenth of self-propelled artillery it requires, a shortfall of 1,600 guns across all types, and widespread obsolescence in existing inventory.[17] India’s towed, wheeled, and self-propelled guns have subject of drawn-out procurement and manufacturing efforts.[18]These are now yielding fruit, with 80 per cent of the Army’s capital budget dedicated to artillery in 2016.[19]
Six Indian-built 35km-range Dhanush howitzers have been inducted and deployed in Siachen and Rajasthan—the first new artillery guns in three decades, since the 1980s vintage Bofors-with 114 more approved for manufacture in June 2016.[20] In November, India finalised a $700 million deal with US to buy seven regiments of the M777 ultra-right howitzer, with 20 guns delivered within two years and the remaining 120 to be assembled in India over the next four to five years.[21] Their weight, permitting carriage by Chinook, makes them particularly suited for the new 17 Corps, India’s fourth strike corps and the first intended for mountain terrain. Finally, India is likely to induct around 100 self-propelled 155mm K9 Vajra-T, a modified Samsung K9 with about 50 per cent indigenous content, over the next three years.[22] This would rectify a perceived imbalance created by the US sale of self-propelled artillery to Pakistan in 2009.[23] The 45km-range Advanced Towed Artillery Gun System (ATAGS) is an earlier stage, with firing trials in December 2016.
These efforts should also be considered alongside progress in building and acquiring both indigenous Multiple Launch Rocket System (MLRS) and multiple regiments of the short-range BrahMos cruise missile. Some of these systems should be available to the Indian Army in the coming years, but the challenges of equipping and procuring a modern force will remain.
Armour
The future of Indian armour is similarly in flux, with tension between indigenous and imported systems, and deeper questions around the optimal balance between protection and mobility in India’s likely theatres of conflict. While the T-72 remains in service, deployed in greater numbers to Ladakh over the past few years, the pillar of armour modernisation is the indigenous Arjun Main Battle Tank (MBT) and license-built Russian T-90S MBTs. As of 2016, India had produced less than a quarter of the 945 T-90s ordered by the Army.[24] Over 400 further T-90s were ordered in November.[25]
The Arjun Mark 1 has not been cleared for combat because of its weight, and three-quarters of the fleet was grounded as of mid-2015 because of technical problems with the transmission system, targeting, and thermal sights, as well as a shortage of imported parts.[26] As many as 118 lighter and more advanced Mark 2 variants have been cleared, but the Army has requested international proposals for a Future Ready Combat Vehicle (FRCV) to be inducted in 2025-27. This could circumvent DRDO and undermine the future utility of the Arjun tank.[27] Arjun’s defenders point out that it has out-performed the flagship T-90S in trials while critics in the Army criticise its inability to fire anti-tank guided missiles (ATGMs) through its main gun[28] as well as its inability to cross some bridges owing to weight.[29] The future of Arjun is likely to be a bellwether for indigenous modernisation. But even if it is a success, India is not procuring tanks in sufficient numbers to open up a militarily meaningful gap over Pakistan—if such a gap could be exploited under nuclear conditions at all.
| Platform | Old | New |
| Assault rifle | INSAS (1990s-2000s) | TBD |
| Ultra-light artillery | ? | MH77 |
| Towed artillery | FH-77B (1980s) | Dhanush, ATAGS |
| Self-propelled artillery | M-46 (1980s) | K-9 Vajra |
| MBT | T-72 (1980s) | T-90, Arjun, FRCV |
Doctrinal Developments—Where India is and Where it can Go
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