Obama's Af-Pak Strategy

tahmed32 #472

{{Could Sri Ram please provide Pakistan these advanced anti-anti-missiles ... These would ensure that the taliban are toast.}}

Chacha, don't get carried away. Anti-missiles (or indeed, artillery and heavy caliber weapons of any sort) won't help you against an internal insurgency, particular if it has the support of significant segments of the Pakistani population. For that your b'loved army needs to do fall back on tried-and-trusted footslogging counter-insurgency tactics - such as cordon-and-search operations in areas of suspected insurgent activity.

India can help train you in such tactics. Remember, you have to win the hearts and minds of the populace. Of course, if the rank-and-file of your army are infected with the same jihadism as the Punjabi Taliban, you have a bigger problem on your hands - they may refuse to fire on an 'enemy' that belongs to the same demographic as they do, and with whom they sympathize.

Re: # 466
khyber...
That is the reason, you katuas should never be let off....
If you can speak about Indira Gandhi "begging" during 1971, then you can resort any form of islamic sh**...

More on DRDO from Indian newspaper Mail Today:

http://epaper.mailtoday.in/epaperhome.aspx?issue=1152009

A brain wave to save DRDO

FOR QUITE some time now, we Indians have waxed about our intellectual capital, of the brain drain being reversed and painting pictures of our countrymen from California to Canberra returning in droves to ride on Shining India. Ask the fellows at the Defence Research and Development Organisation and they will think you are an ignoramus.

DRDO runs 52 research laboratories in the country and in the last five years, over 1,200 scientists have left for greener pastures.

Things were bad earlier too, and in the five preceding years, 400 scientists had quit.

Bad pay, appalling working conditions and a bureaucratic mindset that is hardly in sync with scientific temperament of the establishment. The governments concerns were allayed by the babus who convinced their masters that once the 6th Pay Commission recommendations were implemented, the scientists would be happy with the bounty, would fall in line and all would be fine. Really? The DRDO is taking no chances though. This month, it is organising a Round Table where HR honchos from the US, UK, Israel as well as top Indian corporates like Wipro, Infosys and Tata will teach them the art of retaining talent.

For the sake of our defence forces, let us hope the lessons would be truly learned.
Riaz Haq, PakAlumni Worldwide

=== Interact Filtered ===
view this users filtered interacts

More on DRDO's incompetence:

BOFORS guns in a row, belching fire at Tiger Hill remain one of the iconic pictures of the 1999 Kargil War. Yet it was not known at the time that India had to fly in ammunition from South Africa.

“ Had the conflict not been confined to the 150- km front of the Kargil sector,� says Brig ( Retd) Gurmeet Kanwal, director of the New Delhi- based Centre for Land Warfare Studies, “ T- 72 and 130 mm medium gun ammunition would have also run short. That would have been embarrassing for the government as well as the Army.� Everyone knows that the superb Bofors guns became a victim of the controversy over commissions paid for their acquisition.

But it is the country that has paid the real price. The 400 guns acquired were to have been followed by another 1,000 to be made indigenously.

That did not happen and the original guns diminished through wear, tear and cannibalisation for parts.

They nonetheless remain the mainstay of the Armys artillery units.

It has taken the government nearly two decades since the Bofors scandal peaked to issue request for proposals for 155 mm guns and howitzers for the mountains and plains, and self- propelled guns for the desert.

If the Army is lucky, four guns shortlisted will go for trials and a final selection made that could join the Army by 2012 or so.

Till then, the Army will have to depend on its long- obsolete indigenously designed and manufactured 105 mm Indian Field Gun ( IFG) and the Light Field Gun ( LFG), the 75/ 24 Indian Mountain Gun, the 100 mm Russian field gun and the 122 mm Russian howitzer.

There is some relief that we have managed to upgrade some 180 pieces of the fabled 130 mm M46 Russian medium guns with the help of the Israelis.

Some more relief comes from the acquisition of two regiments of the 12- tube, 300 mm Smerch multi- barrel rocket launcher ( MBRL) system with 90 km range. Had they been available then, they would have provided India the ability to hit at Pakistani artillery positions in Kargil.

All this pain and expense had to be borne because of the DRDO- designed Pinaka system, which is in any case inferior to the Russian product.

The one area in which India has been traditionally weak is that of selfpropelled artillery.

These are the heavy guns mounted on a tracked chassis which are integral to any offensive armoured force.

The US supplied Pakistan the first 155 mm artillery in the 1960s, and even today it has an edge over India in having something like 250 SP guns, which include some super- heavy 203 mm.

India, on the other hand has just 100 130mm Catapult guns which is a juryrigged system of a Russian 130mm gun mounted on a Vijayanta chassis.

Artillery officers complain the gun is too heavy for its chassis, which tends to break down regularly.

The plan to acquire a 155 mm SP gun using a South African turret was scuttled some years ago because its supplier, Denel, was involved in a bribery scandal relating to another ARMY UNARMED? acquisition.

The lack of a relatively light mountain gun or a self- propelled gun affect any offensive war plan the Army may like to formulate.

Movement in the mountains is extremely difficult and getting guns to negotiate the hair- pin bends of the roads is a major task.

So, some of the guns have to be light enough to be lifted by helicopters. As for SP guns, without them, any armoured thrust lacks the firepower it needs to punch through enemy defences.

There is one other area where the Indian Army has been weaker than Pakistan. This is the area of artillery and mortar tracking using battlefield tracking radars.

Islamabad has fielded a French Rasit system since the early 1980s along with the US- supplied AN/ TPQ36, which were used in the Kargil war for tracking Indian mortar and artillery fire.

By contrast, India sought to develop one of its own and actually rejected a US offer for an AN/ TPQ37, a more advanced version of the radar Islamabad had.

This was done at the request of the DRDO, which said it was developing the system. By the time New Delhi realised its mistake, it had come under US sanctions in the wake of the nuclear tests of 1998.

Since then, the US has sold us six of the radars which form the core of the counter- battery systems. According to Kanwal, at least 30 to 40 such radars are required for effective counter- bombardment, especially in the plains.

Only a few have been procured so far.

manoj.joshi@mailtoday.in
Riaz Haq, PakAlumni Worldwide

=== Interact Filtered ===
view this users filtered interacts

=== Interact Filtered ===
view this users filtered interacts

#467 Could Sri Ram please provide Pakistan these advanced anti-anti-missiles like the AlephNull Hotair Missile, or the Ajeya One-Third Brain Missile. These would ensure that the taliban are toast. First the AlephNull will melt their beards with his blasts of hotair. Then the Ajeya will make finish of the remainder by saying "amma mirchi lagi India ki hi-tech space weapon say", causing the taliban to die laughing.

=== Interact Filtered ===
view this users filtered interacts

Here's a piece about the lack of DRDO credibility even among Indian military brass:

NEW DELHI, Jan 9: India’s missile scientists have said that the country’s indigenous missile programme is flagging and needs foreign assistance to revive it.

The embarrassing admission came amid claims by Indian analysts that Pakistan’s missile programme had proved to be more robust and surefooted than India’s. The Mail Today newspaper on Wednesday quoted the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) as announcing that it would scrap its 25-year Integrated Guided Missile Development Programme (IGMDP) by the end of this year.

“Plagued by cost overruns and repeated failures, the announcement is a virtual admission of failure,� the newspaper said. “In fact, some former chiefs of the different services said as much on hearing the news.�

Speaking of the Trishul surface-to-air missile that has now been termed a technology demonstrator, former naval chief Sushil Kumar said: “It was a national embarrassment. DRDO made fake claims for 25 years. In the 1999 Kargil conflict, the navy was vulnerable to attacks from Pakistan’s Harpoon.

“Finally the project was scrapped when the navy went in for the Israeli Barak missiles. The Prithvi’s naval variant, Dhanush, is also flawed and ill-conceived, which is being inflicted on the navy.�On the Akash missile, which was the subject of the DRDO media conference here on Tuesday, former air chief S. P. Tyagi said: “Akash was to be ready at a certain time, but it wasn’t. I had to change everything to make up for the delay.� Both missiles were part of a programme to develop indigenous weapons, which began in July 1983, with plans for Agni, Prithvi, Trishul, Akash and Nag missiles.

The IGMDP, which was aimed at achieving self-sufficiency in missile development and production, comprises five core missile programmes -- the strategic Agni ballistic missile, the tactical Prithvi ballistic missile, the Akash and Trishul surface-to-air missiles and the Nag anti-tank guided missile.

The Mail Today quoted S. Prahlada, chief of the Control Research and Development, DRDO, as saying that development and production of most of the futuristic weapon systems would henceforth be undertaken with foreign collaboration.

With regard to the nuclear-capable Agni series, comprising I and II, the newspaper quoted army sources as saying while they had been tested five times each “a handful of tests are not enough to prove a missile’s worth�.

There were different problems with other systems too.

“Pakistan has always been one step ahead of India in its missile programme,� the newspaper said, adding that Islamabad has “a much more robust missile force than India, one capable of launching nuclear weapons to any part in this country.�

Unlike Indian missiles, which were declared “inducted� after a few tests, the Pakistani projectiles have always been thoroughly tested.
Riaz Haq, PakAlumni Worldwide

tahmed32 #445

Chacha, if only your inane witticisms had the power to reduce the actual effectiveness of a future Indian anti-missile system. Alas!

Such a system severely damages Pakistan's ability to engage in brinkmanship with India under the shield of putative nuclear weapons capability. It upsets a Pakistani leader's calculations in any crisis if the maximum damage he can do India is cut down by a substantial if unpredictable factor. The worst thing is that he won't know the actual effectiveness of the system - that knowledge will be available only to India's government. He has do deal with the agonizing prospect that he may commit his country to national harakiri and do the Indians minimal harm.

So I can well-understand why the prospect of India fielding such a system has you distraught, coming on top of all of Pakistan's other woes. I weep for you, as the Walrus once said; I deeply sympathize.

{{hotair blasts}}

Actual hot-gas thrusters are used to manoeuvre the terminal (homing) upper stage of the exoatmospheric interceptor at up to 5G. So hot air blasts do figure in this scheme, though probably not in the way you thought.

tahmed #461

Chacha, you seem really upset. Was it something I wrote? Don't let these Sri Ram Indian monkeymen get you down!

#467 Posted by CoolAL
stone RAM cant help anyone.Find something else dude.

=== Interact Filtered ===
view this users filtered interacts

=== Interact Filtered ===
view this users filtered interacts

#464 Thanks for offering moral and diplomatic support, Prime Minister of India Sri Ram CoolAl.

=== Interact Filtered ===
view this users filtered interacts