Rightsizing of the Armed Forces

so what’s new? another day and another serious of attacks on paki army by nytimes believing paki expat elites. you people seriously need to get a life and stop blaming army for the fact that people swarm on you when you step out of airport in pak or for the fact that sanitary conditions in civil hospital resemble sanitary condition in empress market. compare our behavior with that of the chinese. while we continue to perform mental maatams, chinese people continue to free themselves from western control by working hard and by working creatively. and this despite the fact that chinese communist party has been in power for a longer period and is more corrupt and more orwellian than paki army. yet without as much as a whimper, chinese go about the business of turning their country into a superpower. and they even do this without parading their women in front of lustful westerners.

paki army generals need to be taken down a peg or two. however a billion dollars or so generated in savings will not transform pak. change will only occur through a flourishing of the free enterprise system. and there is no evidence to show that this cannot occur under a totalitarian or an oligarchic form of government.

Ref harimau #3

What a difference a day makes - 24 little hours.....

Make that a 10-million man army.

Lockheed Martin in talks with India to make satellites

BANGALORE, India (AFP) Feb 06, 2003

Lockheed Martin, the US military aviation giant, said Thursday it was pursuing a deal with the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) to manufacture small satellites.

``ISRO has a good capacity in small satellites and it is as good as anywhere in the world,`` said Bob Hammond, vice president for South Asia of Lockheed Martin, which has annual sales of 24 billion dollars.

The deal was first signed in 1998 but fell through when the United States imposed sanctions after India conducted shock nuclear tests.

``The deal involved exchange of technology and manufacture of specific parts with ISRO. After the sanctions it was put on hold and now we are working our way back. We need a particular expertise which ISRO has,`` Hammond said.

He said the September 11, 2001 terror attacks on the United States were a watershed in India-US relations.

``I think post-September 11 forced the US to look at the bigger picture. Good relations between India and the US will allow us to do long-term business. Now the door is open for us,`` Hammond said.

Lockheed Martin is also exploring a plan with domestic aircraft maker Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) to co-produce or fully manufacture defence equipment under licence.

``Certain equipment such as the air frames and design and engineering are being looked into. HAL has the capability,`` said Michael Kelly, Lockheed Martin`s director for international market development.

``A team of engineers from Lockheed had already had first visits to the factories of HAL and a second team is to come soon. We are also looking into software development and maintenance. There is a great potential,`` Kelly said.

``It is more relevant as the world is moving towards a networked warfare system,`` Kelly said.

Earlier this week Lockheed Martin offered a lavish range of hardware including F-16 fighter jets to replace India`s ageing fleet of Soviet-built MiG-21 warplanes.

On Thursday it added its P-3 Orion to the list and said the Indian navy was negotiating to buy them.

``Initial requirement (for the Indian navy) will be about eight to 12 aircraft,`` said Dennys Plessas, vice president of business development initiatives for Lockheed.

He said talks started about a year ago and were now on a ``government-to-government level.``

Saima Shah; thank you for saying that. :)

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mohar 11, hamid m

who will do it?

IMHO Saira will do it. The ever resilient, living a hard life, without inherited wealth, the darkies, the dispossessed who will do it. Because they have nothing to be afraid of either way. They cannot escape to North America, they are not upwardly mobile, they have courage because they have no recourse but to be the catalysts of change. But other people must provide the intellectual tools for them to carve out a viable future. It is the middle classes who have to recognize the path they are on, and collude in both the construction of values and the enforcement of those values. People like RJ will help recognize the problem, people like Saira will execute. But they must talk. they must have open avenues to communicate.

Pakistan`s satellite



President Pervez Musharraf is excited about Paksat-I. A news report in Dawn recently quoted him as saying that Pakistan`s space programme was now a reality and our scientists must build indigenous satellites within three years, instead of five years. According to the president, Pakistan`s space programme is now ahead of India`s.

Paksat-I was built by Boeing for Indonesia and was launched from Kourou in French Guiana in 1996. It was then known as PALAPA I. Immediately, some electrical problems occurred in the satellite.

It was declared unusable and insurance claims were settled. Then Greece leased it (and named it Anatolia I) but found it useless. Pakistan leased it to save the only geo-stationary slot left to it.

This satellite does not function during eclipses as the rechargeable batteries fail during this period. It costs the Pakistan treasury $40 million a year to lease this satellite.

At the current exchange rate, the cost to the people of Pakistan is about Rs40,000 per minute to operate Paksat-I. Now it is for the Pakistani scientists to prove that this valuable tool is operated properly to help promote education in Pakistan.

KISHAM BHATTA

Texas, USA

/// I have heard so much of pak industries, their capabilities. This shows the simple lie that the pakistanis have fed. I look forward to the day when the tahmeds and romairs will tell the truth, rather than trying to create an image for pakistan

#8 by hamidm2
//...and who is going to do all this ?...//

Classic problem - who is going to bell the cat?

People of Pakistan of love their military and their COAS. Military is their Messiah and Musharraf, their ``Mai-Baap``. So who is going to bell the cat? Not the mice population of Pakistan - they don`t even realize how the military cat has ensnared them and eating them slowly.

How about miliatry`s messiah - a.k.a. America. Military doesn`t answer to the mice population but it sure does grovel in front of America. And we all know America is angry, very very angry.

MATTER OF PRINCIPLES,

Pakistan ary will be taking part in the planning for the invasion of Iraq, because pakistan is part of the coalition against terror. Pakistan is also on the security council, again elected by the support of islamic countries. If they vote agaisnt uncle sam, no weapons for mushy, if he supports uncle sam, the mullahs will get him.

This is a sad situation for a man to be in, when all that he wanted was not to be sacked from the military. he just wanted to keep his job. He is the Tuglak of pakistan.

Jahan

``To wind up, it would be pertinent to mention that utilizing gullible youth, as cannon fodder under the cover of “jihad” despite ploughing the lion’s share of scarce national resources into defence is/was deplorable, whatever gauge of ethics/patriotism one may apply. What purpose does the half-million strong army serve if jihad still has to be carried out by civilian mercenaries?``

We have many military men like romair, and naturally no one has dared to tell the truth. Pak military is an exploitative structure, it cannot protect the frontiers, it can only loot its own. The sad fact is that with the educated middle class like the tahmeds, not daring to join your chorus, are simply supporting the looters.

The good part is the convergence of the jihadists and the military. It is under pressure from the jihadists in the military that musheraff was forced to banish the bhutto and the sheriffs so that the islamists have become the majority of elected reps. Hopefully the next election will see the complete merging of the military, jihadits and the politicians. Then you know that time for liberation has come. You can look for indian troops from afghanistan, india and iran, and then you will no that freedom is at the doorstep. Till then support the military, support the jihadists, support tahmed and other mullahs with beard in the belly.

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Riffat - well said - suger-coated but you got the message across.

The Great Soviet Empire evaporated into thin air with all its might because the Russians had to queu up for even a loaf of bread.

The Japanese with only 1% expenditure on defence have a say in the world affairs and are the second biggest GDP earners.

Moral of the story is that the strength of a nation is no more in the numbers of its soldiars and their hardware. It is in the collective factors such as the political stability, economic strength, industrial prowess, quality of its human resorces and its natural resources.

So if I was an enemy of Pakistan, I need not fight it to win. I only need to creat an environment where it dumps its resources into unproductive channels, remains politically unstable, goes down economically and my battle is won.

Is that being done? and is Pakistan fully in the trap?

Still there is time to recover?

Urstruly, from another board,

Thanks for the convoluted response. I accept that you cannot come up with a one liner, hinduism is as good as islam, becaue it would be against the book and it would be againt TNT that created pakistan. With the ISI, jihadi link, such a one liner could be fatal. Islam is as good as hinduis, sorry I have to go, RSS is knocking on my doors.

R.J. well said,

We need food+water, clothing, shelter, education and health care in Pakistan. We need people power and not khaki power there.

Someday........

Ras

........simply brilliant! ......... another expert opinion on how to fix the khaki problem, solve world hunger, and fix that big hole in the ozone layer ................just brilliant! ........

............ and while we are at it, i think we should also start a cereal factory to compete with fauji foundation and privatize NLC, FWO, Askari Bank, Askari Insurance, Bharia Foundation, Shaheen Foundation and free all the cows imprisoned by the military dairy farm system .............and who is going to do all this ? ...... jamali, or the cattle thieves of gujrat ? .........perhaps nawabzada nasrullah can put on his fez and march on army house with his half-cocked hookah?...... or maybe imran khan can use his one vote in parliament to trump the generals ............. i say, let`s do it ! ........ excelsior !

Thank you Riffat Jahan. I guess it does need to be said over and over again that a comprehensive overhaul is required of the Pakistan Army, and for them to have no power over how civilians live their lives, or policymaking.
for the rest, I turn it over to Romair and the Pakistan-India love fest.

The question to ask is whether the Pakistani armed forces are a defensive or offensive tool? If offensive, than the various conflicts have shown that it can not bring any gains to Pakistan. If defensive, than my question to the Pakistanis is if they believe that India has designs on Pakistani territory.

I doubt if that is the case. Also in todays global world it is very risky to attempt to gain territory by war. Iraq and Serbia are prime example of what can happen. China which has the capicity to get Taiwan by force has not attempted to do so.

As such the pakistani armed forces are irrelevant. They are a burden on the pakistani exchecker with no productivity whatsoever.