Budget constraints push Army to begin restructuring exercise

NEW DELHI, JAN 7: Exigencies imposed by budgetary constraints and the secure shadow of a credible nuclear deterrent have compelled the Ar...

NEW DELHI, JAN 7: Exigencies imposed by budgetary constraints and the secure shadow of a credible nuclear deterrent have compelled the Army to begin a restructuring exercise. This is for the first time that any armed force has moved in this direction and also the first time that a non-Armyman was invited to participate in discussions on this subject. A recent conference at Shimla conducted by the Army Training Command, as well as the last Combined Commanders conference, saw Defence Minister George Fernandes as the first non-Armyman included in what an officer called “purely an in-house exercise”. Fernandes was reported to have been so engrossed in the debate that he extended his stay at Shimla and even returned there after a short trip to Srinagar. The thrust of the restructuring effort, say sources, is to consolidate the Army. “Years of budgetary cuts have left us with serious gaps in lethal and non-lethal items. The entire modernisation programme has been severely affected,” said an officer. “Theemphasis, therefore, is to restructure in order to first consolidate what we already have, make that effective and then build upon it,” he added. The other impetus behind the consolidation programme is to help in the modernisation of the Army. “We have a WE (war establishment scales for equipment and men in a combat unit and headquarter) and a PE (peace establishment scales for static and training institutions) that are basically World War II vintage. They have to be re-evaluated from a modern perspective, taking into account the enormous technological changes under way the world over,” added the officer.

Taking the example of the much-reported shortage of officers, he said by the restructuring exercise as well as the WE/PE rationalisation, “we could virtually be halving the shortfall”.

Even as a manpower suppression of 50,000 is nearing completion, further restructuring is now going on to reduce standing combat arms without affecting security. In that direction, said the sources, the currentholdings of hardware are going to go through a rationalisation process. Combat arms are expected to shed some of their equipment in order to make up for deficiencies in the war wastage reserves (WWR equipment and supplies catering for wartime consumption calculated according to duration of conflict), which is currently at its worst levels. While some Infantry, Mechanised, Armoured Corps and Field Artillery units are likely to be disbanded on the advice of the various colonels of the regiments, the static Air Defence units are slated to revert to their earlier Territorial Army status, thus saving enormously on manpower costs. The disbandment of combat units will release both equipment, as well as manpower, to be employed elsewhere, said the sources. “The tanks, infantry combat vehicles and field guns from the disbanded units will then go into consolidating the WWR. Since we cannot look after our WWR from budgetary allocations, it might as well be done from resources already with us. But all this will onlybe done after proper studies are done on current and projected adversaries with the participation of the Military Operations Directorate,” said a senior officer. The manpower thus made surplus, as well as those from the disbanded Infantry units, will be reallocated to other arms and roles as deemed necessary at that time, said the sources. “While this saves us running manpower costs, it will also result in cutting training expenses since trained manpower will be made available. The static Air Defence units, on the other hand, will now be manned by the Territorial Army just as they used to be even during the 1971 war,” said the officer.

The logic behind changing the manpower profile of the Air Defence units is to reduce soaring manpower costs. “Since they are in any case static units, it makes more sense to have TA chaps rather than spending so much just on manpower,” added the officer. At the root of this exercise, say serving as well as retired officers, is to finally shape the Army into a moderncapability based force. “We cannot continue in this way anymore. A dispassionate threat analysis, force restructure and equipment policy must dictate the capability based structure of the Army,” said a senior retired officer.