India's special operations forces to shrug off 'white elephant' label

Source
China Military Online
Editor
Huang Panyue
Time
2019-04-10 17:59:03

The picture shows an Indian special operations soldier.

By Wang Quan

According to a report from India’s Defense News, Nirmala Sitharaman, India’s Defense Minister, recently approved a quantity procurement program of special operation equipment from the United States, in order to strengthen the operational capabilities of Indian Special Operations Forces.

Flashy but useless “white-elephant armed forces”

India’s Army, Navy and Air Force, as well as its internal affairs departments, all of them have their respective special forces, totaling tens of thousands of active personnel.

However, due to the deficiency of the authorities and the lack of combat tactical training, as well as the power decentralization, equipment shortage and weak ability in information acquisition, the Indian Special Forces are widely considered as “white-elephant armed forces”, that is, a troop “of enormous size, but flashy and useless.”

The report pointed out that the performance of the Indian Special Forces in the India-Pakistan conflict occurred in February 2019 has further confirmed the above assertion. Quoting experts’ opinion, The Economic Times of India said that the Indian special forces do not live up to the reputation, since there is a clear gap when being compared with the average level of the world’s Special Forces”.

In fact, the “White Elephant” label has been attached to the Indian Special Forces for 11 years. In November 2008, a group of militants sneaked into Mumbai, India’s most populous city, to launch a terrorist attack. It took 9 long hours for India’s National Security Guard (NSG) (aka, Black Cat) to arrive finally and made a surprising damage rate of 2:20, with 2 militants killed and 20 casualties on the Indian part. This result of the incident has provoked an international outcry about the operational disabilities of Indian Special Forces.

Hard to break the institutional barriers

In order to shrug off the “white elephant” label, the Indian Special Forces have been “lavishing money on” fancy equipment. In 2018, the Indian Ministry of Defense issued several procurement contracts for weapons and equipment to enhance the operational capabilities of the Indian Army, Navy and Air Force special operations forces. Not long ago, India approved a plan to purchase special equipment from the United States, including assault rifles, ammunition and parachutes, which will cost 100 billion rupees (about 9.8 billion RMB).

Based on the amount of purchases, military experts speculated that the final amount of weapons and equipment purchased from the US would exceed these listed above, and high-tech information systems and night vision and detection systems may also be included in the deal.

In addition, another major procurement would be the delivery vehicles used to transport Indian Special Forces personnel and their equipment. India Today reported that a senior officer from the Indian Special Forces had complained about the poor maneuver ability of the troop, and they still rely on moving on foot to get to the enemy territory. However, the closest distance to enemy is about 100 to 150 kilometers away and it’s beyond our reach,” he added.

As for the large procurement contracts placed by the Indian part, some analysts pointed out that despite the sophisticated weapons and equipment they have purchased, without reforming its institutional system, the Indian Special Forces could only play a role of “senior infantry”.

An officer from the Indian Special Forces said in an interview with India Today that “the Indian Special Forces previously under the control of the combat command at the Military Command level have been dispatched to units at the corps or regiment level, in order to perform some difficult infantry missions, instead of focusing on strategic or tactical-objective nature missions.”

In addition, the Indian Special Forces have also faced many issues in terms of institutional system, the most prominent of which is the severe segmentation undermining its joint operational capabilities. And the lack of a unified command and control system makes it difficult to comprehensively acquire and process information, limiting their ability to perform strategic tasks. India Today reported that in order to change the current situation, the Indian Army, Navy, and Air Force have applied to the Ministry of National Defense to establish a unified special operational command. They are still waiting for a response.

(The original article was published on China’s Defense Newspaper, an official newspaper belongs to the Chinese PLA News Media Center, on April 8, 2019. It was edited and translated into English by China Military Online)

 

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