There have been some people on this site that have touted the Indian military and talked about how great they are, but if you examine closely you'll find that they are almost all Indian.  A lot of people in the world accuse the Americans of arrogance, but the Indians make us look modest by comparison.  In college I had an Indian professor in an American poltics class, and all I heard the whole semester is how India is superior to America in every way.  One day she was going on and on about how badly America treats minorities compared to India.  I'd had enough so I pointed out that India's treatment of minorities like the Sikhs is less than commendable.  She brushed it off and said, "You don't know what you are talking about.  The Sikhs are crazy."

 

From everything I've read the modern Indian military is a joke.  In a fair fight they would get thumped by any modern European military, and probably most of your more modern Third World militaries.  They have some modern equipment, but almost all of it is foreign.  Their military industry is an embarassment.  They have been working on a home grown main battle tank for decades and still haven't gotten it right.  The only military advantage that the Indians have is shear numbers.   Other than that they are unremarkable in my opinion. 

By the way your professor sounded like a bit of a psycho, anti-American much?

Folks, I am an Indian and there are a few unpartial facts I will bring to the fore. Firstly, India is one of the few countries left in the world where America and Americans are greatly admired. Right from science and industry to education to military, we are in total awe of how America has built itself. We strive to be like them and take measures to get our population out of poverty. Having said this, your university professor of Indian origin seems to be demented and doesnt speak for all Indians. Unlike China, wew consider America as an indespensible ally no matter what the geo-political situation.

 

Now on the military front, India is a balanced power. Indegineuous research is the biggest drawback in India due to bureaucratic hurdles. It's true that the Indian Army is the 4tht largest in the world and size could mean comprormize on quality, however it is one of the most disciplined, professional and trained organization in the country. We are upgrading our weapons fleet with the latest (150 billion USD deal for next geneatiton fighter aircrafts is underway.). The variety of weapons from multiple sources is a way to hedge our risk of high dependency on one supplier in a fast changing world. India is slowly moving away from soviet weaponry however since its own reasearch programs are very slow, it depends a lot on imports. The supply can be compromised in times of conflict if the dependancy is on one supplier. The Navy has evolved itself into a true blue water navy with reach as far off as Indonesia from our coastline. True, that recent ships that India has purchased are junk, but that is a non-expensive stop-gap arrangement while the indigeneous ships roll-out. The Navy has all-indian-made frigates and destroyers. The russian aircraft carier Gorshkov is a temporary fittment while the naval dockyard produce India;s own next geneation aircraft carrier in 2014. The Navy is amongst the most advanced of the 3 forces for indegineous development.

 

The army is working on a concept soldier called "soldier as a system" which will enable its soldier to be prepared for modern warfare at par with the best in the world. Indian army already has started raising battallions on this line and it will take another 5 years for an implementation across its 2 million army and BSF forces.

 

And honestly, no point in comparing the Indian army to Europe's since the ideology and mandate of the indian army is different with totally differernt situation and challenges. India no longer regards Pakistan as a threat. The Indian armed forces can militarily neutralize pakistani war machine within weeks. however that is not the intention unless mumbai like attacks pre-empt such a situation. China is what India is preparing for. China is following a policy of encircling India through pakistan, nepal, bangladesh, myannmar and sri-lanka. It will be a cold war since India already has the capability to ensure mutually assured destruction with China.

 

Hope this gives a picture.

this covers the picture to some extent, but there is still the widespread insistence that the Indian forces are superior to their European counterparts, i still believe this to be false, as for myself coming for Britain, and no offence is meant here but i would sleep soundly at night if it came to a war between our two nation, as i know that the British armed forces would be able to dominate any potential engagement (as i mentioned no disrespect intended towards your nation), in fact there would be very few countries i would be worrying over number 1 being the USA, but let?s face it, I?m sure that won?t happen in a very very long time if at all.

i am pleased that you have realised that size often compromises quality, this is true of all forces number more than a couple of hundred thousand men and definitely no more than 300,000, it does not matter their size of your support structure or your budget it even applies to the US armed forces (although some would not like to admit it, ha-ha http://www.strategypage.com/CuteSoft_Client/CuteEditor/Images/emwink.gif" alt="" />) but in saying this the US armed forces are the most powerful in today?s age as they have achieved a near perfect balance

i wouldn?t go so far as to call it that yet, maybe it is, but an effective one that has any real force behind it?, i doubt that very much at this stage, look who its up against, the prestigious Royal Navy, the mighty American Navy (correctly termed the US Navy) and the French Navy, i think there are a few others to name, but i cannot remember them all.

Also your comments about the Indian future soldier program, i have seen this, however other nations are far ahead in the development of their programs such as the US with their future soldier program or the British with FIST and the French with their own indigenous program, i also think it?s a little too ambitious for India to be moving in such a direction at this moment in time, the nations who are developing future soldier programs have secured their place in today?s generation of combat, they are the pinnacle of what this current technology can achieve, the only logical step forward is development, i would think it is more suitable for India to secure its place in the current generations technology before it develops further I.E a perfected/fully developed military, i just think India is overstretching itself and getting way ahead of where it is.

regards JTR~~

Folks, I am an Indian and there are a few unpartial facts I will bring to the fore. Firstly, India is one of the few countries left in the world where America and Americans are greatly admired. Right from science and industry to education to military, we are in total awe of how America has built itself. We strive to be like them and take measures to get our population out of poverty. Having said this, your university professor of Indian origin seems to be demented and doesnt speak for all Indians. Unlike China, wew consider America as an indespensible ally no matter what the geo-political situation.

 

Now on the military front, India is a balanced power. Indegineuous research is the biggest drawback in India due to bureaucratic hurdles. It's true that the Indian Army is the 4tht largest in the world and size could mean comprormize on quality, however it is one of the most disciplined, professional and trained organization in the country. We are upgrading our weapons fleet with the latest (150 billion USD deal for next geneatiton fighter aircrafts is underway.). The variety of weapons from multiple sources is a way to hedge our risk of high dependency on one supplier in a fast changing world. India is slowly moving away from soviet weaponry however since its own reasearch programs are very slow, it depends a lot on imports. The supply can be compromised in times of conflict if the dependancy is on one supplier. The Navy has evolved itself into a true blue water navy with reach as far off as Indonesia from our coastline. True, that recent ships that India has purchased are junk, but that is a non-expensive stop-gap arrangement while the indigeneous ships roll-out. The Navy has all-indian-made frigates and destroyers. The russian aircraft carier Gorshkov is a temporary fittment while the naval dockyard produce India;s own next geneation aircraft carrier in 2014. The Navy is amongst the most advanced of the 3 forces for indegineous development.

 

The army is working on a concept soldier called "soldier as a system" which will enable its soldier to be prepared for modern warfare at par with the best in the world. Indian army already has started raising battallions on this line and it will take another 5 years for an implementation across its 2 million army and BSF forces.

 

And honestly, no point in comparing the Indian army to Europe's since the ideology and mandate of the indian army is different with totally differernt situation and challenges. India no longer regards Pakistan as a threat. The Indian armed forces can militarily neutralize pakistani war machine within weeks. however that is not the intention unless mumbai like attacks pre-empt such a situation. China is what India is preparing for. China is following a policy of encircling India through pakistan, nepal, bangladesh, myannmar and sri-lanka. It will be a cold war since India already has the capability to ensure mutually assured destruction with China.

 

Hope this gives a picture.

I agree with you JTR to some extent on logistical nightmares being dogging the Indian Armed forces. THis would have been more true about 5 years back but since then the army has made semantical changes to its war doctrine. The Indian army's "cold start" doctrine was built specifically to address the logistical issues that it discovered during the 2002 war-like confrontation with pakistan post the terrorist attack on the Indian parliament. It took India 6 weeks to amass 700,000 thousand soldiers on its borders along with the support infrastructure in order to be war- ready. this led to the window of opportunity of surgical strikes (when the iron was hot) to dissappear as foreign diplomacy gathered momentum after the launch of "war-on-terror" (pun intended :)) .

 

You will find more information on the doctrine itself on >> which has an exhaustive list of Indian defence preparedness. On the question of having large number of soldiers and maintaining the standard of training, we must factor in the length of the International border that India needs to defend. Also we must note that most of the border is hostile thus needing more boots on the ground. Indian space programme lately has been doing well to augment ground forces. However, the terrain + cross-border infiltration (apologize to be political here) across a porous border bring up the need for such large numbers. Having said that India has a force of close to 100,000 special forces trained by British and Israely special forces. It has a world-class jungle warfare school that trains british and american soldiers in urban and jungle warfare to deal with situatitons in Iraq. This because India has been facing insurgency in Kashmir and north-east since the last 25 years and has known well to deal with it.

 

To answer your question, yes, India does rely on a lot of different weapon systems. Hoever there's another flavor to it. The country has realized that its way behind in military technology versus the western counterparts when it comes to being indigeneous. So the new mantra is joint collaboration in all new projects. India jointly developed the fastest cruise missile "Brahmos" in collaboration with russian scientists. We are having missile defence and supersonic missles in joint collaboration with Israel. This way we are getting the latest weapons and acquiring knowledge of cutting edge technologies. THis will be a game changer 5-7 years down the line.