The Hindu : National : A view of the battlefield in the planning room

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, May 11, 2005

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National

A view of the battlefield in the planning room

Sandeep Dikshit

GAG (JALANDHAR): At 50-feet under the ground, the command post of Army's simulated war games being held after several years differed radically from the last near-war situation when it faced off with the Pakistan army in 2002. A bank of dozen computers transmitted information, a large screen provided video images of "enemy" movement and commanders gave instructions on secure handsets.

"This is not the World War II scenario any more. We are not blind at all and today have the capacity to see the battlefield in the planning room," said Brig. V.S. Gulia from the secure bunker for top Army commanders.

Being recreated for the media during daytime, the Army actually conducted its 10-day-long exercises in the heartland of Punjab at night. Unmanned aerial vehicles flew over "enemy" formations, 30-feet high newly acquired radars beeped incessantly and tanks and infantry soldiers glided across the flat terrain with the help of night vision devices.

In addition, the Army put its recently fashioned war doctrine to practical test. Helicopters inserted small teams of Special Forces (SF) personnel in the war zone while noiseless para-motors, or parachutes fitted with motors, carrying commandoes equipped with global positioning systems, altimeters and the latest communication systems informed their commanders about the battlefield what the unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) had missed.

"I am very impressed with the standard of the exercise. We spent a lot of money on this but there is no going away from the fact that the best way to train for war is to create realistic conditions," said the Chief of the Army Staff, J. J. Singh.

Joint control achieved

The exercise also achieved another aim that all militaries in the world are currently striving for — joint operations by the Army and the Indian Air Force (IAF) — and in the process wiped the smudge of mismatch between the two during the Kargil conflict. The issue was briefly a subject of acrimony but the services put that behind them and strove to act in tandem and thus ensured that the war game billed Exercise Vajra Shakti (lightening power) lived up to its name. The IAF flew 130 sorties by fighters, UAVs and helicopters and used lasers to destroy pinpoint targets that would have been otherwise difficult to detect and destroy from the air, a problem that was regularly faced during the Kargil operations.

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