It does not specify length of attachment...even the person I was listening to did not refer to length...I am pretty sure it was long enough for them to come up with a solution (don't ask me what it was) so that the young and impressionable babus and lady babus had to figure out how to put a stop to the 5:30am parades and eventually they did. Again this was a private conversation...so things should be left unstated at some point. The outcome was they were finally given a concession that they can get up at 7:30am and not attend parade.....again it has something to do with when breakfast and chai was served. Babus do not function without chai.

Oh and there is another fact that IA might lacks or the IN person I spoke to had better exposure.

Just like you can be a good politician but a lousy administrator, you can be a fine soldier/sailor/airman but a lousy administrator/manager. And when you goto Dilli-MOD/or whatever Sena Bhavan/or other places that require your services you are now in an integrated team. This might be second nature in the private sector but apparently due to reasons unknown in some instances they put the wrong person in the mix. And when you talk to your peers from FinMin, MOD etc you REPRESENT one of the services.

They do not care/may not be aware how many al-keeda you killed with your bare hands, you are there to talk to them about xxx project and you might know how important that is in al-keeda killing but you are still dealing with babus from FinMin and MOD who have a zillion projects and your xxx happens to one of them. It is unfair to expect FinMin or MOD babu to assume your xxx Project which will help kill al-keeda is more important (hypersimplification) than next guy they meet who is a IN guy who has yyy Project which might deal with next gen ECM. You piss (again hypersimplication) off the babu by telling him how you killed al-keeda with bare hands the IN guys bares the brunt of it.

And we are talking about jingo type projects, you need FinMin and MOD for bread & butter stuff like infrastructure etc. People management is very important.

Atleast in Bengaluru there is now a formal liaison unit setup between the City Police and the Military establishment. Earlier there were instances of Army and the Police going bersek and chasing each other all because of ego issues at both sides. With the liaison unit these incidents have pretty much stopped, and the unit also helps in other stuff like sharing intelligence, providing VIP security etc. etc.


If my understanding is correct, IPS has such a scheme. An IPS chap has to work in the levels of Constable,HC, SI etc. This is to basically learn what these grass-root level people actually do and how it is done.


Well put. And at these levels financial aspects also become important, because at the end of the day the FinMin Babus and MoD Babus also need to prepare some kind of balance sheet. For them the criteria of "important" may be totally different from the criteria used by the defence service officer. May be some thing like an me reporting a "critical issue" of my mobile phone being stolen to a Police officer who has to look into more critical issues like a couple of homicides, traffic accidents etc .

Sachin/George J: I do not believe in the argument above. In fact, it is symptomatic of the malaise of system where a babu sitting in the MOD/Fin Min has the decision making power to decide on what the services get;this when he may not understand didly sqaut about the system. In the case of weapon procurement there is only one angle;the requirement of services. It is exactly because you give powers to the Babus that they decide on these things as per their wimps and fancies. The budget has been sanctioned by the GOI in advance and it should the prerogative of the services to decide and buy things. While checks and balances are required to ensure no misuse of the system, it does not mean that a babu should have veto on what the services buy.

IIRC, there is an article on BR which shows the powers of a babu in deciding what the services (IAF in this case) purchase, even when they do not want it (buying more than required number of runway cratering bombs). The financial aspect is mean to an end, not an end itself. It is because the priorities are in reverse order that we have the case of Srervices surrendering the budget; which in itself is a brilliantly absurd scheme decided on by the some babu sitting in fin min

Dont know if this was posted or if it belongs here
MPVs handed over to Army
http://www.hindu.com/2009/10/31/stories ... 040400.htm

The vignette is about interacting with other stakeholders. This was far from a purchase related meeting...this was purely planning and getting consensus about where Project xxx and yyy fit into their long term plans. The services interact with civilians for a LOT of things it's not just procuring weapons in fact I am betting they do more interaction about regular stuff than jingo stuff........

I am trying to find an old article (2003-2004..before the 2005 floods) which talks about how the Navy refused or delayed (???) giving BMC permission to clean storm water drains in Navy Nagar and that leads to flooding in the Colaba area. There is nothing remotely glamorous about clearing/non clearing storm gutters...but pretty much everyone in Colaba suffers. The same thing applies to BMC vs Railways. There are storm drain on defense land and railway land but they still drain into the city's system.

Perhaps the defence of the entire nation, is also more important than a missing cellphone. While legitimate reviews by finance etc are necessary and acceptable, rank interference in matters where one is not sufficiently technically qualified, is certainly not.

I am glad you used "entire nation" because the vignette I provided is exactly that. IA guy kills al-keeda with his bare hands for a living and has some new funda tech which will help kill more al-keeda. Navy guy might sit in a/c ops room...eating cake...staring at IVCS screens that provide the next gen ECM. Again you yourself said "defense of the entire nation".

I am certainly not qualified to say which project is more important. And then suppose IAF guy comes in after that some advanced fuel management system for the FGFA...you really cannot say one project is more important than the other. And there are real world BUDGET CONSTRAINTS. So the FinMin guy associated with MOD goes to his FinMin senior babu...and there he meets the FinMin guy associate with Health and Family welfare...again BOTH are FinMin guys...who just happened to be associated with different depts. The Family welfare guys says...I could use a few crore rupees for setting up 100 regional labs for next get flu virus testing....so which one is MORE important now....al-keeda killing/Naval ECM/AF fuel management or Influ A detection and surveillance.

There are real world problems, money is not infinite.

**
Why not gas or smoke grenedes? why not aflame thrower?

Armed Forces joint exercise begins



Ankit

Now lets get back to the thread and its subject!

Army patents two varieties of camouflage
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city ... 184976.cms

Surya wrote:

Somewhere SSreidhar was asking why the house was not brought down
According to Gaurav, major Suri was not given permission
Someone's head needs to roll for that
http://headlinestoday.intoday.in/index. ... ntid=63655

Check the reader comments in the article:

Quote:

dear Gaurav......i respect you for bringing out such facts.....i agree to every single letter of this article.....and i completetely understand what a family of martyr goes through as i belong to a martyr's family.....I lost my elder brother Capt S K Choudhary, KC ( Posthomous ) , SM on 27 Jan 2008 .....He laid down his life fighting with dreaded ULFA terrorists in Nao Pathar, Assam on 27 Jan 2008 jus a day after winning Sena Medal.....The CO gave us a cover up story about the whole operation....As my father is an army officer and I myself m a serving Airforce officer, We could not understand the circumstance of my elder brother's death....As we started digging for the truth, we found out that my brother was bleeding n injured for 1hr 30 mins...but he wasnt evacuted in time because of the mismanagement on the part of his CO and higher commanders....I am not saying all this without proof....We have sufficient proof to prove that it was an illegal covert operation and army has tried to cover it up....Just the thought that my brother was suffering with pain and was bleeding for such a long time doesnt let any member of my family sleep peacefully at night...we have written to Army Chief, defence ministry and everyoone possible to bring the people responsible to book....however, the response from army and govt has been very cold....our lives have been shattered forever with this loss....no matter how hard we try, we cant get this injustice out of our minds....if you are intrested in my brother's story , you can contact me on my email id....because my family is not going to sit idle till we bring such grredy commanders to book....i extend my deepest condolence to the martyr's family....keep up the good work....Jai Hind
Ankur Choudhary
September 26, 2009

A serving officer is making a direct accusation against another one?

Aditya,

I have seen his website http://indiaswarhero.com/index.html

A very poignant photograph of the father and two sons is here
http://indiaswarhero.com/new_images/pic_gallery/1.jpg

Finally !! At least a thought given to our poor soldiers dealing with such extremes of nature.

One had always wondered why could all of our high altitude posts not be completely modernized with good spacious and well protected concrete and metal structures with electricity, all modern amenities, water lines etc etc. After all, these are permanent positions of the Indian Army which will always be inhabited and manned...at all costs..what ever the development cost...it can not be more than the lives of our men, and if China and Pak can do it(or even if they do not), why should we be shy of taking care of our soldiers ?

Yes its shocking to hear of the conditions in which our soldiers are working there. I dont understand why commanding officers did not raise this issue before. Or is it that they did and were ignored till someone actually goes up there and sees it. As one of the comments in that article said....babus are overweight while our soldiers are underweight....who is the one doing the fighting !!!

They could also have talked to the Indian sceintists who travel to Antarctica- Maitri and Dakshin Gangotri about cold weather living conditions.

All that gear should be available from India itself. Hats off to Shaym Saran and his survey/report.

Don't know if this has been posted before - the Facebook fan page for Rashtriya Rifles.
Quite a few veterans are there and there are a few unpublished pics taken during ops as well.

Interstingly, there is a G Katoch active there. Some relation to the SF hero?

He went on a two month trek in Bhutan/NE after the IUCNA completion.

x-posting from viewtopic.php?p=766105#p766105

shiv wrote:

Also see
http://www.militaryphotos.net/forums/sh ... p?t=124994

Quote:

The patka helmets have a distinct advantage over standard bullet-proof helmets. Stadard bullet-proof helmets provide protection against 9mm weapons, whereas our patka helmets give protection against AK-47 to the forehead and rest of the head area.

If they are better than regular helmets, then why do we not see greater adoption amongst all the army soldiers.
Also, in the image at the link, the helmet is covering the neck area, while in the pics one sees on BR, there is no neck protection.

Very heavy!

I think almost all the equipment that the Indian scientists use for Maitri/DG are foreign sourced.

Its unfair to blame babus for this.

Consistently the armed forces have always overlooked small ticket items for big ticket items

Upgrading posts costs less than all the gizmos - 3000 crore is one hours scam money



Getting aerostat radars
ILS - (recent report) what prevented every airbase fromgetting upgraded upto now??
Hardened shelters etc etc

And it's on the recommendation of a babu that the upgradation work is going to be carried out

Hmm, Col Ajay Shukla had also gone to Arunachal for a few months some time ago.

New webportal of Indian army:

http://www.indianarmy.nic.in/Index.aspx ... cULYFlbeQ=

To be fair to the Govt, there is continual improvement of life on the posts. It is still not perfect, but then..........

When I joined, it was rum crate and ghee tin shitpots. Now there is FFLs. We had petromaxes and the jawans lanterns. It is now with generators for some hours. We had transistors, now there is generator run TVs. We had mud bunkers, now it is concrete. We had to pass through a series of transit camps to go on leave. Now we have ILs or AI charters. We could never speak to our folks at home, now there is satellite telephones!

Things are improving and they will continue to happen.

However, the flipside is we are getting soft and so all these problems of fragging and things like that!

nice photo of the smerch on the cover page....warms the cockles

The insurgency in J&K was crushed down becuz all sections of the govt - Army, police, intelligence, Politicos, BSF, CRPF, IPS, IAS, MEA (recall Abdullah and ABV coming togther to fight India's case in UNHCR in geneva- all this under a INC govt) Air Force, Civil administration all came together as one to crush the insurgency. There was tremedous camaderie amongst all...a job well done. I recall an IPS officer responding on TV with a deadpan response, we will take care of it to the news that Afghanis were infitrating with heavy weapons and OBL will be comin to JK.


This was a standard psyops campaign by Islamists across the valley......."OBL aa raha hai."

Oye Porkis....Kahan hai OBL aajkal?

Same during the Khalistan insurgency. We all love to put Arjun Singh down whenever we get the opportunity, However we will do well to remember he was the home minister at the height of the insurgency in the early to mid 80s. Later on he was Governor of Punjab when KPS Gill was wiping the floor with Khalistani turds.

The handling of the Nepal crisis so far is a master stroke that has not been understood or not paid attention by the forum maharathis. Bear in mind this is primarily a administration handling, army is not involved here at all.

As I said many years ago in the Red Storm rising article, the state does get it's act toogether but only at the 11th hour. The same is happening now for the Maoist problem.

The challenge is that since we are a democracy it takes longer to generate consensus in civil society to generate awareness and get the arms of the govt to start the execution.

sir,

How does it constitue a masterstoke? Or is this sarcasm?

am I mistaken or is it a fact that incidents of fragging have really come down in last few months ? I don't remember reading of any for quite some time.

fragging alone is not the index.

It is the scary bottom line!

One has to experience to realise!

On the other hand the generation of officers who have lived their life in the 80s onwards ie. through NE and J& K and IPKF think all the guys from 70s (many retired and writing wonderful books and papers) and before are useless and soft.

They have just experienced the 71 war and not much more.

I would like to correct.

Not only the have faced 1971, they have faced Kargil, IPKF and also CI.

Anything left?

And now they are writing books.

"Useless and soft"?
"experienced 71 war and not much more"?(yeah, 71 war is current generations' idea of fun time, isn't it?)
You claim to know a lot what later generation officers think. Is it just your guess or have you heard any IA officer express such shocking sentiments?
I, for one, doubt if [any] generation of officers would be naive enough to say that.

PS: Was your post supposed to be sarcastic?

I will take it with a pinch of salt.

Gaur

take it for what you think its worth. of course there will be exceptions.

Yes its a friend of mine (and Kapils )

Yes 71 was downright clean and simple compared the nastiness that has been IPKF, J&K etc


All young officer ranks of Kargil (Majors, captains, Lts) all would have joined after 1971. The Cols may have been in IMA around 71.

And Kargil was a war won by young officers.



Its interesting - one can say todays guys are soft - but there is major angst if some of the guys say the oldies were soft???

Guess it depends on who says it

^^
You mean that you actually heard an IA officer say that? Well, that may just be his personal opinion and not the general thinking. But then again, it may very well not be.
I certainly cannot claim to be privy to IA officers thoughts and opinion.

Also, 71 was clean and simple? Well, I guess this is truly a matter of opinion.
71 was conventional and what we faced later was very unconventional warfare. So, in this case, I somewhat get your point.

gaur

not just the unconventional aspect (which is huge) but just look at the improvement in weapons and firepower over the time

added later:

Yeah all opinions are personal - including the one claiming todays men are soft

No, it is not right - no matter who says it. Everybody is part of the continuum. If a senior says his juniors are soft, but isn't actively taking measures to fix it - he is part of the problem; his criticism negatively affects the morale without making any positive contribution to the discipline. Conversely if a junior shoots off his mouth about his seniors being "soft", he is at the very least a tactless immature jerk who is trampling legacy that gives weight to his own legitimacy; also someone whose behavior with senior NCOs and JCOs must be closely monitored, because it can have HUGE discipline and morale issues if he does something similar with those men of long service and experience. At any rate, it is something that must be resolved within the chain of command - not something for us to take sides on.