chetak wrote:I have participated in many and no one opens their mouth, irrespective of what "agreements" have been signed. Everyone smiles, claps, shake hands and then quietly head home after the debrief and only a very few are allowed to speak.
The place is swarming with intelligence types from both sides, watching like hawks, anyway.
Agreements are hopeful documents and just to maintain cordial relations, signed under duress from our govt under serious pressure from the other govt.
I disagree, especially about the last part because I know for a fact that very few of these exercises are "under duress". In fact your entire account makes it seem that we are forced into these events by malevolent entities and we are not competent (gora worship, loose lips) to manage our affairs or even run our own ship tightly. On the contrary, many of these exercises were pushed for by senior leadership in our services, and took advantage of the available opportunities, as they saw the advantages they would bring in terms of benchmarking our own capabilities, figure out what we are lacking in & how to improve. It was give & take, facilitated by the MEA who used it for projecting our image internationally as a side benefit.
remember the kilo story and how much pressure we came under from them as well as our own bab(oo)n gangs slyly looking for visas and jobs??
don't bet coin on such fruitless endeavours.
I say again, no one will trust another military. we will never fight alongside them as allies because they will never cede command to us anywhere and under any circumstances and we will not be commanded by them.
Its not a question of trust or friendship or anything of the sort but somethings which are far more prosaic.
Do we understand their SOPs and baseline procedures?
If push came to shove, is there interoperability?
Under the mutually agreed upon parameters is there equivalence? Are we far ahead in some areas or behind? Both equipment and training.
The last is often the most commonly understood one, but the first two are equally important & which is why the Pakis and Chinese get really upset whenever we exercise with the US/western alliances.
Even in the last, these exercises serve as the impetus to change thinking of the day - Cope India is often talked of how it woke up the USAF to change its training. Similarly, several exercises in India helped the IAF in figuring out how to deal with certain platforms and capabilities they may face in the future from our regional adversaries.
we may just end up on opposite sides one day, and one never knows how the future will pan out. So keeping the powder dry is of vital importance.
silence and playing dumb beats any "agreement" or "SOP" or "training benefit".
Agree with the first but disagree with the second. Silence and playing dumb only works insofar you have everything and know everything. Even the US spends a huge amount of effort & coin in training with almost every other force across the world & learning from them, and incorporating the lessons. We have also picked up a huge amount of learning from our exercises with NATO & other AFs and have tweaked our capabilities accordingly. We need not share everything we have in our toybox either in these exercises, which is why there are all sorts of notional limits on weapons put, maneuvering limits, simulated benefit from countermeasures etc.
pilots and crews are smart enough to garner bits and pieces of savvy operational techniques and inspired use of systems and equipment capabilities without ever talking about it to the opposing side. once something exhibits even the smallest of patterns, it is easy for experienced hands to clearly discern it and decipher the use and find the counter.
The amerikis have already flown every aircraft in our inventory (or its very close cousin) somewhere or the other in the world.
You really can't find a counter to specific items in our inventory unless you own it, and in many cases what we own is unique to us. This is the reason why some of our aircraft only simulate specific capabilities & don't reveal the operational aspects.
they are very keen to understand our exploitation techniques because it sometimes reveals russian training methods, russian operational methodology and the Indian build up on that.
It is increasingly rare that we use any Russian training methods or operational methodology in any of our exploitation. In fact we have had several cases wherein we have gone back to the Russians to train with them to figure out how they use the equipment we originally procured from them, because they inducted it decades after we did, and are now drawing up SOPs which we developed on our own. Always helps to understand what their procedures are.
they certainly don't come here with gandhian principles on their minds.
Nor do we go there with any Gandhian principles in ours, at least not anymore. Its give and take and we are fully committed to taking our advantages as well.