habal wrote:pakistan is ruled by the army, thus there is no RoE for them.
Now coming to India. Here armed forces are ruled officialy by politicians (people's representatives), but unoficially by IAS bureaucrats manning MoD, MEA, cabinet secretaries, IAS deputed to PMO, PS to PM etc. Now for this bunch it is important to preserve their credibility to foreign embassies, for sake of Green Card holder son, daughter-in-law, dadaji, mamaji based in US.
Next WB/IMF/UN/ICJ/basel convention deputation depends upon their 'international acceptability' (trans to inaffectualness, passiveness), son studying college in massa etc.
Not sure I agree completely here. Yes, 'Babus' are loathe to get their hands dirty, but the reasons you mention are not entirely true.
This lot will never allow any alteration to RoE if they can help it. As tsarkar mentioned, any armed services personnel who violates this RoE will be punished severely to satisfy the gallery to international approvers whom this group is catering to.
Yes, this may well be the case and there is enough justification in peacetime for this, else you will have Rambos doing things that would not always be in the national interest. However, it is not to 'play to a gallery' but to maintain the civilian and elected democratic government control over the military. Else we might as well become another Bakistan.
So thus you see the dichotomy while politicians are all gung ho and 'giving go ahead for any action', nothing concrete is taking place.
Only way to remove this restriction on RoE is to hand over any operation completely to a CDS or air/army chief and that will take away any obstructions bureaucracy can pose in a taking fight back into enemy territory.
I thought that (bolded part) was the case here. Are you saying that the chain of command does NOT go like this:
PM>NSA/DM>COAS>Regional Commander>Squadron Commander>Pilot
There may be a few others in the chain, but where does the Babu come in? Are you saying the ground controller is a Babu? How does he even know what to do with all that information? I am not sure this is how it all works, but I may be wrong.
There is a lot that happened that we do not know about. I've said this elsewhere, it would not be in our interest to keep asking for details or probing this deeply. I am sure that the armed forces have really had complete (well, almost) freedom to retaliate in a fitting manner without tying their hands. There have to be general guidelines but within a broad framework they must have been given definite RoE from the top.
I think it does the brave people on the front lines a disservice to question their actions in this manner. From what you are saying, WingCo would become an aberration and no longer a daring soldier who took the fight to the enemy.
Just my opinion of course.