Introduction
The approval for restructuring of the Indian Army was granted by the Defence Minister Rajnath Singh in August 2019. The aim of restructuring the 1.3 million strong Indian Army is to make it ‘leaner and meaner’ and enhance its combat effectiveness.
At present the Army is structured to have 3-5 units comprising a Brigade, 3-5 Brigades comprising a Division, 3-4 Divisions comprising a Corps. The various corps are equipped and organized to constitute ‘strike corps’ for offensive role and ‘holding corps’ to maintain territorial integrity of own international border.
These units have a specific role while they are a part of a particular formation (strike/ holding) and as it moves to another formation its operational role also changes. Besides, it is only during an operation that various combat and combat support elements are grouped together to fight as battle groups. Hence, their integration and synergy may fall short of the expectations.
Further, it was observed during OP Parakram, when India planned to launch an offensive into Pakistan after the terrorist attack on Parliament on 13 December 2001 that it took more than two weeks of time to mobilize and reorganize troops into battle groups for launching across the border.
In order to improve synergy, cohesiveness, save time of mobilization and enhance combat effectiveness, Army will now restructure to have 11 to 13, terrain and role specific Integrated Battle Groups (IBGs). The IBGs will have both offensive and defensive roles.
The size of these battle groups will be bigger than a Brigade and smaller than a Division. These battle groups will comprise of all the elements that will be fighting together and will be located in a manner that they can be effective in a much shorter timeframe and with much greater effectiveness to fight a short, intense war and capture shallow objectives without crossing the nuclear threshold of both our adversaries.
Evolving Military Doctrine
The Chinese debacle of 1962 had put caution into the mindset of our military planners and political masters. The Army operations were mainly infantry oriented and was organized, equipped and trained to prevent territorial loss. The military doctrine was based on allowing the enemy to attack first, absorb the attack and then launch a counter attack.
It was only after the success of the 1971 war, where Indian Army launched mobile, aggressive operations using PT-76 tanks that the mindset began to change. Bangladesh was liberated in just a 14 days war with Pakistan.
The PT-76 regiment that participated in the war for liberation of Bangladesh was 45 Cavalry and I have had the proud privilege of commanding this exceptional Armoured Regiment (though much later in 2006).
The military think tank, after the success of 1971 war, realized the significance of mechanizing the forces to achieve tangible results during combat and the first mechanized infantry unit came into existence in 1979.
Thereafter, the infantry units were provided with Armoured Personnel Carrier (APC), which could carry the infantry to the objective speedily to take the best advantage of the ‘shock and awe’ effect created by the tanks that had overrun the objective.
Later, in the late 1980s and early 1990s, there was a continuous process of evolution of the mechanized forces, including their equipment, training and operational doctrine.
The Army was restructured into ‘Strike Corps’ and ‘Holding Corps’ that were appropriately equipped to execute their operational roles more effectively.
The application of strike corps during a war, owing to its gigantic size and unwieldy composition is likely to be time consuming, cumbersome and offers conspicuous signatures to the adversary to blunt it by employing its own strike elements even before it can be effectively launched.
A number of concepts have been tried out by the Army to overcome this constraint. The most prominent one being the ‘Cold Start Strategy’, which means striking the enemy straight from the unit garages by prepositioning troops and support elements appropriately.
The thought process behind the ‘Cold Start Strategy’ actually forms the precursor for the concept of ‘Integrated Battle Groups’ (IBG).
Advantages of Integrated Battle Group Concept
China and Pakistan are both nuclear states. Pakistan as a policy has enunciated that it will use nuclear weapons the moment India threaten its green belt or its nuclear arsenals or if it feels that Pakistan is going to suffer major losses during a war.
Therefore, it is pertinent for India to not breech Pakistan’s nuclear threshold during war. It is for this reason that the concept of IBG is being formulated, which will go only for shallow objectives with speed and synergy and will not give a reason to Pakistan to press the nuclear button.
It is seen from the foregoing that force restructuring of the Army in IBGs will accrue the following advantages:
- Integrated Battle Groups will be located close to their designated area of operation for sharper responses. Depending upon their location, their mobilization will not take more than 12 to 24 hours.
- The components of the IBG will become more familiar with the terrain and the geographic advantages/ challenges.
- The combat and combat support elements being co-located will have better familiarization, integration, training, understanding each other’s strengths and weaknesses to optimize synergy during operations.
- Since the composition of the IBG will be based on threat perception, planning and rehearsals for all conceivable eventualities will be possible for more effective execution of the task at hand.
- It will be possible to optimize resource allocation based on task, terrain and threat, especially in an eventuality of a two front war scenario (Pakistan and China).
- The limited task of capturing shallow objectives for the IBG are realistically achievable, offers greater dividends, and also does not breech the nuclear threshold of the adversary.
Training Exercise Scheduled for IBGs
Three IBGs, picked out from the newly raised Panagarh based Mountain Strike Corps participated in a training exercise in September 2019.
These IBGs were supported by their affiliated armour (tanks), artillery, attack helicopters, infantry combat vehicles and all combat support and logistic elements in a simulated situation across the Line of Actual Control closer to Doklam.
The Yol (Himachal Pradesh) based 9 Corps also undertook the test bed exercise and it is believed to be the first formation that will be reorganized into IBGs for deployment along the Western border by the end of this year. Subsequently, the Siliguri based 33 Corps and the newly raised Mountain Strike Corps located in Panagarh will be reconfigured into IBGs.
Conclusion
The IBGs are terrain, task and threat centric. In order to make them lighter for speedy application, these will be low on logistics and lack reserves, because of which they will have limited staying power and hence will need backup.
Therefore, the present organizations of Brigades and Divisions will still continue, only some of the Divisions, about 11 to 13, will be reconfigured into Integrated Battle Groups (IBGs) that will be controlled by the respective Corps HQs.