Pakistan Army has started its biggest Military exercises in history. The exercise Azm-e-Nou 3  is outcome of two war games conducted by forces named as Azm-e-Nou 1 and Azm-e-Nou 2. In this exercise Pakistani Forces will practice its new concepts and doctrine to counter Indian Army’s Cold Start.

According to ISPR “AZM-e-NOU will begin with violent surprise attack by Fox Land’s Air force on Blue Land territory followed by ground invasion. In Initial stage 20 thousand Troops will Take Part in exercise and at later stage 50 thousand troops will be involved. In this exercise all forces and their wings will take Part. The battle situation will be generated in three operation sectors and all conventional weapons will be tested and practiced. According to agreement India has been informed about the military maneuvers.

Why Pakistan Army had to start this exercise? Especially more than hundred thousand of Pakistani troops are engaged in Counter terrorism operations in FATA…..To understand this we have to see developments on Pakistan’s eastern borders and threats originating from them.

Indian army is the biggest army in south Asia and is also one of the largest in the world. However, its biggest dilemma is Pakistani Armed Forces that are haunting it since the independence of both countries. The active strength of Indian army alone is more than 12 00,000. The army consist of 38 divisions, which are distributed in 5 tactical area commands namely

·         Northern Command” which is headquartered at Udhampur and is responsible for Indian Occupied Kashmir.

·        “Western Command”, which is headquartered at Chandimadir and is responsible for Punjab.

·        “Southern Command”, which is headquartered at Poona and is responsible for Gujrat and Maharashtra.

·        “Eastern Command”, which is headquartered at Calcutta and is responsible for counter-insurgency operations in Assam and defence of boarder with Bangladesh.

·        “Central Command”, which is headquartered in Luckhnow and consists of Indian army’s strike elements to take offensive against Pakistan.

In addition to these five commands India has raised a new tactical command christened as “South Western Command” In recent years a new tactical command named South-Western command has been created and has been formally operative since 18th April 2005 (with its Headquarters at Jaipur). This command will operate in conjunction with the Udhampur-based Northern Command and Chandimandir-based Western Command

Looking at the deployment of these tactical commands one thing is obvious that out of 7 tactical commands 5 are specifically meant against Pakistan (And Indian Leaders weep about Chinese Threat fooling whom??).
On April 28th 2005, Indian army gave out its new war doctrine named as “Cold Start”. Formulators of this doctrine revealed that it is specifically for Pakistan. Indian officials and analysts, who are quite excited about it, are predicting that the future Indo-Pak war will be short and decisive one and will be based on info centric concept which US army demonstrated During Iraq Invasion..
The Cold Start doctrine is a combination of   Information  0r Network Centric War fare and Shock and Awe Strategy  tactics as displayed by Americans in Iraq Invasion of 2003.
According to this doctrine the air borne troops and air cavalry units will be dropped behind Pakistani lines and important installations to destroy Pakistani command and defense infrastructure and capabilities. For the said purpose 8 or more integrated battle groups (formed with elements of Army, air force and navy) will undertake Blitzkrieg type action against Pakistan.

The war will not exceed 2 to 3 days. The actions will be crisp and violent because due to intergradations of all intelligence available at troop level allows commanders at junior level to modify the plans according to operational requirements and increase the pace of battle. This information sharing at lowest level, according to Kapalia,  will allow Indian forces space and flexibility for  maneuvers to Indian commanders  to execute in such a speed that objectives will be achieved before the international community will have the chance to intervene.
This doctrine do not aims at the capture of Pakistani territory but at the destruction of Pakistani armed forces and defense infrastructure. The formulators of this doctrine suggest that essence of “Cold Start” is surprise, mobility and speed achieved by coordinated efforts of services. They say traditional slow mobilization of forces gives enough time to enemy for taking measures and so surprise is washed out. In future war they say they will not give time to think and react.
Indian planners think that future war will be a limited war (in time dimension) fought under nuclear umbrella but short to nuclear threshold. They say Pakistan will not use nuclear weapons
a) Because Pakistan knows that if Pakistan goes for its nuclear option than “it will be wiped out by Indian counter nuclear strikes”.
b) Purpose of action will be to destroy not to capture therefore Pakistan will not be able to use its assets.

c) Initial attack will leave Pakistani forces in Shock and Paralysis.

Indian generals think decisive results can be achieved by close coordination among the three services, which is only possible when all services act under a unified commander. They also think that any blitzkrieg type action requires the revolution in military affairs of India and up gradation of Indian air force and logistic capability.

Since end of Operation Porakaram in 2002-03 Indian forces have conducted many exercises to practice their new concept. In next Part of the essay we will see the results and lessons learned by these exercises and in end Pakistan Army’s response to cold Start.