On Aug 19, 2008, at 7:57 PM, Balaji Dutt wrote:
I don't agree with the argument of lowered military spending or
generally
lower chances of military buildup. There is a simpler geographical
reality
to consider - as the Capital city of a country with enemies on both
sides,
Delhi is vulnerable - located as it is at the "neck" of India with
hostile
states only a few hours away by road on both sides. This is not a
pleasant
though for most of Indian military strategists.
Most of Europe has lived with this reality for a long time, for better
or worse. I would make the point that one does not invade a country
without telegraphing that fact weeks to months ahead of time; there is
plenty of time to make those "hours" to the Capital turn into days and
weeks with proper preparations in even the most pessimistic scenarios.
I might be mistaken, but I was under the impression that the Indian
military was capable of a fairly hardened defense given adequate
warning from a country with comparable military technology like
Pakistan. That becomes some very costly ground to cover, a fact
obvious to even the most delusional Pakistani General.
Suddenly, the Indian military establishment is faced with the
prospect of
having Pakistani MBTs parked about 500 kms away from Delhi. Given
the top
speeds of the frontline MBTs in the Pakistani army, that's about an
overnight drive before you see Pakistani T80s rolling down Rajpath.
[1]
Absent any defence or preparations whatsoever. But I do not see that
happening in even the most dystopian scenarios.
The above is admittedly a doomsday scenario, but isn't that what all
military establishments survive on?
I think it is a little more complicated than that. The object of the
military is to make a country too expensive to invade, and to a lesser
extent, attack. There are many ways to maximize the return on
investment toward that end, and the logistics of supporting vast land
buffers is not particularly efficient by the reckoning of many
competent military theorists, largely because the idea is predicated
on putting large quantities of military equipment in those buffer
zones. Buying time is almost purely a function of the ability to
resist, which has only a slight relationship to land distances.
One of the basic strategies of the US military that has served it well
over the last several decades is to convert the operational expense of
massive, region-covering hardware into research-fueled CapEx that
creates a buffer at least as hard but with a much smaller logistical
footprint -- militaries live and die on logistical footprints. It
turns out that for modern military systems, the reduced OpEx of more
modern designs can fully amortize the research and CapEx within a
decade or so. It is a virtuous cycle of sorts; the more research that
is done, the cheaper a given level of military power actually is, in
inflation-adjusted currency. It is not intuitive and so many people
resist the notion. It might be better to invest the money for
supporting a huge land buffer into research and technology that
obviates the land buffer in the military calculus. It is not only less
costly on many different levels, but investments in technology
research tend to pay off for the broader economy in ways that are hard
to predict.
In short, there is substantial empirical evidence that research and
CapEx is much more efficient than dumping resources into OpEx for
military purposes, though many people find the notion counter-
intuitive. While it was famously said that quantity has a quality all
its own, that "quality" has proven to be ersatz in modern practice.
Given a sufficiently hard technology wall, the amount of physical
buffer land becomes superfluous and in the worst case buys little more
than a sliver of time.
Cheers,
J. Andrew Rogers
