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Unified command

One of the lessons of the recently concluded Gulf War is that control of overall military operations in any war theatre must be in the hands of a single authority to ensure coordinated result-oriented decisive action. To a great extent General Norman Schwarzkopf, the Commander of Allied (37 nation coalition) Forces in the Gulf War, has been a Patton-like extension of General Dwight D.Eisenhower’s diplomatic skills that held the Western Allies together in World War II till final military victory over Germany. The US Central Command functioned as the HQs nucleus for the Allied Forces in war-testing of the US doctrine called AirLand Battle. To those that may be misled into thinking that this is a brand new concept, one may invite attention to the development of the German “Blitzkrieg” that overran Europe in a combination of deep tank forays preceded by close support Stuka fighter-bombers within a few weeks of the start of World War II. The Allies were giving the Germans back in the same coin during the later part of the war, though the great “leapfrog” envisaged during the planning for Operation “Market Garden” came to grief at Arnhem when the BRIDGE seized by Allied para-dropped and glider-dropped Airborne troops was found to be TOO FAR out of the reach of Allied ground troops trying in vain to link up. This time around General Schwarzkopf’s strategy brought the Allies in a series of leapfrogs to the banks of the Euphrates River and the total encirclement of the Iraqi forces in the “Kuwait pocket”.

All Armies train for war during peace without coming out of their peacetime syndrome. Armies almost never learn from the experience of others, they are more likely to learn from their own bitter experience. Most military men have mindset fixations about practices which may have been followed for generations, considering it to be a heresy to even debate otherwise. Despite two wars, the latter a sorrier experience than the first, the Pakistan Armed Forces have not really broken out of the shackles of World War II except in the upper reaches of military hierarchy to some extent. Unfortunately we do not have geographical depth or industrial resilience to come back from a military catastrophe. Some organisational and management changes were effected in the 50s because of induction of US military aid, while the Tables of Organisation and Equipment (Ts O & E) have been modified, upgraded and updated to some extent, there has been no real change in organisational tables or basic tactics. The induction of modern equipment in the 8Os has orchestrated some improvement in the battle systems but they remain far below the level that we have seen employed by the Allies in the recent war. Even the Russians and Chinese have started to conduct a major rethinking of their manpower-heavy military machines because of the high-tech lessons of the Gulf War, in all fairness real evaluation will show that no army on this earth could have withstood the tremendous aerial onslaught that the Iraqis were subjected to, coupled with electronic warfare that made their systems “blind”, the Iraqis could not respond even if they had the will to do so. Entire units were decimated by the preponderant Allied Air power, with constant desertions many Division-sized formations ceased to exist even before the Ground war was joined. Military analysts may be led to wrong conclusions by the humiliating collapse of the Iraqi Army, caution has to be exercised to obtain relevant lessons out of the fog of war that has further been coloured by the euphoria of Allied victory.

Warfare of the 21st Century as seen in the Gulf is essentially one of attempting to obtain electronic dominance in the first stage of conflict, coordinated simultaneously with the battle for air superiority. A combination of electronic warfare and judicious use of high-tech weapons ensured that the Allies had total aerial command of the battlefield within 12-24 hours. Once air superiority had been firmly established over the battle zone, the Allies then concentrated on channels of communication, wiping out the Iraqi means of communicating with field formations, whether landline or wireless, and the logistical means for re-supply. With surplus weapons-delivery capacity available they then went after Iraq’s industrial potential and socio-economic civic facilities with unrestrained vengeance, warfare cannot be waged with any holds barred. Pakistan almost became a victim of the AirLand concept of battle during India’s Exercise “Brass Tacks”, though it was an open question whether the Indians could have really had the same means and commitment to dominate the battlefield as the Allies have done in the present situation. Former Indian COAS, Gen Sunderji, may have been ahead of his time but in trying to push the Indian Army into the 21st century in the span of a couple of years he overstrained their capacities, exposing their limitations and may have inadvertently unleashed a backlash of sorts that was exposed to military observers in a bad light during India’s ill-advised foray into Sri Lanka where a dedicated guerilla group, the LTTE, used the countryside to excellent advantage to stop the so-called Indian Peace-Keeping Force (IPKF) dead in their tracks. Suffering heavy casualties and faced with an unending morass, the Indians made the right decision in pulling out before they got more deeply involved in unrestricted guerilla warfare. The Indian misadventure in Sri Lanka was militarily interesting to India’s neighbours, especially Pakistan. The high ratio of Indian Officer casualties to that of other ranks may be excellent in a conventional war, in Counter-guerilla operations it exposes an alarming unwillingness of the other ranks to fight. However, in one area the Indians were ahead of Pakistani planners, all Indian forces in Sri Lanka, ground, air and naval, were under one Field Commander, essentially the head of the preponderant military arm, the Army.

The Present Situation ————— The Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee (CJSC) will become an unmitigated disaster for Pakistan in wartime if it continues to exist in its present form. It was instituted by late PM, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, not for military reasons but primarily to curb the power of the Army Chief to impose martial law. Within a year or so of its formation, its ineffectiveness as an anti-coup mechanism was ruthlessly exposed when General Ziaul Haq, as Army Chief toppled the political government, while his nominal superior, General Sharif, then Chairman JCSC (and an above average soldier), could not assert any authority to do anything to stop or reverse the revolt of his nominal subordinate. The continuance of JCSC in its present toothless-tiger form exposes the mind block of our political and military planners who are loath to disturb routine, howsoever useless it may be. Our political leaders have shown a bankruptcy of confidence in their abilities to ward off military rule while our military planners have shown temerity (or dangerous complacency) in pointing out that the JCSC is utterly useless without a single authority’s operational and administrative ability to wield power over the three Services. Lip-service is given to some JCSC (as yet unclear) role during times of conflict, failing to be an on-going reality during peacetime, coordination during the stress of wartime will remain a pipe dream. Third World countries cannot justify white elephants, in its present role JCSC is more play-acting than any relevance to real-life requirements. It may be true that JCSC has some utility value in preparing various position papers and carrying out analysis but in the absence of reality with respect to its primary function, Unified Command during wartime, the JCSC is a ceremonial washout, it exists as a drain on an already overstrained Federal Budget.

The other fallacy being propagated is that because the other Services may be resentful, the post of Chairman JCSC should be rotated among the three Services. One may well ask, why is not the same principle followed in the appointments of the NATO C-in-C or Commanders of US Central and Southern Command, who are always Army Generals or why is the US Commander in the Pacific always a Naval Person? The reason is that the Service which will have the dominant employment in a Theatre of War must invariably have a specialized person of that Service to be the Theatre Commander. In the context of Pakistan, we have two friendly neighbours and two who are not so friendly. Among the not-so-friendly, Afghanistan does not have a Navy but India has a vast blue-water navy, complete with nuclear submarines and aircraft carriers. Given that our Navy cannot match them gun for gun, Pakistan Navy’s major aims would be to (1) keep the Indian Navy away from the shores of Pakistan and (2) break the invariable blockade that will be surely enforced. This action will be subsidiary to the ground war which will be the main Theatre of employment. Our Navy has to operate within the arc of air cover provided by the PAF, with only limited capabilities for an offensive forays. The Navy’s effort to keep the Indian Navy from closing in on our sea shores and keeping our own lanes open will certainly be of some effect to Pakistan in the long run, in the short run military planners will be satisfied if they succeed in their primary task of warding off the Indian Naval surface and underwater fleet as well as carrier-based naval aircraft. There will be no immediate real Naval influence on the conduct of the battle on land and in the air. The PAF is going to have their hands full for the battle for air superiority, with a quantitative edge that the Indians enjoy to the extent of 4-1 over the PAF, barely offset to some degree by the qualitative superiority of the Fighting Falcon (F-16) and our pilots, it will require their highest professional skills to hold their own in achieving relative dominance over the battlefield and then carry out (1) close support and (2) interdiction missions. Needless to say the PAF Commander will be hard put to allocate resources so that he does not detract from his main aim, command of the air. The Gulf crisis has shown that the type of terrain where most of the fighting is expected to take place, the Punjab Plains and the Sindh-Rajasthan desert, is most conducive for decisive aerial operations against ground troops. Gaining of battlefield air superiority or at least neutralisation of the conduct of aerial warfare to an extent will certainly affect the future course of battle. The Gulf Crisis has also shown that whatever damage air power may do, in the end ground troops must be engaged to carry out the ultimate destruction of any fighting machine, Iraq was literally pounded into rubble, before the ground conflict decimated the occupation Iraqi Army and a temporary ceasefire was called, yet soon after utter military collapse, Iraq’s Army is waging an effective civil war to quell regional uprisings. That can only mean that despite high-tech precision attacks almost out of science fiction, the destruction of Iraq’s Armed Forces from the air was less than complete.
Lacking the economic capacity or the industrial potential to match quality for quality in every sphere, especially without any geographical depth and outnumbered badly in quantity, Pakistan’s salvation may lie in the highest professional skills of its airmen and sailors, the final arbiter of its independence and sovereignty will be the ground battles engaged in with the enemy by the Pakistan Army. Man for man, the soldier costs less than a sailor who costs less than an airmen to train and maintain, for us it becomes cost-effective in relation to threat perception to maintain large ground forces. While there must be some ratio in numbers to opposing forces (India enjoys an edge of almost 5:1), ultimately it is the fighting spirit, motivation and the willing response to higher call of duty that drives the Pakistani soldier. It is not that the sailor or the airmen have lesser ability, devotion to duty or willingness to sacrifice, it is simply that the soldier has to face more and give more than what can be normally expected out of a human being. Given Pakistan’s long borders with India, its lack of natural depth, its sensitivity to deep encroachments effecting vital lines of communication of the entire country, the preponderance of numbers of the Indian manpower, the Pakistani soldier simply HAS to hold his ground, the nation cannot afford even small tactical withdrawals except in stray cases. There will be a life and death struggle on the seas and in the air, it will be nothing compared in relative terms to the quantum of sacrifice in sheer numbers on the ground. While the Indian Army’s aim will be to get astride the tenuous Pakistan Lines of Communication i.e. seize critical real estate, the Pakistan Army’s aim will be to blunt and then destroy the Indian ground forces. Essentially it will be an AirLand Battle but with a greater modicum of parity than in the Gulf war where Iraq’s greater numbers were completely cowed down by systematic attrition till the final left hook to the solar plexus put the vaunted Republican guards on the run. One has to be pragmatic when faced with such a possible scenario, given the fact that the decisive battle has to be fought on land, it would not be pragmatic in our context to have anybody other than a soldier to head the overall command of the three Services. From time to time we may get outstanding officers from the Air Force and the Navy who have attended a Staff Courses in Command & Staff College, National Defence College (Army War Course and Joint Services Staff College). These officers should always remain in consideration on pure merit, provided they have been given the opportunity on having been the Field Commander of one of the Commands envisaged, to be discussed later in this paper. Similarly, the soldier to consider for appointment as the Head of the UNIFIED COMMAND must have commanded formations at various levels to the level of a COMMAND and done the National Defence College Course, preferably also the Joint Services Staff College. If the person has been an Instructor at the National Defence College for some time, this would make him eminently qualified to be a candidate.

Coordinated Action ————— The Pentagon is a symbol of force-fed Inter-Service coordination, if not the perfect example of harmony. Each Service Chief has full authority over his branch of Service but for Joint Services action, it is the Chairman who calls the shots. Authority is then delegated to the Theatre Commander who assumes field responsibility for forces in his domain. There are glaring discrepancies but these are more obvious in the Pentagon itself rather than in the Theatres of Command. One area of discord is in the choice of weapons and equipment, standardisation is paid lip service. Whereas some arms and equipment may be specialised for a particular Service, there are lot of areas for standardisation e.g. small arms, vehicles, clothing, battle gear, etc. Sometimes Inter-Service independence is carried too far e.g. The Navy, Army, Marines and Air Force may all go for their own particular type of fixed wing and rotary aircraft, thereby denying economy of scale in a joint production. This is a fine-line argument e.g. the Air Force needs its own requirement for interceptors, ground attack aircraft, bombers, reconnaissance aircraft and the Navy has its own specifications because of its carrier support operations but it stands to reason that the Army and US Marines can dovetail their requirements by effecting a few changes to specifications to fit their peculiar needs. Our biggest problem is that in Pakistan we have never really carried out standardisation of weapons and equipment except when forced by circumstances, this is primarily due to totally independent command of each Service, guarding jealously their own prerogatives to make separate choices. While each Service may spell out their own peculiar requirements, the JCSC should be able to pick a particular weapon or equipment which en masse can be used for all the three Services. Vehicles procurement and utility thereof is one sorry example. Why cannot particular utility vehicles be chosen (and then procured centrally) for all the three Services in the Jeep, Dodge, light truck and heavy truck range, with common workshops for anything beyond unit maintenance capability? This same policy may be followed for all procurement which may be labelled non-specific. Only the items which are specific to each Service should be handled by the Service concerned. For Third World countries, it is important to build self-reliance based essentially on economisation. This cannot happen unless an effective authority exists to dovetail all requirements and prevent duplication of effort. This policy may even be followed with like-minded friendly nations, e.g. Iran, Turkey, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Malaysia, etc so that indigenous production is encouraged for inter-country swaps.

The Suggestion ————— The major military experience of the Gulf Crisis was the ability of dominant air power to paralyse the Command and Control functions. We may have frozen our own Command and Control mechanism all by ourselves by inadequacies in our present organisational structure. Lip-service is given to UNIFIED COMMAND by having a Chairman Joint Chief of Staff Committee (JCSC), as previously mentioned it is common knowledge that he is virtually a ceremonial figurehead of an ineffective body whose only claim to fame is protocol duties and preparation of position papers of various kind, the routine job of a THINK TANK. During the Zia Regime we had a farce of having a Chairman JCSC nominally superior to Zia as COAS but Zia in turn being his superior as President. Admiral Sirohey, the present Chairman, may be a good man, he had to be bailed out of becoming a political football in 1989 during Ms Benazir’s reign by a combination of the President and three Service Chiefs. The Gulf Crisis should give revived impetus for total Inter-Service cooperation, hardly upto the required proficiency at this time despite flamboyant paper rhetoric to the contrary. The Chairman JCSC should have the same authority as that specified for the Chairman JCS in the USA, even if it is necessary to re-designate him as C-in-C Armed Forces or Defence Services or Chief of Defence Staff or even Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff (by dropping the word “Committee”). The President (as in USA) remains the Supreme Commander. GHQ Pakistan should be the GHQ of all the three Services, not only of the Pakistan Army. As the Gulf War has shown, Central Command (as in Iraq) may be paralysed to our detriment for any number of reasons. To cater for breakdown of channels of communications, we must create SIX Commands, each capable of independently fighting large-scale battles, if a need so arises, by having dedicated ground, air and/or naval forces or a combination thereof as the case may be. Each Command should be headed by a Lieutenant General (or equivalent Naval/Air Force officer). The Command should have an integrated staff with compliments of the three services in ratio to the Services effort in each separate Command. The OC Command should have an assistant Commander of lower seniority but equivalent rank and a Chief of Staff of the rank of Major General (or equivalent). Pakistan’s geographical layout and the posture of the likely enemy, India, dictates the layout and size of each Command. The allocation of troops and resources may vary from Command to Command, it should be suited to the terrain and likely opposition. We must give serious thought to a poor man’s Air Force composed of light fixed wing aircraft armed with air-to-air and air-to-ground missiles operating from Advance Landing Grounds (ALGs) to give close support to each Command in the first phase of battle when the PAF will be engaged in the battle for air superiority.

Given all the requirements, the suggestions for the organisation of Command are, viz. (1) Northern Command including AK, Northern Areas and all areas within Chenab River and the Indus (2) Eastern Command between Chenab and the Sutlej (3) Central Command including Sutlej but excluding Sukkur (4) Southern Command including Sukkur, Hyderabad and Badin but excluding Karachi and the Coastal area (5) Coastal Command to include Karachi and Pakistan’s coastal areas and (6) Western Command to include all areas of Balochistan and NWFP bounded to the east by the Indus, in a war with India it forms the Country’s Strategic Reserve. Corps formations must exist in only those critical areas which we must defend, in AK (two Corps), Lahore and Sialkot (one Corps each), Rahimyar Khan-Pano Aqil belt (one Corps) and Chor-Umerkot-Nabisar-Badin (one Corps), the rest of the Army should be grouped into Brigade-sized Task Forces (Divisional sized only when specifically required) within respective Commands supported by commensurate Air Force elements as well as Artillery and Anti-Aircraft Divisions in addition to their integral supporting arms, e.g. artillery, armour etc. Both Central and Southern Commands should each have Brigade-sized Long Range Desert Groups (LRDGs), fully mechanised and desert-mobile with camel-mounted ancillary troops. The Army and Air Force must be under command of the Naval effort in the Coastal Command. It must be understood clearly that in the first stage of the war, the PAF will remain under its own central authority, the Chief of Air Staff, to fight the battle for air superiority.

The choice of the man to head this new concept of UNIFIED COMMAND becomes important, given the fact we cannot afford to experiment. Media speculations about promotions in the Armed Forces are usually counter-productive to the national interest. They may be labelled “creative” journalism, it is more pertinent as creation of sensationalism with or without motive. The stakes being high, candidates can be expected to be having their lobbies, with or without their knowledge, with or without their consent. Selection Criteria may be a fit subject for debate, mention of any particular personality tends to erode the professionalism and discipline that our Armed Forces are presently imbued with. The choice of the Heads of the various Defence Services should not be seniority but merit-based and founded in the supreme national interest. Given these parameters we need a mature and tested personality who will create the right precedent for the future, someone who is a known quantity in the realm of practical support to democratic institutions and the experience of having served on Senior staff positions and held Field Command. The personality to head this new Command structure must have the confidence of the people of Pakistan. At this time there may not even be many alternatives, sheer merit, professionalism and contribution to the cause of democracy in Pakistan should decide the issue without further debate. What is important is that this concept must be implemented swiftly, speculation will be counter-productive to the interests of Pakistan, the time of decision was yesterday.

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