IS INDIA FIT FOR WAR?

INDIA GENERAL: WE’RE UNFIT FOR WAR

India's army chief writes a scathing letter to the prime minister about the Indian military. Is he right?

Jason Miks

The Diplomat, March 29, 2012

India’s million man-plus armed forces are unfit to fight a war, according to the country’s army chief. “The army’s tanks have run out of ammunition, the air defense is as good as obsolete and the infantry is short of critical weapons,” Gen. V.K. Singh wrote in a leaked letter to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, India’s DNA news agency has reported.

Singh is said to have approached the prime minister after failing to get a response from the Defense Ministry. He warns in the letter that the state of India’s military is “alarming,” noting that the country’s air defense is “97 percent obsolete,” while the elite Special Forces are described as “woefully short” of “essential weapons.”

“This news is causing a lot of angst here,” said The Diplomat contributor Manpreet Sethi, who lectures regularly at India’s armed forces training centers. “Reports are pouring in from both sides – those who are angry with the general for allowing such a leak to happen, especially in the wake of allegations over a bribe he supposedly made earlier in the week, and those who believe that the corruption in the system can only be cleansed if such issues come out in the public.”

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