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Rumours as of now.
India China LAC & International Border Discussions
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Bhadra
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Saikat Datta | India's intel agencies make no use of big data analytics
Saikat Datta | India-'s intel agencies make no use of big data analytics
The Galwan Valley skirmish and the COVID-19 crisis have both showed up our intelligence frailties
The confrontation between India and China in the Galwan Valley in Ladakh and the ongoing COVID-19 crisis have laid bare a critical failure in India’s security apparatus.
When the first reports of Chinese intrusions into Galwan Valley emerged in May this year, the immediate expediencies overshadowed longstanding flaws in India’s security. What was also forgotten was another ongoing crisis that is linked to the happenings in Ladakh.
The Galwan Valley crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic are both security threats to India just months apart, and have the same origin, China. The Chinese threat to Ladakh began soon after August last year when the Indian government announced the abrogation of Article 370 which gave a constitutionally-mandated special status to the erstwhile state of Jammu & Kashmir.
The first reports of the COVID-19 virus emerged from Wuhan in November.
In either case, it is pertinent to note that India’s intelligence community failed to anticipate and mitigate either crisis. The reasons for this are manifold and systemic. They are in fact a national tragedy.
Bhadra
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Saikat Datta | India's intel agencies make no use of big data analytics
Failed reforms
For decades India has been trying to fix its intelligence apparatus to make it fit to deal with emerging threats. Unfortunately, every attempt at reform has been made after a crisis, making each of them reactive rather than comprehensive.
After the humiliating defeat in the 1962 war when India lost vast swathes of territory to China, there was a major attempt to reform India’s intelligence community. Between 1962 and 1968, the efforts of Ram Nath Kao, then then head of the Intelligence Bureau’s (IB) foreign division, led the creation of the Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW). He was a visionary and had a bold plan to change India’s intelligence apparatus and give it form and substance. However, his ideas were borne out of the failures of 1962 and failed to build a comprehensive approach that met the expectations and needs of all key stakeholders.
The early success of R&AW in the creation of Bangladesh before and after the 1971 war with Pakistan and the subsequent annexation of Sikkim hid many gaps in Kao’s bold attempt to reform India’s intelligence community.
Similarly, the Intelligence Bureau never really grow out of its colonial mindset. Created by Britain as a tool to keep a watch on the Indian natives, IB remained an integral tool of the Government of India after independence, shaped more by the personal equation between its second director B N Mullik and prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru. This is most visible in IB’s role in the governance of Jammu and Kashmir where security and political ambitions intermixed to create an unhealthy nexus between the political masters and intelligence professionals. This problem of attitude remains a major bane in India’s intelligence community.
Naturally, several attempts to reform failed. Be it the move to create a national security council and secretariat in 1998-99, the Kargil Review Committee in 1999-2000 followed by the Group of Ministers report or the Naresh Chandra Task Force after the 26/11 attack on Mumbai – they all failed to address the core issues that dog India’s intelligence community.
Failed reforms
For decades India has been trying to fix its intelligence apparatus to make it fit to deal with emerging threats. Unfortunately, every attempt at reform has been made after a crisis, making each of them reactive rather than comprehensive.
After the humiliating defeat in the 1962 war when India lost vast swathes of territory to China, there was a major attempt to reform India’s intelligence community. Between 1962 and 1968, the efforts of Ram Nath Kao, then then head of the Intelligence Bureau’s (IB) foreign division, led the creation of the Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW). He was a visionary and had a bold plan to change India’s intelligence apparatus and give it form and substance. However, his ideas were borne out of the failures of 1962 and failed to build a comprehensive approach that met the expectations and needs of all key stakeholders.
The early success of R&AW in the creation of Bangladesh before and after the 1971 war with Pakistan and the subsequent annexation of Sikkim hid many gaps in Kao’s bold attempt to reform India’s intelligence community.
Similarly, the Intelligence Bureau never really grow out of its colonial mindset. Created by Britain as a tool to keep a watch on the Indian natives, IB remained an integral tool of the Government of India after independence, shaped more by the personal equation between its second director B N Mullik and prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru. This is most visible in IB’s role in the governance of Jammu and Kashmir where security and political ambitions intermixed to create an unhealthy nexus between the political masters and intelligence professionals. This problem of attitude remains a major bane in India’s intelligence community.
Naturally, several attempts to reform failed. Be it the move to create a national security council and secretariat in 1998-99, the Kargil Review Committee in 1999-2000 followed by the Group of Ministers report or the Naresh Chandra Task Force after the 26/11 attack on Mumbai – they all failed to address the core issues that dog India’s intelligence community.
Bhadra
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Saikat Datta | India's intel agencies make no use of big data analytics
Twin failures: Collection and analysis
Modern intelligence processes are based on the twin pillars of collection of intelligence followed by robust analysis. In India, both fail repeatedly.
As a result, while there are elaborate intelligence structures that could have anticipated China’s new aggression to change the status quo in Ladakh, none of them worked to prevent the crisis. This is a political failure. No government in independent India has ever wanted to plug the gaps and professionalise India’s intelligence community to ensure that national security objectives are served above political interests.
As a result, not only have successive governments failed to assess the quality of intelligence being collected externally and internally, it has never looked at the analytical processes either. For instance, both the Galwan Valley and COVID-19 crises are a failure of external and internal intelligence both. Not only did they fail to produce any early warnings, they also failed to alert the country’s other key stakeholders when the crisis was emerging.
As a result, there were systemic failures in analysis. No one could comprehend as the Chinese intrusions deepened, or the COVID19 virus spread rapidly through district after district. None of the agencies used any modern methods for analysis, such as big data analytics or even basic data visualisation, which are now common tools for the private sector and academia across the globe.
Since 2003, a pandemic has been recognised as a national security threat by the National Security Council and subsequently, by the National Disaster Management Authority formally. However, there are no dedicated intelligence resources made available in the IB or the R&AW to actually deal with it even today.
In the case of the Chinese intrusions in Ladakh, it is a traditional threat and therefore makes the intelligence failure even more alarming. A quick reading of the Kargil Review Committee and its chapter and recommendation on intelligence reform in India are shocking. They are shocking because even 20 years after the report, key reforms have failed to take place.
In 1999, the Committee noted this: “The political, bureaucratic, military and intelligence establishments appear to have developed a vested interest in the status quo. National security management recedes into the background at the time of peace and is considered too delicate to be tampered with at the time of war and proxy war.” It also noted that “There is no institutionalized mechanism for coordination or objective-oriented interaction between agencies and consumers at different levels. Similarly, there is no mechanism for tasking the agencies, monitoring their performance and reviewing their records to evaluate their quality. Nor is there any oversight of the overall functioning of the agencies.”
The Chinese intrusions and the COVID-19 pandemic are urgent wake up calls to reform a broken intelligence system. Unless India’s political masters address this now, the country will continue to pay a high price in blood.
Twin failures: Collection and analysis
Modern intelligence processes are based on the twin pillars of collection of intelligence followed by robust analysis. In India, both fail repeatedly.
As a result, while there are elaborate intelligence structures that could have anticipated China’s new aggression to change the status quo in Ladakh, none of them worked to prevent the crisis. This is a political failure. No government in independent India has ever wanted to plug the gaps and professionalise India’s intelligence community to ensure that national security objectives are served above political interests.
As a result, not only have successive governments failed to assess the quality of intelligence being collected externally and internally, it has never looked at the analytical processes either. For instance, both the Galwan Valley and COVID-19 crises are a failure of external and internal intelligence both. Not only did they fail to produce any early warnings, they also failed to alert the country’s other key stakeholders when the crisis was emerging.
As a result, there were systemic failures in analysis. No one could comprehend as the Chinese intrusions deepened, or the COVID19 virus spread rapidly through district after district. None of the agencies used any modern methods for analysis, such as big data analytics or even basic data visualisation, which are now common tools for the private sector and academia across the globe.
Since 2003, a pandemic has been recognised as a national security threat by the National Security Council and subsequently, by the National Disaster Management Authority formally. However, there are no dedicated intelligence resources made available in the IB or the R&AW to actually deal with it even today.
In the case of the Chinese intrusions in Ladakh, it is a traditional threat and therefore makes the intelligence failure even more alarming. A quick reading of the Kargil Review Committee and its chapter and recommendation on intelligence reform in India are shocking. They are shocking because even 20 years after the report, key reforms have failed to take place.
In 1999, the Committee noted this: “The political, bureaucratic, military and intelligence establishments appear to have developed a vested interest in the status quo. National security management recedes into the background at the time of peace and is considered too delicate to be tampered with at the time of war and proxy war.” It also noted that “There is no institutionalized mechanism for coordination or objective-oriented interaction between agencies and consumers at different levels. Similarly, there is no mechanism for tasking the agencies, monitoring their performance and reviewing their records to evaluate their quality. Nor is there any oversight of the overall functioning of the agencies.”
The Chinese intrusions and the COVID-19 pandemic are urgent wake up calls to reform a broken intelligence system. Unless India’s political masters address this now, the country will continue to pay a high price in blood.
Anandhu Krishna
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I've read in a comment that they are building a subway between Chengdu and lhasa about 80% underground. Don't know if it's true
That’s not so clear. While Trump is whimsical and Biden himself is probably pro-India, the positions put out by his campaign and the Democratic Party itself is not likely to bring a lot of comfort to India. Would depend a lot on who is the VP (unusually since VP’s rarely have much say) but the senior people on his team will be the ones determining India policy. If he comes to power.
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They're trying to build a war-chest, just as we did, by the fuel price escalation 2 weeks ago.
Sehwag213
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May be
But their economic situation is very bad.
Remittance from Gulf has dried up.
And with no service export , they are looking at huge economic destruction.
Yawnnn... wake me if the shooting starts. Most probably we will allow Russia to broker a solution .... and if we do unfortunately it will probably mean that we allow the Chinese to stay put in a large number of areas they have intruded in. After all that happened, it would be really sad if we loose control of the entire Galwan valley though. From all that I have seen from the govt so far and the way it has been trying to portray that there have been no intrusions I don’t think Our political leadership has the stomach to take on the Chinese. I wouldn’t entirely blame this govt though. All of our govts have pussy footed around the Chinese. Having said that, the PM might surprise us.
It’s all very well for us armchair generals to say go to war. War is brutal and there is a price to pay. Unfortunately if we give in this time the Chinese won’t stop and will just keep on coming.
We should have foreseen his after Doklam. We were naive to think that the Chinese would take the Doklam humiliation sitting down.
It’s all very well for us armchair generals to say go to war. War is brutal and there is a price to pay. Unfortunately if we give in this time the Chinese won’t stop and will just keep on coming.
We should have foreseen his after Doklam. We were naive to think that the Chinese would take the Doklam humiliation sitting down.
garg_bharat
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Well my considered opinion is that American defence establishment (think tanks) see China as an enemy.
Remember 125k Americans have already died by Covid19 and this number will pass 200k by end of year.
China has already destroyed job market in USA.
Nations react to ground situation generally. Do not assume Trump to have some special antagonism towards China.
Let us see how things turn out. India is a big country with good resources. India is unlikely to be a pushover. If war has to happen, it will.
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Heavy bombers won't flush out chicoms from Galwan, this will:we are seriously lacking heavy bombers
Nimble, agile, but two of these loaded out like that can re-shape the situation in Galwan.
When this is over, IAF will seriously re-consider the engine upgrade program.
H-6K can scare someone like Taiwan or Vietnam, but not India. It's a flying barn door that can be easily taken out by our AADs. And I've discussed their irrelevance as an H-bomb scare-tactic against an H-bomb possessing state like India that has 7000 kg payload-capable cryogenic launch vehicles. All our airbases in the north and northeast have quantitative forward SAM sites, and India is rumored to have deployed even prototype SAMs at Leh, along with round-the-clock CAPs.
The welcoming party for H-6K.
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Sridhar_TN
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If it’s thrust upon us, we fight. Period. We understood the Chinese will not back down. But did not predict the earnestness with which they would act.
ruskies are not going to fast track s400.
No need for mediation from the ruskies. It’s clear which direction they are going in.
The chinks and the ruskies have successfully pushed India to the US
.If it’s a two front war, it’s a two front war. No other way to look at it.
Either way, we just blitzkrieg into Aksai chin and POK and defend AP and chickens neck. I see no other game plan to bring theminto the negotiating table. This will be fought Only by us And no one to support.
And if the US agrees to do something for India without any deal or ‘scratch my back bargaining’, then the most that they can do is cause trouble in SCS. Not even sure, if they will put the pressure on pak in case of a two front war. Although earlier today I did see the state department blasting the Paki state as supporting terrorism. That sort of the rherotic basically is the start of hostilities between a given country and the US.
Any of you have any other possible game plans for GOI?
Sridhar_TN
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What’s the payload of this ordinances. I count 8 of them. Are they 1000 pound pluses?
JBH22
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PP14 already lost as per media report.
Forget doklam post this galwan incident he will definitely open new fronts for us
here2where
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1000 pages and not a single shot. People here need to take a chill pill and take rest. Instead of war gaming, members can post important developments on the ground that will make this thread informative.
As of now there are more rumour/opinion posts than hard data.
As of now there are more rumour/opinion posts than hard data.
Willy3
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1000 pages but nothing in ground .
Policy paralyzed govt , backstabber opposition and noble chasing PM.
In last few weeks, we virtually lost any claim we had in between finger 4 and 8 region which we used to claim disputed. + Don't know what's the situation in galwan, where our biggest source are twitter account.
Hopefully there will be now atleast permanent military presence along every inch of LAC so that no further encroachment can happen . It's the least we can expect as I don't see this govt having any guts to raise up in escalation ladder.
Policy paralyzed govt , backstabber opposition and noble chasing PM.
In last few weeks, we virtually lost any claim we had in between finger 4 and 8 region which we used to claim disputed. + Don't know what's the situation in galwan, where our biggest source are twitter account.
Hopefully there will be now atleast permanent military presence along every inch of LAC so that no further encroachment can happen . It's the least we can expect as I don't see this govt having any guts to raise up in escalation ladder.
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