Fighting the world's most powerful militaries: Some lessons for India

The 'Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA)' was much touted during the 1990s, when US forces won almost without incurring any casualties in the First Gulf War and then in the Kosovo war.How is RMA faring in conflicts today, in the Ukraine or in West Asia? They are redrawing conventional wisdom in many ways, and there are important lessons to be learned by Indian military analysts from these conflicts. RMA is characterised by smart and high tech weapons, as well as by advanced information systems that can penetrate the fog of battle. When RMA enabled the US military to easily win wars in the 1990s, it paved the way for the 'unipolar moment' and caused the Chinese to study it closely. RMA was the lodestar when the Chinese People's Liberation Army pursued its own modernisation.As RMA requires a great deal of investment, it was once thought that it would greatly advantage the big powers over smaller powers. That’s no longer proving true as RMA has percolated worldwide. Smaller but agile and innovative powers are successfully challenging bigger powers with the tools of RMA, combined with tactics of asymmetrical warfare. ShowBlurbsFrom Russia-Ukraine to Hamas-Israel That applies as much to the Ukraine war as it does to West Asia, and we are witnessing such hybrid tactics flummoxing the world’s most powerful militaries in both the Black and Red Seas. This is making the world more multipolar.Thus Ukraine has been able to hold the storied Russian Black Sea fleet at bay, despite having no naval warships of its own. The Black Sea fleet’s flagship, the Moskva, was sunk by the Ukrainians using an indigenously developed anti-ship missile.While the US and other Western countries are backstopping the Ukrainians with arms supplies, this is only incremental as the West doesn’t want to provoke a wider war, nor does it want to deplete its own armed forces.Something similar applies to the manner in which Iran is supporting Hamas, the Houthis or Hezbollah.Thus most of Ukraine’s military equipment still comes from Soviet inheritance and indigenous production, and the duress of the Russian invasion has caused it to improvise tactics and weapons. medium107184735Although a regular army, Ukraine has adopted some aspects of guerrilla warfare, forming small and highly mobile units equipped with cheap commercially available drones, adapted to spy out the enemy’s positions and even drop bombs on them. Russian soldiers are said to fear the drones so much that many don’t dare sleep in their trenches or move across open ground. In addition, Ukrainian drones have even taken out Russian tanks as they are insufficiently armoured on top (or were till recently, as it takes a centralised and bureaucratic force like the Russian army considerable time to learn and adapt). Drones have thereby added a third dimension to land warfare.Likewise Hamas has used drones to attack Israel’s Merkava tanks as they pour into the Gaza strip; the group also possesses 'tandem' anti-tank weapons with two charges to pierce armour. Like the Ukrainians it has formed small, mobile units to take on the attacking Israelis with guerrilla ambushes. If the Israeli Defence Forces dominate land and air, Hamas has added another dimension to the conflict with the extensive network of tunnels it has dug underground. This is a time-honoured tactic in David vs Goliath battles that was, ironically, used by ancient Jews when fighting the Roman empire in first century Judea, and later by the Vietcong against the Americans during the Vietnam war. The tunnels under Gaza, over 300 miles in length, are a tribute to Hamas’s engineering abilities: They are reinforced with concrete, equipped with essential utilities, and in some places wide enough for vehicles to pass. Hamas has been able to manufacture weapons in Gaza such as RPG-7 rocket-propelled grenades. Like the Ukrainians, Hamas has been successful in spreading technical knowledge and creating a supportive ecosystem for technology development. medium107184783While media in the English-speaking world is overwhelmingly sympathetic to the Israeli version of events, Hamas has been able to neutralise Israel’s media advantage and put out its own narrative with its adept use of social media. By baiting the Israelis into an overreaction Hamas has achieved some of its political aims, chief among which is blowing open the Palestinian issue that was being quietly buried by the Israelis. The Israeli reaction has also enhanced Hamas' popularity as the chief defender of the Palestinian people, which enables it to draw more recruits. If another Hamas aim was to provoke a wider war which would open more fronts against the Israelis it hasn’t succeeded in that yet – although it could still get there. Yemen’s Houthi group, though, has opened another front by striking ships bound for Israel. The Houthis, a ragtag bunch of guerrillas in a very poor country, are past masters at asymmetrical warfare. US and British forces have carried out waves of air strikes against Houthi targets, without much success in getting them to back down. US President Joe Biden’s response to a journalist asking about the effectiveness of the US/UK air strikes sounds like a counsel of despair: “When you say working, are they stopping the Houthis? No. Are they going to continue? Yes.”The problem with air strikes is that they have no obvious places to attack. The Houthis, like Hamas, are decentralised and dispersed. They have radars and missile launchers on trucks, making them highly mobile. And they can rebuild their equipment, or have it smuggled across to them, if destroyed. The Houthis can, in fact, use the US/UK air strikes to rally support and recruits in a divided country like Yemen, as well as gather more resources from Arab countries sympathetic to the Palestinian cause. medium107184832Lessons for IndiaThere are lessons to be learnt by Indian military strategists from the success of asymmetrical warfare tactics against forces with superior firepower.One lesson is that too much reliance on expensive and exquisite weaponry can set you up to fail. On that score, for instance, China is a manufacturing superpower and its economic output is five times higher than India’s; China will therefore always outgun India.It’s better to rely on cheap systems that can be mass produced at home, and which can give India an asymmetrical advantage against China. India is set to add a third aircraft carrier to its naval fleet, which could be a mistake – these are very costly systems that can be disabled by one or two accurate hits. If you want to prevent the Chinese navy from entering the Indian Ocean and blockading India, a better way would be to populate the Indian coast with anti-ship missiles. medium107184879A similar strategy can be adopted for the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, an unsinkable aircraft carrier that India is fortunate enough to possess. That, combined with a naval presence there, could effectively blockade the Malacca straits against ships bound for or from China, in the event of conflict with China. Alongside the Indian Army should form small, mobile and highly networked squads with decentralised command and equipped with drones, to guard the land border with China. India’s armed forces need to factor in RMA and must not be caught fighting the last war. The Ukraine and West Asia conflicts, as well as other recent wars such as the clash between Armenia and Azerbaijan, offer ample material which should be closely studied to determine what works in 21st century warfare.Read more from the author here.