Frankly my observation about RST's antics were restricted to the penultimate paragraph in my post pertaining to the procurement of Rafales but since he's misconstrued it to mean my observations for the entire post of mine ( not unusual in the least given the high esteem he holds himself in , so what if some of his observations are laughable & others , well, part of his febrile imagination ) , let's examine them .
The only 2 enemies we've are China & Paxtan. We can add Bangladesh to this list too but they're in a completely different league so I'd not bring them in for now .
We're still a decade away from PLAN being a regular feature in the IOR & my stance on this issue is well known . I expect the issue over Taiwan to be resolved by then & irrespective who wins , like I said before , it'd be a Pyrrhic victory which translates to mean China'd take a good 2 decades if not more to rebuild their forces to current levels & that's a very big IF in capital letters.
So any naval attack by China's ruled out which brings us to PLA & PLAAF. I wonder how would RST characterise PLA's actions in the summer of 2020. As far as PLAAF goes , as & when the inevitable showdown happens , I wonder if RST thinks China's going to serve us notice or just go ahead & do their thing.
See what I mean when I previously stated RST assembles all the facts in the public domain , puts them together & comes to the wrong conclusion.
As far as Paxtan goes they've a history of targeting both our civilian as well as military installations since forever. I mean what was Uri , Pathankot & Pulwama all about ? And that's not just the half of it , the list is much longer like the rare fedayeen attack in a car on the Army Base in Badami Bagh or the Kaluchak massacre of army personnel & their families or even the fedayeen attack on the J&K assembly followed by the one on Parliament .
If anything we ought to be grateful to them for confusing tactics with strategy. Consider the 26/11 attacks . It's thanks to them we've installed transponders on all our boats - civilan as well as military & set up a control station in Delhi (?) IIRC to monitor sea traffic in the near seas.
It they do reciprocate it'd be with drones in peace time like what we're seeing Ukraine do to Russia deep in the hinterland. If we don't secure ourselves thoroughly we'd have only ourselves to blame . Then again see it as a wake up call before the real test against China.
All that fluff about Muridke , Bahawalpur etc is just that . If Leaderji wants to cop it out that's what he'd do. The problem is this . Ever since the response to Uri which is what we've been doing forever beginning from PV Narasimha Rao's tenure as PM , only on a slightly bigger scale , Leaderji has set the bar several times higher by publicising those operations.
Result - people's expectations have gotten higher. For Balakot he took it up several notches , by launching air strikes deep in the heart of Paxtan & not just PoJ&K. What's he going to do now which doesn't drag us into an unintentional war ?
See , the idea behind what I'm proposing is we strike to destroy their war waging capabilities not get into a war of attrition with them especially with the Chinese sword hanging over our heads. Whereas what RST is proposing is the very opposite of mine which will inevitably lead to a war of attrition , something we can ill afford as of today not with the Chinese problem unsolved & with them with an army on the LAC.
The last thing we should look forward to is withdraw men & assets from the LAC directing them to the LoC . With the Chinese still there , they'd swoop down in a jiffy like a vulture on carcass & there goes 5 years of whatever we've achieved down the drain. Our time against Paxtan will come but today is not that day. For perspective consider this - we're no longer in 2019 . Consider what Paxtan was then & see how far they've fallen on every parameter since. Then consider what they would be like in 2030 . As we grow & they sink especially Fauji Foundation, we're going to see an escalation in the frequency of such attacks perhaps extended to all across the western borders not just restricted to J&K .
I'm left with a sense of foreboding & it's not about what we're going to face vis a vis Paxtan or later on with China , it's to do with RST's analysing a situation to generate predictions. If this is the best he's got to offer , I'm afraid that score of 0/10 will remain as immaculate as ever , forever. It's a frightful thought but it is what it is. I'm still rooting for RST lest people think I've given up on him.
