With the increase in lethality of modern-age weapons and global averseness towards fighting large-scale conventional wars, especially amongst rivals with equitable war fighting and power projection potential, the space for war has shrunk. Conversely, todays war fighting is wrapped in many cloaks that are inclusive of kinetic as well as non-kinetic means, commonly referred to as hybrid warfare. The corner-stone objective remains to avoid wars and that is achieved by maintaining effective deterrence in all dimensions—air, land and sea. Hence contemporary armed forces are structured and configured not only to fight and win wars but essentially to deter wars.
Historically, geopolitics remained land centric and that’s where most wars had been fought for the control of territory. With transition of geo-strategy in favour of geo-economics, maritime security has gained increasing significance with a desire of maritime powers to uphold the principle of Mare Liberum while concurrently safeguarding own interests.
As a fallout of end of the British Colonial rule over Indian Subcontinent, the military hardware was distributed amongst Indian and Pakistan armed forces. It was an unjust distribution which grossly skewed in favour of India. The distribution was even starker in case of Pakistan Navy which had a very humble beginning in 1947. But over time Pakistan Navy has grown in size and capability transforming into a regional maritime force to reckon. Throughout its history Pakistan Navy, despite being enormously outgunned and outnumbered, had kept a numerically much superior enemy at bay. Destruction of radar station at Dwarka and bottling up of entire Indian Navy in port in 1965, sinking of Khukri in 1971 by submarine (an achievement only by PN and Royal Navy post WW-II), detection and confrontations with Indian submarines in 2016 and 2019 (post Pulwama) are reflection of Pakistan Navy’s commitment to its task and above all its perpetual operational readiness.
On October 28 2020, Pakistan Navy carried out an impressive fire-power demonstration in the North Arabian Sea that included launch of a number of offensive weapons from different surface and air platforms. The successful destruction of targets at extended ranges speaks volumes of proficiency of Pakistan Navy’s personnel and reaffirms its strong combat capabilities to respond to any act of aggression by an adversary. While Pakistan Navy has gradually transited towards achieving self-reliance in anti-surface and land attack capabilities, successful engagement of targets by erstwhile anti-ship missiles also indicates the proficiency of PN personnel with reliable logistical and maintenance systems that ensures operational and war worthiness of systems that were procured decades earlier. On the contrary, India has been struggling for reliability of its acquired as well as locally built missile systems, not to mention the recent dismal performance of much boasted Nirbhay cruise missile which failed again despite years of testing and trials.
Pakistan Navy’s fire power demonstration was very aptly timed just after the Indian Navy test-fired its own set of missiles along its coast. These tests come at a time when India is bloating with its self-assumed status of “Net Security Provider” through new-found honeymoon with the United States and being partner to QUAD or “Asian NATO” to challenge growing Chinese influence in the region. The message from Pakistan was firm and clear to digress India from its misconceived ideas of becoming a regional hegemon, altering the regional security stability and intimidating Pakistan. Simply put, the punch-line is: any misadventure at sea would be dealt with firmly and with parity in effects. Another aspect of this fire-power display was the Chief of the Navy’s presence on the frontline amongst his troops shortly after assuming the command of Pakistan Navy. This purely reflects, among other things, the clarity in operational thought.
Since the Partition of subcontinent, successive Indian governments, especially the incumbent RSS-BJP fascist combine, have been seeking to undo Pakistan. India continues to amass billions of dollars’ worth of military hardware but blatantly ignores the miserable plight of its own poverty-struck population. India’s hegemonic desires coupled with hysteric paranoia over the CPEC and more recent signing of BECA with the US can disturb the regional security balance. Pakistan Navy’s recent live weapons firing is not only a positive step towards maintaining and promoting regional stability through deterrence but also an unwavering display of its intent against a belligerent hegemon.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2020
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