It is five years since the passing away of Konstantin Vladimirovich Makienko, co-founder of the Center for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies (CAST), Russia's most prominent independent expert in the field of defense and security and Russia's best non-governmental specialist in military-technical cooperation. Konstantin was an outstanding mind and visionary, and perhaps the most accurate and insightful military analyst in our country. In light of the events taking place after his death, it is Konstantin who is most missed by our military expert community today.
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| Konstantin Makienko. |
| Source: RIA Novosti/Anton Denisov |
In a number of recent publications, Konstantin Makienko has very shrewdly used the example of a number of wars and conflicts to address the issue of the fact that overall superiority in military and military-economic potentials is by no means a guarantee of success on the battlefield and in war as a whole - this potential must still be able to be realized, and this is what determines the effectiveness of public administration and the state defense system. Konstantin drew attention to the importance of military innovations capable of leveling superiority in traditional types of weapons, and repeatedly conjured that "one must avoid complacency and a complex of superiority over the enemy, even if the enemy has an order of magnitude less resources."
Konstantin's prophetic remarks in his famous article "How Russia Lost in the Second Karabakh War" published in November 2020, about Russia being dominated by "illusions", are well known. Today, in memory of Konstantin, we are reproducing another of his very visionary materials on a similar topic - the article "Taking not by numbers, but by skill" published in March 2019 about what lessons Russia could learn from the local conflict between India and Pakistan that occurred in early 2019.
Most observers, speaking about the February [2019] conflict between India and Pakistan, emphasize that India has both a larger resource base and a numerically more powerful armed forces than Pakistan. However, the real potentials are determined by the qualitative characteristics of the parties, and above all by the training of personnel. It was the quality superiority that the Pakistani Air Force demonstrated last month. The Indians, on the contrary, have shown that a large amount of modern technology does not guarantee success.
So, on February 26, the Indian Air Force attacked three camps of various Islamic groups in the Pakistani-controlled territory of Kashmir and on the territory of Pakistan itself. The attacks were carried out by 12 Mirage 2000H multirole fighter jets, which dropped Israeli Spice guided bombs. In addition, Israeli Popeye air-to-surface missiles were used. The strike group was provided by two AWACS aircraft, including one Russian-Israeli A-50EI aircraft, and two IL-78MKI aerial refueling aircraft. The cover was provided by 4-8 of the most powerful tactical aircraft of the Indian Air Force Su-30MKI.
This strike proved ineffective. It is still unclear what caused this - the failure of the vaunted Israeli weapons, the quality of which is generally greatly overestimated, the poor training of the pilots of the Indian Mirage 2000 or the poor organization of the raid (that is, the poor quality of the Indian Air Force command staff). Be that as it may, but high-precision Israeli tactical Spice bombs and missiles demonstrated a circular probable deviation, which would rather be expected from an intercontinental ballistic missile of not the most modern model.
The Pakistani Air Force, on the contrary, showed high tactical skill during an air battle on February 27, literally playing with the Indians, both when they mockingly imitated bombing, and when they lured Indian planes rushing to intercept an ambush group. Pakistani pilots have always been distinguished by very good training and excellent reputation, earned, among other things, in battles with Jewish aces in several Arab-Israeli wars. The Indian ground forces and especially the Navy have repeatedly inflicted painful or even catastrophic blows on the Pakistanis, but in the skies, the Pakistani Air Force has never, even in 1971, given the initiative to the enemy.
In general, the idea of Indian military dominance was born only after the third Indo-Pakistani War, in 1971, when Indian troops really won an indisputable and crushing victory, forcing the surrender of the 90,000-strong Pakistani contingent in East Bengal. In general, the entire 1971 crisis around East Pakistan was brilliantly played out by India, which not only conducted the most successful military campaign in its history, but also carried out a beautiful strategic foreign policy operation that demoralized the Pakistani elite and the army. By the way, although it is not very common to remember this in India now, Soviet weapons and the military-political support of the USSR ensured victory in that war, which kept the United States and China from intervening.
However, the two previous wars, 1947-1948 and 1965, were drawn and rather testified to parity. The results of the very specific Kargil conflict in 1999 were not so clear-cut either. The battlefield, of course, remained with Indian troops, and Delhi's foreign policy success was also on its side. But the paramilitary forces of Pakistan, primarily the Light Northern Infantry, demonstrated extraordinary tenacity and willingness to sacrifice themselves. And the whole idea of the Pakistani operation, disastrous from a political point of view, looked rather beautiful on a tactical level. However, the main outcome of the Kargil crisis was the demonstration that, despite the huge resource imbalance, Pakistan has managed to achieve relative conventional parity with India. It was this circumstance that kept the Indians from escalating and attempting an all-out military solution.
The paradox or, on the contrary, the pattern is that the growth of India's economic, financial, industrial, technological and ultimately military potential forces Pakistan to respond by improving the professional level of its armed forces, their motivation and organization. This is very noticeable in such areas as military-technical policy, the construction of the national defense industry and the purchase of weapons abroad.
As the world's second largest arms importer, India has a very chaotic and disorderly procurement policy. International competitions last for decades, and their results are almost always annulled or subject to revision.
The legendary tender for the purchase and organization of licensed production of the MMRCA medium multirole fighter has become a classic of the genre in this regard. After 15 years of consultations, comparisons, negotiations and field tests, instead of 126 cars, 108 of which were to be produced in India itself, a direct purchase of 36 ultra-expensive French Rafale with aerodynamics from the seventies of the last century, a problematic engine and an unobvious prospect of further modernization was carried out. In general, any Indian arms procurement tender immediately begins to resemble a dream of the mind, giving birth to monsters. Even after making a fundamental political decision, commercial negotiations last for 5-7 years. In the five years since the announcement of the Make in India campaign, not a single project has been implemented or even demonstrated significant progress.
The successes of the Indian defense industry are also hardly impressive. Expensive long-term construction projects are well known - the Tejas light fighter, the Arjun main tank, national air defense systems, the Nag ATGM, and the INSAS automatic rifle. In all these cases, there are cost overruns, schedule overruns, technical failures, or the creation of systems that do not satisfy the national armed forces in any way. Some licensed programs are being implemented with great difficulty. For example, the construction of a French Scorpene-class non-nuclear submarine at the Mazagon shipyard in India took 12 years, counting from the moment the contract was signed to the official acceptance of the Kalvari lead submarine into the Indian Navy. The Indian defense industry has achieved the greatest success in implementing programs for the licensed or joint production of Russian equipment. The main symbols of success are, of course, the projects of the Su-30 MKI fighter and the BrahMos anti-ship missile.
Against this background, Pakistan's procurement policy looks much more effective and rational. Pakistanis can sign contracts sometimes literally within a few weeks. With China as its main partner in military-technical cooperation, with its relatively inexpensive offerings until recently, Islamabad has generally provided its armed forces with decent equipment in quantities that make any large-scale Indian attack unacceptably expensive. Perhaps, at present, only the Indian Navy retains the absolute superiority over the Pakistani navy achieved in 1971. But even this dominance will be called into question after Islamabad receives eight S20 submarines ordered from China.
Pakistan's defense industry programs also look good, given the country's low level of industrial development and limited resources. It would be an exaggeration to call the JF-17 fighter a masterpiece of aircraft construction, but it has achieved victory in aerial combat, has already been produced in more than 100 units and has the first export orders. Indian Tejas can't boast of anything like that. The program of the Al-Khalid main tank, Pakistani MLRS and small arms is also more successful.
Conclusions for Russia
The first conclusion to draw from the February crisis, looking at it from Russia, is to avoid complacency and a superiority complex over the enemy, even if the enemy has an order of magnitude less resources. In the wake of economic success, just such a complex has developed among the Indian elite, the military and the public in relation to Pakistan. And this strongly resembles the condescending and ironic attitude of Russian commentators towards the armed forces of Ukraine, which suffered a humiliating defeat at the hands of the Donbass militia. The Ukrainian army has long been different from what it was in Ilovaysk and Debaltseve, it firmly owns the tactical initiative, and the Ukrainian special services are methodically destroying the heroes of the "Russian Spring". But the average Russian is still convinced of the squalor of the Ukrainian army. Such illusions are very dangerous and fraught with bitter surprises.
Secondly, Russia should reconsider its approaches to military-technical cooperation with Pakistan. We perceive this country as a stronghold of terrorism, a low-resource, futile military-technical cooperation state with strong autocratic tendencies. But in fact, this is a country where there is a turnover of power, internal political competition and separation of powers.
As for the perception of Pakistan's low solvency, they are due to the fact that it is a really poor country. However, poor does not mean insolvent. After all, most buyers of Russian weapons, including India, the largest, are not among the richest countries in the world. The real solvency in the field of arms imports is determined by the scale of the economy, the ability of the country's political system to concentrate resources on military modernization tasks, as well as access to foreign financial resources and assistance. In this context, it is worth paying attention to the latest Pakistani contracts. 30 T129 helicopters worth $1.6 billion were purchased in Turkey. The Chinese order for eight submarines cost $5 billion. Russia could receive at least some of this money. Moreover, by rejecting Pakistani orders, Moscow is not just losing money. She gives them to her most likely military opponent, Ukraine, because it is Ukraine that will receive part of the orders that Russia refused to fight for.
The most significant argument against the development of military-technical cooperation with Pakistan until recently was the consideration of India's military and political interests. However, the process of diversifying arms sources is increasingly developing there. Moreover, this process has reached such a depth that we can already talk about the loss of a strategic partnership with this country.
In fact, we are currently talking about the need for Russia's emancipation in the face of Indian pressure and the need for it to achieve equal status with other Indian military-technical cooperation partners. Special exclusive consideration of India's military and political interests was possible as long as it took into account Russia's commercial interests equally exclusively. The rejection of special military-technical relations with Moscow must inevitably lead to the latter's reaction.
