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Tuesday, Apr 06, 2004

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National

Army to create new top post

By Praveen Swami

NEW DELHI, APRIL 5. A conference of Army commanders scheduled to be held shortly is expected to ratify the appointment of a new Deputy Chief of Army Staff for Information Systems and Training.

The appointment will mark a major step in giving teeth to the Army's growing emphasis on modernising its battlefield information systems. Critics of the Army have often argued that its combat capabilities were handicapped by the lack of real-time information on inventories and advanced communication capabilities.

Sources said the new position would, most likely, be occupied by Lieutenant-General, J.B.S. Yadava, now the Deputy Chief of the Army Staff in charge of Procurement and Systems.

The Army now has two Deputy Chiefs of the Army Staff, with the second position responsible for Training and Coordination. It is unclear if the new position would result in the creation of a third position, or would simply replace the current position held by Gen. Yadava.

Gen. Yadava, a highly-regarded officer whose tenure as 16 Corps Commander saw the highest levels of kills of terrorists in the border districts of Rajouri and Poonch, is expected to bring an understanding of the special needs of counter-terrorist operations to his new job. As things stand, field units sorely lack fast access to the available pool of information on terrorists operating in their areas, and there is no automated system in place for sharing intelligence gathered by different organisations working on the ground. Counter-terrorist operations in Jammu and Kashmir are also scheduled to figure in the coming Army Commanders' conference, which will be chaired by the Chief of the Army Staff, Nirmal C. Vij.

The Army will discuss contingency plans to deal with the prospect of heightened infiltration this summer, a prospect some believe is realistic given the increasingly hawkish rhetoric of the Pakistan President, Pervez Musharraf.

The conference will also discuss plans to operationalise and test fencing along the Line of Control.

At the time of writing, work on the 580 km-long fence is almost complete, with only small gaps remaining to be filled in the Jammu frontier and on some of the more mountainous stretches of Kashmir.

The physical fencing is expected to be supplemented by a variety of electronic motion and pressure sensors, and, eventually, by electrified cobra wire.

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