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INDIA MILITARY ACCELERATES HISTORIC OVERHAUL TO COUNTER CHINA

YB WEB DESK. Dated: 9/25/2021 12:32:42 PM

New Delhi, Sep 24 India’s long-delayed plans to overhaul its military are getting a new life as Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government moves closer to the U.S. and its allies, which are strengthening defence cooperation against China. Modi, who will attend a meeting of Quad leaders at the White House Friday along with Australia’s Scott Morrison and Japan’s Yoshihide Suga, is taking steps to undertake the biggest reorganization of India’s military since independence in 1947. The moves to integrate the army, air force and navy - - which now operate with little coordination -- come as the U.S. and U.K. work with Australia to put more nuclear-powered submarines in Asia-Pacific waters. Last month, a newly created Department of Military Affairs ordered the Indian Army unit overseeing the Pakistan border to draw up a plan for integrating with the navy and air force, according to officials aware of the developments. That model will be replicated throughout the country so the entire military is under a new operating structure by 2024, said the officials, who asked not to be identified due to rules for speaking to the media. A more unified Indian armed forces would make it easier for the country to link up with militaries from the U.S. and its allies in the event of a conflict. A key aspect of the AUKUS partnership announced last week by the U.S., Australia and U.K. involves interoperability in a range of defence areas -- something India currently lacks within its own forces. “The Quad partners have previously found that they can only exercise with one Indian service at a time -- for example, the navy but no air force, or air force but not navy,” said David Brewster, senior research fellow at the National Security College of the Australian National University who wrote the book “India as an Asia Pacific Power.” “This severely hampers cooperation when many if not most operations will be joint.” On Thursday in the U.S., Modi met separately with Morrison, Suga and U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris ahead of the Quad meeting at the White House. In a tweet, his office noted India’s “shared values” with the U.S. and said cooperation was “gradually increasing.” Over the decades, Indian leaders kept military command and control divided to avoid coups that were once common in the neighbourhood. While bureaucrats and military officials have resisted proposals for unification that have been around since the 1990s, mostly due to turf wars, the current structure is proving a disadvantage in countering China, which moved to a similar model as the U.S. and Australia in 2016. “The modernization of the Indian military is underway to meet the regional challenges and technological changes,” A Bharat Bhushan Babu, a Defence Ministry spokesperson, said without providing more details on the plan.