The defence minister is indeed correct that ‘sacrifices’ would have to be made but this time India should offer that privilege to the Pakistani Army.

Though the target date for completing the 73 envisaged roads is 2012, only nine have so far been completed.

The Indian armed forces appear to be driving defence budgets rather than a cold calculation of the country’s desire for ‘adequate’ military capability.

While limitation in aims set is acknowledged as the primary way of conflict limitation, the point lost sight of usually on the politico-military facet is war termination.

Adequacy or inadequacy of defence allocation largely lies in the manner it is spent keeping in view the defence requirements for meeting operational and strategic goals and to have the needed defence preparedness to deal with threats.

While the asymmetrical threat will have an effect on warfare at strategic, operational and tactical levels, the threat will be most dramatic at the operational level.

To prevent intelligence failures there is a need to incorporate the additional and fresh areas of intelligence interest brought on by the asymmetric and nuclear dimensions of future conflict.

Modernisation has been grossly inadequate in the field of command, control and communications systems that link the ‘shooters’ and ‘sensors’ together to achieve synergy through network centricity and effects-based operations.