ARMY- TABLE TOP EXERCISES

New Delhi, Sep 23: To counter terror threats in the backdrop of the Mumbai attacks, top army generals have evolved detailed plans to secure the country's coastline from Gujarat to Orissa and refine the force's amphibious warfare tactics.

The strategies were fine-tuned by top brass including Army chief General Deepak Kapoor during a two-day table-top war game in Pune last week, army sources here said today.

Plans for the Southern Command to protect the coastline from both conventional and asymmetric threats were discussed threadbare, they said.

The war game was a closed-door conceptual exercise conducted by top commanders with the help of sand models and large-scale maps, which do not involve troops on the ground.

The Pune drill follows a similar exercise by the Kolkata-based Eastern Command a fortnight back for area in the North-eastern states along the borders with China, Bangladesh and Myanmar, apart from its counter-insurgency operations.

Special Forces face shortage of officers

Facing an acute shortage of officers in its Special Forces, the Indian Army has decided to send two passing-out officers each from its academies to these elite units. “We have shortage of over 60 per cent officers in our Para (SF) units. We would now be sending two volunteer officers each to these battalions right after they pass out from our academies such as the Indian Military Academy in Dehradun and Officers Training Academy (OTA) in Chennai,” a senior Army official said here. Out of the sanctioned strength of around 35 officers, the official said, these units have only 10—12 officers. “More than half of the officers on the strength of these units are out doing their mandatory courses in our various schools and centres. So, these units are left only with four to five officers at any time to manage the affairs,” he said. At the moment, the Army has seven Para (SF) units, which are deployed in different locations across the country. The tough and strict physical and mental parameters for qualifying into the SF battalions are attributed as main reasons behind the shortage of officers. Infantry and other units are also facing a shortage of 30-35 officers but problems of SF units become more acute because not many officers are able to qualify the physical tests and 90 days probation that they have to go through before they join the SF, army sources said.