by RAHUL BEDI
Chandigarh: Endemically plagued by budgetary constraints, import restrictions, and bureaucratic delays in materiel procurement, both India and Pakistan have long relied on jugaad, or locally executed battlefield improvisations, to keep their respective militaries effectively operational.
Whether it is retrofitting legacy combat aircrafts, refurbishing Cold War-era air defence systems, patching submarines, hacking together heating systems in high-altitude bunkers or adapting civilian platforms for military employment, both the nuclear-armed rivals have consistently turned inherent constraint into invention, forging capability where none existed.
Over decades, these two militaries had become adept at successfully marrying systems that were never meant to meet.
Through jugaad, field commanders, mechanics and technologists – military and civilian – have reframed the rules of physics, engineering and industrial logic to augment their respective materiel capabilities.
In executing these retrofits, they had improvised solutions in rudimentary workshops, far removed from air-conditioned and antiseptic corporate research and development laboratories and factories. But the outcome eventually enabled legacy and even a smattering of modern platforms, to perform well beyond what their original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) had envisioned.
To most Western militaries, however, jugaad was not only unimaginable but reckless and irresponsible.
Trained in precision, redundancy and systematised logistics, many Western and North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) militaries regarded Indian and Pakistani ethos of battlefield improvisation with bewilderment, albeit with some riveting, but objectionable fascination.
From fitting tractor parts into tanks to splicing together mismatched electronic systems, jugaad was ingenuity born of necessity – an approach largely alien to most Western militaries. The very idea of a damaged fighter jet patched up by a local mechanic or ironmonger, or a tank or infantry combat vehicle (ICV) being jump-started by villagers, would appear absurd to NATO planners.
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