Operation Brasstacks was the largest combined military exercise of the Indian Armed Forces in the desert of Rajasthan, which was the biggest military activity the world has seen since World War 2. It started on November 18, 1986 and ended on March 6, 1987. As part of OP brasstacks, a series of exercises were planned to stimulate the operational capabilities of the Indian armed forces. The mass mobilization of troops in the Indian army feared Pakistan's fourth war with India. It was the largest military exercise on the Indian Subcontinent, involving around 600,000–700,000 troops mobilized and stationed on Rajasthan state's western border, less than 100 miles away from Pakistan. It was around half of the Indian Army at that time.
There were two tasks to the exercises: the initial task was to deploy ground troops, and another was to conduct a series of amphibious assault exercises by the Indian Navy near the Pakistan Naval Station. India maintained that the core objective of Operation Brasstacks was to test new concepts of mechanization, mobility, and air support devised by the Indian army.
The entire exercise was planned by CoAS, who earlier had commanded the infantry division in the 1971 war. General K. Sunderji and Gen. Sundarji focused on modernizing the Indian Army, creating the mechanized infantry, and rewriting the war manual to emphasize speed, decisive action, technology, and armor. He was part of many important operations (e.g., Op Bluestar, Op Pawan). Even Gen. K. Sundarji and the MoS for Defense, Arun Singh, didn't inform Rajiv Gandhi about it, and the scale of the operation and other details were hidden from him.
Role of forces: As mentioned earlier, troops of the Indian Army were stationed along the international border with Pakistan in the Rajasthan sector under the western and southern command of the Indian Army. To support ground troops, squadrons of the IAF moved towards the forward air bases of Ambala and Bikaner. Operations of Jaguars, Mig 27s, and many transport aircraft were carried out for two months. An amphibious assault group of the Indian Navy was planned to deploy near the Korangi Creek in Karachi. To respond to this, Pakistan deployed army troops, and the Southern Air Command of the PAF was on alert near the Indian State of Punjab. Within weeks, the Pakistan Navy's combat ships and submarines were deployed for the purpose of intelligence management in the northern Arabian Sea.
As tension increased, the hotline between the two states was activated, and officials from both sides tried to ease fears. Eventually, in February 1987, Pakistan's President General Zia ul-HHq traveled to India under the pretense of watching a cricket match, where he held talks with the Indian leadership to diffuse the crisis. These talks were followed up by Islamabad between February 26 and March 2. Both sides agreed to phase troops into peacetime positions. 150,000 troops from Kashmir and next in Rajasthan (Exercise Area). The tension diminished by the end of March, and withdrawal to peacetime positions was achieved at the end.
To continue talks between the leaders of India and Pakistan, they finally concluded with confidence-building measures between both countries. India and Pakistan signed the Agreement on the Prohibition of Attacks Against Nuclear Installations and Facilities on December 21, 1988. Every year on January 1, India and Pakistan exchange a list of their nuclear installations with each other under the non-nuclear aggression against nuclear installations agreement. And any country will not tell a third party to attack their enemy's nuclear installations. It was a confidence-building and trust-building agreement between India and Pakistan. The treaty was ratified by the parliaments of India and Pakistan on January 27, 1991. The first list of India's and Pakistan's nuclear installations was swapped between the two nations on January 1, 1992.
The exercise's true motivations are still up for debate. Lieutenant-General P. N. Hoon, a former senior Indian Army commander, stated in 1999 that the operation had mobilized the entire Indian Army to the eastern border with Pakistan. He adds that the goal of Brasstacks was to create the conditions for a fourth conflict with Pakistan. According to theories advanced by Western academics, Pakistan misinterpreted an unintentionally provocative Indian Army drill, leading to the accidental crisis known as Brasstacks. According to Robert Art, General Sunderji's aim was to incite Pakistan's retaliation in order to give India a pretext to carry out its preexisting contingency plans to launch an operation against Pakistan and abandon its nuclear weapons projects in preventative strikes.
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