Though the Indian Army would ultimately deploy a little over two brigades in the region and reorganise it as Kilo Force under Major General PO Dunne, these were undermanned and did not have the mobility and wherewithal to counter the swift initial assault by a brigade-sized force with a squadron of Patton tanks on 7 April that bypassed the Indian posts of Sardar and Vigokot and made a run for the small town of Dharamsala about 30-odd kilometres inside Indian territory. Pakistan’s response to India moving its posts towards a border hamlet called Kanjarkot was disproportionate – it moved almost an entire division into the area by early April. The first was an evaluation of India’s military preparedness the second was an opportunity to test the Patton tank in manoeuvre warfare along with the infantry and with artillery support and lastly, to grab any territory and hold it. While the larger strategic objective of Operation Desert Hawk, as Pakistan named this limited operation, was to analyse the politico-military reaction from the new Indian government led by prime minister Lal Bahadur Shastri, the military objectives were pretty focussed. The Americans had armed the Pakistanis with sophisticated military equipment that included Patton tanks, Sabre fighter jets and field artillery guns since the late 1950s and Ayub Khan was keen on assessing Indian military preparedness before August and September 1965 when he had planned Operation Gibraltar (the armed insurrection in J&K) and its follow-on operation called Operation Grand Slam that would complete the isolation of J&K from the Indian heartland through the capture of Chhamb and Akhnur. Global Watch | Pakistan’s Defence Day celebrations and the art of perception management by deep state Army launches 'Project Naman' for welfare of veterans, kin of martyrs Like many poorly defined and demarcated frontier areas in the sub-continent, the Rann of Kutch emerged as a contested area in the mid-1950s with both India and Pakistan laying claims to it despite clear evidence being available in pre-independence records that the Maharajah of Kutch had laid claims to the Rann based on historical evidence. ![]() ![]() For a major part of the year however, it remains a marshy area interspersed with hard and dry salt pans and a permanent riverine creek, the Sir Creek, the middle of which marks the current border. The Rann of Kutch is a large peninsular-shaped hybrid marshland cum salt pan which gets partially submerged during the few monsoon months. ![]() The summer of 1965 saw a buoyant Pakistani Armed Forces under an overconfident military dictator, General Ayub Khan, test the resolve and preparedness of India’s Armed Forces in the salt pans of the Kutch. Watch out for this column close to all the dates in the year when independent India has had to deal with various national security challenges. Editor’s note: This series by one of India’s leading military historians of contemporary times showcases chronological vignettes of war and conflict in independent India.
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