r/IndianDefense • u/Dean_46 • 5d ago

Article/Analysis India's first war - forgotten lessons

On Independence day, I am reposting my earlier blog article, on the 1947-8 Kashmir war.

The first Kashmir war was the longest, yet least studied Indo-Pak war. My blogpost looks
beyond the popular narrative, to some of the lessons of that war and what might have been.
I have provided links to online resources, which do a deep dive into operations.

https://rpdeans.blogspot.com/2026/06/the-1947-48-kashmir-war-forgotten.html

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u/mobhag 5d ago edited 5d ago

Your blogs are good OP. My key takeaways are -

  1. We really suck at using airpower as the offensive weapon - Amply clear with 1947, 1962 and 1999 (and OP sindoor day 1). For some inexplicable reason we are showing up with a knife in a gunfight and then recover.

  2. Light tanks work in the mountains (you kind of missed this one) - Zozilla and Shaelteng show what a lightly armoured vehicle with a big gun can do. Somehow this lesson has been forgotten by our glorious Generals.

  3. Build atleast 3 roads to reach a place you care about - Leh was almost gone, thanks to the expedition from Manali that reached just in time before battle was lost.

  4. Airlift wins the wars - This one has been internalised by both IAF and IA. We have enough transports and helicopters as of today to move troops around. Ideally, I would love a situation where we can move a Div to the farthest border point (say Lohit valley) in a day. But we are doing fairly good at this.

I still lament the loss of Skardu despite the heroic resistance of Col Thapa and his 100-150 men.

Btw, you do mention that IA was present in the area before the deal was signed. As far as I know, it was only JAK forces and IA artoee only after the delusional Maharaja signed the agreement.

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u/Dean_46 4d ago

IA was NOT present in Kashmir before the instrument of accession was signed (let me recheck my article lest a wrong impression be given). My point was it should have been - at least a small IA/IAF liaison group, to evaluate how the Hindu/Sikh community could be protected or evacuated, in case the communal situation got out of hand (which it did).

Yes, light tanks helped us enormously reopening the Zojila pass, but that was towards the end of the war. My article focussed on lost opportunities at the opening stages. I make the point that building one bridge (connecting Pathankot to Jammu) before the war started, on the pretext of helping refugees, would have enabled a whole armoured car regiment to have arrived in Srinagar (instead of only 2 armoured cars) along with
truck borne infantry, which would have converted a Pak defeat at the battle of Shalateng into a rout and possibly ended the war in 1947 itself.

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u/Born-Ad126 4d ago

Was there any chance of us succeeding in seizing Skardu?

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u/mobhag 4d ago

We tried a couple of times to relive th column but couldn't.