Operation Brasstacks

The Indian Armed Forces conducted Brasstacks, a sizable military exercise, in Rajasthan state from November 1986 to January 1987. Two Army Commands merged their forces for it, mobilizing almost 5,00,000 soldiers - roughly half of the Indian Army. Two goals of the exercise were the deployment of ground forces and a series of amphibious assault drills by the Indian Navy close to the Pakistani naval station. The drill featured 500,000 soldiers massed within 100 miles of Pakistan, including infantry, mechanized, and air assault division.  Planning and deployment of an amphibious assault group made up of Indian navy personnel took place close to Korangi Creek in Pakistan's Karachi Division. The Indian Army's tactical nuclear strategy was to be determined during the exercise.

The Pakistani military saw this war simulation as the most important turning point in India-Pakistan relations since it was a menacing demonstration of overwhelming conventional might, maybe even  a nuclear war practice. Even today, Pakistani military experts and strategists view it as a planned coordinated deep offensive strategy to infiltrate into populated regions of Central Pakistan that is akin to a "blitzkrieg". India, meanwhile, said that "the main goal of Operation Brasstacks was to test new mechanization, mobility and air support concepts developed by Indian army."

The Indian Army had long pushed for the use of new tactics for land-based combat and professionalism since the Indo-Pakistani war of 1971. General Krishnaswamy Sundarji, the Chief of Staff of the Indian Army and a former commander of the Infantry division in the Bangladesh Liberation war, committed himself into the modernization of the Indian army. He was given permission and instructed to conduct a sizable military drill in order to try out new mechanization, mobility, and air support theories. With over 10,000 armored vehicles deployed over the western desert in December 1986, India began the last phase of a massive military exercise that sparked fresh tensions with Pakistan.

"Operation Brasstacks was a mobilization of the whole Army of India," according to Lieutenant General Prem Nath Hoon, head of the Indian Army's Western Command. Because of the size and scope of the exercise, Pakistanis were afraid that India was showing off its overwhelming conventional supremacy and had plans to invade and obliterate Pakistan with surgical strikes, much as it had done to East Pakistan in the Indo-Pak winter war of 1971. General Hoon's memoirs state that Western Command wrote to Sundarji stating that "when such a large exercise is conceived," the movement of Indian soldiers will draw Pakistan's notice. General Hoon said that such information was withheld from Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi and that General Sundarji failed to notify him of the scope of the operation. Paul Kapur, an Indian researcher, adds that the Indian army repeatedly urged the government to strike Pakistan during Operation Brasstacks, but to no avail. The Brasstacks Crisis, according to author Robert Art and others, was not unintentional and accidental crisis brought on by Pakistan's perception of a massive Indian Army drill, which was restricted mostly to the huge Rajasthan desert area, as provocative.

According to memoirs of theoretical physicist and nuclear strategist Munir Ahmad Khan, there were frequent meetings between the Ministries of Defense and Foreign Affairs due to worries that India may invade Pakistan, which was developing nuclear weapons. Pakistan was on the verge of becoming a nuclear power. In order to deflect such attacks, Pakistani military leaders have been given standing instructions to immediately mobilize their soldiers in all directions as quickly as possible since 1981. When Brasstacks was carried out, Pakistan reacted immediately with its own manoeuvres, first assembling the whole V corps and later the Southern Air Command, close to the Indian state of Punjab. Additionally, the V Corps and the whole Armoured Corps were given instructions to go to the front lines.
The Pakistani Armed forces and Indian Army forces were in close proximity to one another throughout the border's enlarged region by mid-January 1987. At midnight, the Pakistani Foreign Office invited S.K.Singh, the Indian Ambassador to Pakistan, to meet with Zain Noorani, the minister of state for foreign affairs, who had just returned from an urgent meeting with Zia-ul-Haq (Then military dictator of Pakistan). Noorani informed the Indian embassy that President Zia had given him a crucial message. Noorani formally warned Singh that Pakistan was "capable of inflicting unacceptable damage" on India should it violate Pakistan's sovereignty and territorial integrity.

Pakistan has placed its nuclear facilities on high alert in January 1987, heightening the crisis environment. A declaration that "Pakistan would use its atomic weapons if its existence was threatened" was made during the period by Abdul Qadeer Khan in an interview with Indian ambassador Kuldip Nayar, however he later denied making the claim. Indian diplomats in Islamabad (capital of Pakistan) allegedly received a warning that Pakistan would not think twice about using nuclear weapons in response to an assault. Pakistan disputed the accuracy of these claims.

The two countries agreed to remove 150,000 soldiers from the Kashmir region in March 1987, and later that month they also agreed to withdraw further troops from the desert region. These two agreements helped to reduce tensions. India threatened to move through with Brasstacks while negotiating the pullout agreement, claiming that Pakistan had no need to be alarmed. India did wait till the next week to start the last part of the operation while the most recent pullout deal was being finalized. India took the unprecedented step of allowing diplomats and media to view the operation separately in order to demonstrate its objectives were benign. Senior diplomats, politicians, and members of the Pakistani Foreign Service were invited. In February 1987, Pakistan's president Zia travelled to India on an invitation to see a cricket match between the two nations. Zia believed that although he and Rajiv Gandhi, the Prime Minister of India, could meet amicably, they could not come to a consensus on important matters.

The Indian Army said that Brasstacks was solely intended to be a training exercise and not a controversial one. General Sunderji repeatedly insisted that "This was, is, and always has been a training exercise." Pakistan continued to vehemently deny India's accusations that it was conducting atomic weapon research despite repeated accusations to the contrary from India. A.Q. Khan also denied any assertions made about the creation of an atomic weapon and later claimed that "his comments were taken out of context."

Lieutenant-General P.N. Hoon, a former senior Indian Army commander, said in 1999 that the operation had mobilized the entire Indian Army to Pakistan's eastern border. He adds that Brasstacks was a strategy to prepare for a fourth conflict with Pakistan.

According to theories put up by Western academics, Pakistan's misunderstanding of an unintentionally provocative Indian Army drill led to the crisis known as Brasstacks. According to Robert Art, "General Sunderji's strategy was to provoke Pakistan's response in order to give India an excuse to implement existing contigency plans to go on the offensive against Pakistan and destroy its nuclear weapons programmes in preemptive strikes." The New York Times reported that Pakistan's decision to stockpile atomic bombs as a nuclear deterrent was prompted by India's rapid pursuit of military technologies.