Bypass to Dhaka, 1971: boldness or a reverse 1962?
December 1971. Eastern Command must defend to a sceptical operations directorate a plan that sends three divisions around, not through, a dozen fortified border towns, and drives on the provincial capital. The 1962 file lies open on the table: forward positions held in company and battalion packets with no depth, a corps commander obliged to seek Delhi's permission before pulling back, and brigades that abandoned equipment in the withdrawal. This time the constraints are tighter in one respect and looser in another - 30 days of fuel and ammunition, one newly raised division of indifferent equipment, and two parachute battalions that can be lifted exactly once. The adversary's main body sits in the capital with roughly a division, and its lateral communications run through two towns that are themselves fortified. Foreign pressure is expected to reach the UN General Assembly in about three weeks. The directorate's objection is blunt: bypassing strongpoints is how armies get cut off.
1. Is the bypass faithful to the principle of the objective, or does it violate the principle of secure lines of communication?
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Objective first. The centre of gravity in the eastern theatre was the political-military authority in the capital, not the border garrisons. Those garrisons existed to trade space for time and to tie down attackers - which is exactly what a sequential reduction of twelve towns would have given them. Reducing them in turn would consume the 30-day logistic clock and hand the adversary the three weeks it needed at the United Nations.
But LOCs cannot be wished away. A bypass is only sound if the attacker substitutes something for the road he did not clear:
- flying columns that keep moving and force the defender to react rather than blockade;
- local irregular forces to interdict and screen the bypassed garrisons;
- airlift for the parachute battalions, used once, at the point where speed matters most;
- riverine and air resupply in place of a single vulnerable road.
The real test. The bypass is defensible if the invested garrisons cannot sortie in strength and if the attacker's own supply can be shifted by air and river. It becomes reckless if the columns outrun both. Historically the bypassed forces did contest the line of communication, so the risk was genuine - but it was a managed risk against a political clock that would not wait.
Verdict. Faithful to the objective, and conditionally acceptable on LOCs, provided depth is created by airlift and irregulars rather than assumed.
2. Which lesson of 1962 does this design apply, and which lesson does it risk repeating? Distinguish them precisely.
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Lessons applied.
- The civil-military lesson. The most damaging feature of 1962 was not the correlation of forces but the erosion of professional military advice on timing and posture. The 1971 design reflects the opposite: refusal to move until formations were ready, and a plan built around logistic reality (30 days, one airlift) rather than political expectation.
- Concentration. 1962 dispersed force into forward packets without depth; the 1971 plan concentrates on a single decisive axis and accepts risk elsewhere.
- Air and engineer support integrated from the start, rather than improvised after contact.
Lessons at risk of repetition.
- Dispersal, inverted. 1962 failed through defensive dispersal; the danger here is offensive dispersal - several thin columns racing ahead of their logistics, each individually beatable.
- Intelligence underestimation. Assuming a bypassed brigade will stay passive is an intelligence judgement, and 1962's central failure was exactly that kind of assumption.
- Command interference. A three-week political deadline creates pressure to accelerate; if higher headquarters micromanages phase lines, the 1962 pathology returns in a new form.
Judgement. The plan applies the timing and concentration lessons well but inherits the intelligence-risk lesson; it should be briefed as a calculated risk with named tripwires, not as a certainty.
3. The directorate calls the plan 'a gamble that will strand three divisions'. What evidence would substantiate or refute that charge?
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Translate the charge into testable propositions. 'Stranded' means the divisions run out of supply, lose their line of communication, or face a concentrated counterstroke before the capital falls. Each is measurable.
Evidence that would substantiate it.
- Days of supply actually held at each phase line, calculated for the farthest column rather than the average.
- Bridging and ferry capacity at the major river obstacle, measured in vehicles per hour against the planned crossing rate.
- A demonstrated ability of the bypassed garrisons to sortie - sortie rate, transport, fuel stocks - rather than an assumption of passivity.
- Enemy reinforcement times from the capital to each axis, compared with own arrival times.
Evidence that would refute it.
- A logistics plan in which no column exceeds a stated days-of-supply reserve at any phase line.
- Airlift and riverine tonnage sufficient to replace the road not cleared.
- Intelligence showing bypassed formations are immobilised by lack of transport and by local irregular activity.
- A wargame in which the adversary's counterstroke arrives after, not before, the capital is invested.
Judgement. The charge is not answered by confidence but by the reserve at the farthest column and the crossing rate at the river. If both hold, the plan is a calculated risk; if either is unquantified, the directorate is right and the plan is a gamble dressed as boldness.