Pakistan Army

The Army is large, well trained, reasonably well equipped and has good morale. Senior Leadership is of a high quality and there is no evidence of religious extremism among senior officers, largely due to tight monitoring of promotions and selection boards by successive army chiefs, although it appears there may be some extremists in junior ranks.

The army's weaknessesses include a shortage of high-quality officers, lukewarm co-operation with the Pakistan Air Force (PAF), insufficient appreciation that Indian tactical airpower is probably its major threat, and difficulty in retraining to meet the military/insurgency threat in the western regions. Some planning has been based on unrealistic assessments of achievement of local air superiority over the forward edge of the battle area (although, given IAF difficulties in maintaining air superiority capability, the situation is not now as critical as it was in the late 1990s). There is emphasis on ground Air-Defence (AD) by surface-to-air missiles (such as the Swedish RBS70 and US Stinger) and extensive gun systems. Both strike corps have considerable AD assets intended to be deployed rapidly during obstacle crossings and breakout, and mechanization has been steadily improving.
Following the 1989 excercise Zarb-i-Momin (Believer's Blow), it was made clear to commanders that logistics mattered, that resupply was not to be considered "out of excercise" or "notional" and that all excercises had to have a credible logistics plan. Analysis of Zarb-i-Momin resulted in considerable restructuring, including the creation of Air Defence Command and Artillery Divisions. It was assessed that Command, Control, Communication, Computers and Intelligence (C4i) had serious defects, especially in the passage of tactical information from higher HQ to unit level, but improvement in this aspect has been slower than desired, mainly because of financial constraints. With the injection of US equipment, this situation is expected to improve.

Some use is made of satellite communications. Although it is accepted these are insecure, there have been notable advances in the development and production of secure systems, but these do not appear to be available other than its strike formations and special and independent forces. Subsequent excercises have tested the development matrix generated by Zarb-i-Momin, but budget limitations have precluded conduct of trials on the scale necessary to test, prove, and modify doctrine and procedures to the extent desired by commanders and GHQ.

On 3 November 2007, former Pakistani President and Chief of Army Staff Pervez Musharraf imposed emergency rule and suspended the country's constitution by putting into effect a Provisional Constitution Order (PCO). The military high command remained on side with Musharraf until he stepped down as the commander of the military amid domestic and international pressure on 28th November 2007. General Ashfaq Kayani was appointed his successor.