NEW DELHI, Feb 22: The Indian army had falsely believed that its new found nuclear prowess would guarantee perpetual peace with Pakistan, the army's newly released secret assessment of the Kargil fiasco says, according to excerpts published in the Outlook magazine on Monday.

In its cover story headlined "War Against Error," the magazine says that the Indian army "was shocked and awed by the Kargil war." Five years later, the army's internal report lists the blunders it made, and steps to avert them in the future.

"The battle fought on the icy heights of Kargil between May and July 1999 is one that will not be easily forgotten by India," the magazine says. "Five years after a war in which 474 officers and men lost their lives, there has been much introspection in the country's security establishment on what went right, and what went wrong, in Operation Vijay."

The peace process, kicked off by the Lahore bus ride of Prime Minister Vajpayee, and the fact that both India and Pakistan had gone "overtly nuclear" led the army top brass to believe that war was a distant possibility," the army assessment admits.

The assessment also recognises another factor "that caused much heartburn within the army's higher echelons" - the fact that there were no inputs from the Research & Analysis Wing (RAW) spy agency.

The decision to take a dispassionate look at the war and to record its history and disseminate it among top generals of the army was taken two years ago when General N.C. Vij took over as the army chief. He had witnessed the conduct of the war at close quarters as the Director-General of Military Operations (DGMO).

Gen Vij decided to put together an internal assessment documenting crucial lessons from that war, culled mostly from top-secret operational notes with the military operations directorate. Such an assessment, it was felt, would help the army's senior commanders to learn "valuable lessons of the art of war" --a war that was fought in recent times and won, albeit after paying a heavy price.

The self-assessment made the army take a hard look at the many blunders that were committed during the Kargil operations - the critical failures, which happened at various levels.

"Senior commanders failed to deliver, the intelligence setup proved ineffective, battalions were led by people too old to climb razor-edge peaks in sub-zero climes, rifles that were introduced midway through the war created problems and the delay in deploying air power during the conflict prolonged the war," the report says.

The fact that there were "no ground sensors" on the 130 km stretch also adversely affected the army's ability to preempt incursions. It has also been put on record that Military Intelligence was unable to analyse certain inputs.

For instance, there were reports of "large-scale animal transport movements on the Pakistani side of the LoC." However, military intelligence concluded that these were undertaken to replenish ammunition for the Pakistani artillery regiments.

There were lessons learnt and action taken following the internal assessment. A range of new technology has been introduced, including regular flights by unmanned aerial vehicles.

The army pressed for a fence on the Line of Control to effectively check infiltration. With a drop in infiltration, the senior commanders can keep their troops readied for conventional operations.

It was also decided that winter posts would not be vacated. A Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA) was created along with the National Security Council secretariat and Military Intelligence was refurbished and "strengthened" by then army chief General S. Padmanabhan.

There was an "interim government" in India, which, according to the assessment, emboldened the Pakistani army hierarchy to assume that it would be "indecisive" and not be in a position to tackle with the exigency.

With political instability, the Indian army should have been on high alert. But it was not. According to the assessment, Pakistan's army hierarchy was "banking on the fact" that since it was also "overtly nuclear" India would not want a fully-fledged war. There were also fears in the Pakistan army that the ongoing Lahore peace process in February 1999 could "dilute Pakistan's stand on Kashmir".

Among the key conclusions it draws from the experience in Kargil, the army top brass recognised that in future there would be "short wars", that the army needed the "immediate ability to go to war" and it would be fought in the "backdrop of terrorism" as well under the cloud of an "overt nuclear threat".

On the ground, army headquarters has also ensured that to maintain "adequate force levels" a formation from the Bareilly-based 6th Division would now be permanently located in the north and would "train and deploy elements to keep them battle-ready."