The strength of a military force lies in the quality of its human resources, weapons and equipment, and its morale. There is no better time to reiterate this than now, exactly 13 years after the Kargil war. Twenty days after taking over as army chief - while addressing the prime minister and his cabinet committee of security colleagues in a Combined Commanders' Conference (October 20, 1997) - i had described the state of the army as "the spirit is strong but the body is weak", and then proceeded to indicate the high deficiencies of arms, ammunition and equipment.