Bharat Rakshak

Awesome post!

Check this out

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PmtgRS10Vvk

Ray, Let me ask the question this way:-

What in your opinion were then ten main mistakes IA made which in retrospect should not have been made.

Guys read Jaswant Singh's book, will provide much better insight.

Guys read Jaswant Singh's book, will provide much better insight.

Sharma, keep it up. Don't get bothered by negative reaction, this will only help you correct your course and phrase your remarks better. Don't get drawn into a sparring bout with those who might rankle you with their snide remarks. You are entitled to your opinion and you must ai them to find out if they are correct or not. And lastly, don't get overawed by anyone.

The 10 mistakes made were and they are not only Kargil related:

1. That reappraisal of the Threat Analysis that has been handed over years ago has not been undertaken at the highest HQ.

2. That officers are more ambitious to attain higher ranks by hook or by crook (people are no longer satisfied to feel that commanding of one's own battalion is the height of achievement and professional satisfaction) and so readily accept anything passed on by senior officers as the Gospel Truth.

3. That we don't realistically appraise the 'troops to task'.

4. That anything out of the book happening is taken as impossible till proved otherwise.

5. Too much of improvisation and adhocism, leading to cut and paste actions,

6. Too much of Rambo and gung ho, and little thought given to a task in hand to be done with thought, planning and detail.

7. Since too much of political correctness and statistics have become more important, the CO is no longer the last word and instead is more of a pawn.

8. Too much of American style of command, slick presentations etc wherein the "meat" disappears in the razzmatazz.

9. Too many officers reach the higher echelons by merely marking time in their command slot and then move out as soon as it is finished because of having some maibaap somewhere. Many tag a round thier mentors and hence obtain excellent 'chits' that pass muster at the Promotion Boards.

10. Indian ethos and traditions of always being awed by authority and always wanting to curry favours ( I could have used an example mentioned here, but then I will give it a go by)

11. (Bonus) Never rock the boat and instead sail with the tide. This is the greatest fault.

There are ***dozens*** of books bought out from the Indian side, but you still say the first punch was pulled by Mushy.. what a joke.

I have given my side of the bargain i.e. 10 faults,

Now you let me know:

1. How is Kargil a Strategic Disaster.

2. How Kargil could have been easily avoided.

3. What are the better plans of yours to ensure WASO and patrolling is effective (and keep it to the availability of men and materiel pre Kargil War)

4. How did the infiltration take place.

5. What better way we should have taken up the defences.

6. How did the infliltrator hang around from Jan to May.

7. What better way we could have detected the infilitration when it was occuring.

Karan,

If Musharraf is indeed such a hero and Pakistan has achieved a resounding victory as he claims, then why did he not allow the Commission (something like the Justice Hamdoor Rehman commission for 1971) to be set up for reviewing the Kargil War?

Wonderful discussion going on. Thanks to RayC, Sharma, Karan, JC, Raj & a host of other posters, actual nitty-gritties are being discussed. Hope, this should help many of us civies to understand the nuances and the reality that faces IA.

RayC Saheb, Many questions were raised on the 'intelligence' provided and whether they were 'actionable' or not. Gen. Malik & B. Raman have provided versions of their own, which are at odds. As a CO from the battlefield, what are your views? Where did we really stumble?

Added later: To clarify, I am not talking 't field level intelligence. I am talking 't intelligence and/ or espionage in Pukistan. After all, India could tap discussions betn Mushy & his rats and even warn Mushy on possible assassination attempts. Was there something amiss wrt Kargil?

I was a CO in an earlier tenure in Operation Intrusion Dalunang.

In Op Vijay (interestingly, the Goa operation is also Op Vijay and it show the total lack of imagination) I was the Deputy GOC.

Intelligence has always been very vague.

Sorry for the infraction; so Gen Malik seems to be correct. May be B Raman only was trying to protect dignity of his ex-employers.

we need more people like RayC at the helm....not the bag carriers and golf club crowd who cluster like vultures over the fishes....a pity, in my experience "straight shooters" seldom if ever rise beyond a certain level since they are unable to "manage" relations with ignorant/incompetent civilian 'leaders' and sycophantic seniors.

as in the army, so also in other fields.

but thank you Sir, for your service.

Isn't this the feeling all over India (except may be MMS & Menon)?

http://www.indianexpress.com/story/13561.html

On Musharraf, Malik said: “I don’t think much of him as a General. As a Captain or Major, I would give him nine out of ten. But as a General, I would give him three out of ten.â€

Thank you Singha.

Every person reaches his level of incompetence and I must have reached mine. I have no quibbles, Had a very interesting innings and enjoyed every minute of it.

I also play a good round of golf too Ideal way to keep fit, when you find that age does not permit even 15 minutes of real fast soccer!

There are good people in the army still.

But, yes, it is time that field soldiering is given more importance so that people don't skip away to staff since that is a safer way out since the decision is someone elses.

Taking decisions is a very difficult thing since it affect the lives and workings of the people.

It is fashionable to be in the Operations Branch since it means as we used to say drawing arrows and lines, but damn difficult to be a Logistic staff. Every thing the logistics chap does affects the people on the ground. And the most difficult task in the Indian Army is to be a CO, but also the greatest and the most satifying one too.

I am sorry I was a bit harsh on Sharma, but then I have become a bit "chary of the English language being used as a "weapon of war" and my favourite CDs are the "Yes Minister" series, where the language sound so important and yet it means nothing! I used to enjoy using the English language since it was fun to see how it impresses without meaning anything and wondering in amazement thereafter!

If one wants to know about Kargil and if one lives in Chandigarh, one should meet my Commander Brig SS Nakai (RajRif) when I commanded a battalion there. He is one of the most clear thinking Army officer I have ever met!

Your point one in list of faults in answer to all questions.

Raj that is a copout. Please spend some time and answer his questions.

On the matter of field intelligence, I noticed something Brig. Ray mentioned and would like to highlight it in the context of detecting intrusions. I'd like to be corrected, if I am wrong.

1. Our MI informers in PoK are simple folk and are trained to spot and report on specific things e.g. a battalion moving to a forward area, extra supply trucks entering/leaving a base, ammo being dumped in forward areas etc. These are taken as reliable military indications.

2. If the infiltrators were in plain-clothes, their activities within PoK or in the border villages would not evoke the same reports back to MI. If they are carrying ammo/stocks, again that is not likely to elicit the same interest within the intelligence community; they would merely put it down to infiltration into J&K. Spread that over 4 months and there would be very little pattern recognition.

3. Kunal Verma's video interviews of captured Pak soldiers documents some of their logistical preparations, but I also seem to remember reading of it elsewhere. There was a deliberate effort to disguise regular Pak soldiers as plain-clothesmen

Thanks, Anoop. I also remember the interviews and Ray Sir's detailed explanation of the field-level intelligence being done on this side of LoC.

I also believe MI would somewhat be constrained infiltrating ISI or Puki Army's top echelons. I was talking about getting access to the war rooms, the top-notch classified documents etc which RAW should have been doing. Either the supplied intelligence was very vague (Gen Malik & now Ray Sir has talked 't it) or the political/ mil leadership sat over it (per B. Raman's rebuttal).

RayC,

During Kargil at what level could one request access to satellite recon ? 1m resolution images would definately have shown something abnormal. High resolution images taken by Canberra and Foxbats later were used to pinpoint enemy supply routes and bunkers. Since these were detected and destroyed during the ops they could have been discovered before the ops too.

ARC did conduct a few sorties and according to an interview with the ARC chief they didnt have orders do conduct more. Seems to me there were subtle instructions to create a facade of normaliness from the top political figures.

After Kargil one of the recc. of the KRC was batallion level access to satellite data. I dont know if this has been implemented yet as there was a report recently that army units fighting in NE have subscribed to Google Earth to get access to topography formation. Should the Indian Army have to resort to Google Earth to get bread and butter information ?

Good question.

Don't mind if I don't answer that.

I can say this that one must have their own satellites.

If one depends on foreign sources, there is always the possibility of being given out of date photos and passed off as current!

Google earth pictures are not really usefull for recon as they are not realtime and image for subscribed and free version are SAME. TES and Cartosat2 with a resolution of 1 m give usefull images. Israel's latest EROS is supposed to have a resolution of 0.5 M. Cartosat 1 and 2 are the backbones of IA's upcoming SBS system. So in near future satellite imagery should be available at batallion level, if not already available.

However this is not a substitute for aerial recon. The satellites are trackable and their overhead timings can be calculated in advance, enabling enemy to take preventive action.

Ray Sahib
What he did in kargil was tactically superb but a strategic blunder. As a former CO you may agree or disagree with it? Kargil is one of those events of history where everything went right for pakis (initially) and fell apart later. The thought process of mushy and his icronies is, if it wasn't for American Pressure they would have succeeded. He sees victory in the fact that IA did not cross LOC, for him that is IA's weakness. However wrong it maybe- he still believes it. Nobody can change someone's beliefs no matter how many times you beat him down.

I am sure there are plenty of skeletons in his closet that will fall out if any commission is setup to enquire, depending on the mandate given to the commission.
As far as his book is concerned he got his moolah that is safe and secure for Bilal somewhere.

Karan and others
No offense, but can you cut the Sahib part? Nothing wrong but seems Pakistani style of addressing.
I will delete this irrelevent post after 24 hrs

The term is used voluntarily out of a mark of respect for RayC. Perhaps "Sir" would be better? Same purpose, same intent. Lets not engage in pointless comparisons with the Pakis just on account of using a single term.

I wonder if it was tactically superb. The very fact that Pakistan did not have secure lines of communication and had penetrated deep, in itself indicates that they were tactically 'isolated' and would have eventually been defeated in detail.

In comparison, the Indian posts were stocked in all respects and had the requisite weaponry to last out till the next season.

Strategically, had they been able to establish themselves (though not feasible they way they had planned the operations) and domiated the Srinagar - Leh Highway, it would have been a coup of sorts - dream come true strategically.

Therefore, you can judge whether it was a tactical or a strategic victory/ blunder.

They had achieved Strategic suprise for sure!

GTG, will come back and reply.

Thanks ALL and especialy to RayC.



I think if we need to answer the questions from 2 to 7 than question one is answered. Though we can term it as Failure instead of Disastor.

Kargil could have been avoided easily like we foil every attempts in other sectors of LoC. Terrian can be different but resource deployment should be proprtional to the difficulty of terrain. Battalions deployed there should have escalated that to higher commands. I assume that many of the COs must have done that. Now Higher commands faulted in ignoring the fact. They kept on shifting important formations to for CI ops. May be they igonered the fact that this shifting is infavt lowering of guard. Army acted or was made to act (Politics) as CI Force. This attitude of High command must have had following effect on the remaining troops there:-

1. Initialy they must have felt frustated to guard some much large and difficult area.

2. Priority w.r.t. equipments, supplies and other things must be given to the forces in valley. Further heart burning.

3. Slowly and steadily Complacency crept in and SOPs were not followed and also ignored by seniors.

As per the KRC the battalions deployed there before May,99 did some fundamental mistakes which I have mentioned earlier. (Patroling the valleys not ridges. Not going up to LoC). Above 3 points can be reason.

Army was acting more like a CI force than Defence Force. I rember that even Armored and Arty unit were sent to serve in valley in Light Inf role. Though this was visualised by Indian Thinktank and RRs were raised along with induction of CRPF and other paramilitary forces. But we took bit long time to realize that. Prolonged use of Army in CI ops must have some impacts on functioning and admin of it. RayC may explain better what exactly this factor had contributed.

Let Army work like our defence force against external threat and not make it work like a mere police force.

CI ops in J&K were priority for Army and thats why they continued to saw those intruders as some Muzee Rats as late as upto 2nd week of May and not as Pakistani regulars. M/s Vajpajee and Company was busy dreamimg about a Nobel Prize for Vajpayee. Intelligence agencies were also busy with infiltration in valley, unstable Indian Govt and all others things expect Kargil. They also outrightly denied any offensive designs by Pakistan for next 6 months in their bi-annual report in Feb,99. And reason was economic turmoil in Pakistan.

And pakistanis were pouring inside by that time. You need to give them credit for that. They braved that bad weather and terrain which prevented us from proper patrolling.

OP Vijay could have demanded more Indian lives or different tactics or more time if Weather God had thought otherwise. Zozi La was opened one month earlier than scheduled because of good weather. Pakistani got one month less and that could have made major difference. (I think).

Additional points:

*To put things in perspective, we lost 654 soldiers during CI ops & deployment during the Parakram event, more than at Kargil (533). Figures from IA website.

*The Kargil crisis sparked the modernisation of the Indian military & the restructuring of the Indian MIC, which will have a huge impact in the coming years. Again, a strategic loss for Pak.

This is not a copout, I was not the one who made these allegations. But i do believe that there was a failure at top level to re-assess the ground level scenario over a period of time.

There is not much ground level commanders could have done to prevent infilteration as aggressive patrolling in such terrain would have led to casualties which would have to be explained at top level.


So just because I have answered in one line does not mean that I have not put thought into it.

In fact prior to Kargill I had myself had discussed such possible scenarios with some senior officers and unpreparedness to react properly to such situations. (in China context)

And mind you, i sometimes wonder how well prepared are if China does the same thing or if Pak and China act together to do the same thing

Must be we forget the Burzil Bai Pass? What about the other routes to Shaqma?

But I think there is big difference between countering insurgency and facing external enemy. Thats why all over the world they have different forces for these threats. And if we use them in different role than there must be some adverse implications.

How this has affected Indian Army's war fitness? I would like RayC Sir to throw some light on this topic so that we may know if this was one of the causes of Kargil intrusion at both Tactical and strategic levels.

Even though army units deployed in Kargil were not in CI ops posture but they were also alerted many times by Intelligence agencies against large number of muzees waiting to infiltrate from Skardu. So may be they also developed that as priority w.r.t. Threat Perception.

And I will be very pleased if RayC sahib also tell us that how that intrusion can be avoided at Batallion or Brigade level?

Which country in the world has different forces to fight insurgency and an external enemy? How long have those insurgencies run? When the GoI mandates the Army to step in and deal with COIN, how can the Army refuse and still hold true to its oath of defending the country from external and internal threats?

What is the cost of raising a dedicated COIN force to deal with the insurgencies we have going on in India?

Maybe We should try telling that to the 1000s of soldiers who died on both sides in the adventure? If you have a brainwave and cant take it to a victory, there is nothing 'superb' about it - its plain old silliness.

But Anoop sir I thought we have RR dedicated to COIN in valley is it not.

But I would disagree if you tell me that army never wanted to be part of COIN and were forced. I read a port where an Army was saying " we are getting free practical training " , same in NE with ULFA army is geeting free training. But I think thay took it too far
We Learnt after Kargil now we see CRPF and BSF there then Army

But Anoop sir I thought we have RR dedicated to COIN in valley is it not.

But I would disagree if you tell me that army never wanted to be part of COIN and were forced. I read a port where an Army guy was saying " we are getting free practical training " , same in NE with ULFA army is geeting free training. But I think thay took it too far
We Learnt after Kargil now we see CRPF and BSF there then Army

By assigning the blame on PM + Clinton Mush is stating that he was denied this victory. He/They claim that they withdrew and that IA did not evict them.

On top of that, of course, Mush has added a new twist - one created in his mind (if he has one that is) - that the IA was the aggressor.

I love Mush. What a mind. Too bad he had to migrate to Pakistan. He is the only one that can claim he re-wrote history while alive. (That the US is dealing with him is even more amazing. )

Rampy,

Please don't address me as Sir. It makes me feel un-necessarily important!!

The RR is staffed by Army personnel on deputation from regular battalions. After their tenure, they return to parent regimental centers for re-orientation and training. The difference is that the RR funding comes from the MHA instead of the MoD, which is really just a case of robbing Peter to pay Paul, to quote the good Brigadier. My point is that it is not feasible to build a large COIN force from the ground up - think of personnel costs, recruitment time, training facilities, cantonment facilities, arms procurement etc.

I don't know whether the Army is thrilled about COIN duties or not, but they have stepped up and delivered without complaining. Gen. V.N. Sharma's statements about the Army holding fast in the Valley when the civil administration had broken down and the V.P. Singh govt. was nervous about tackling the threat need to be seen in this light.

From reading posts by Brig. Ray, I gathered that COIN imparts good training at the Section level and has resulted in developing new drills. However, due to the large time and resource committment to COIN, other problems of training and fatigue creep in. I could be wrong, of course.

I heard Ray_C saying that we were well stocked with Supplies( I gues ammo, clothing, edible supplies etc). Agreed that our logistics were well connected for replinishment.

But what it does indicate

when during the Kargil war rush orders were placed for

1) Small arms ammo
2)Bofor shells ( procured at high prioces in open market as we black listed bofors principals)
3) Orders fro coffins ( the famous coffin gate)


Now this is only a warlike situation as ABV GF LKg had proclaimed,

what if we were into full scale not war like but War with TSP and also PRC

what would be the situation like?

Or all these rush orders were just to make money by the civvies

I disagree on one aspect, it was entirely possible and affordable to build a modern COIN force from the ground up, prior to the RA, and should have been done so a LONG time back, IF the stupid (and I use the term very charitably) MOD and MHA had agreed on it, and made the great MOF understand the need for the same.

The pathetic attitude displayed by many GOI babus harks back to the British era where they sit in their steel frame postings, whilst sending out more & more manpower which is entirely expendable, to do the dirty work of actually fighting the fight. They care two hoots about what happens to the people involved. I have had one such individual also pointedly tell me how "cheap" it is to use manpower vs technology and how he (with no experience whatsoever in combat arms, mind you) did not think it necessary to have high tech gizmos or whatever, to fight "militants". Try selling the idea that you need RR, a unit dedicated to COIN to such people / generalists who infest the decision making woodwork and have all too important an idea of themselves and their powerplay. As compared to sending in the Army/ Alphabet soup central Paramils as the usual response.

The fact is that it had become easy to sanction a few additional manpower raisings here & there in existing units, rather than acquire anything or undertake reform or upset the cart. The end result is that we have alphabet soups of different Central paramil forces, each of which could have been strengthened or contributed to the COIN aspect with the army, but they have been used piecemeal, with the reliance on the Army throughout- in the meanwhile soldier after soldier gets killed and crippled or whatever in some obscure fight far away from New Delhi.

The end result has been that the Army and many other raisings manpower budget has zoomed, while the most original thing to address any COIN issue is to keep throwing manpower and money (for the locals) at the situation. There is no institutional long term planning towards dealing with insurgency or IDing potential trouble spots, or having a consistent approach bar a point. Just send in the Army and things will be ok. And yeah, worst comes to worst, Governors rule. The Maoist imbroglio has blown up entirely because of this attitude, and it testifies to how pathetic the MHA is towards internal security when the IA Chief has to speak up over the potential threat from Maoists before they are forced to take action.