Pathankot AFB terrorist Attack After Action Analysis-I

[Altair]

Two service chiefs, NSA, PM in less than 100 square feet.
All the pics have Modi in serious mood.

[shiv]

This looks like the building that had to be blown up

[deejay]

^^^ Last pic above ... I don't see many bullet holes!

[Baikul]

kit, about why they called back. We can speculate at this point:

This sort of hits are being executed by the pakis as part of state policy. They should have the option of re-targeting or changing plans, which are approved by the HQ. These sort of small-team jihadis with objectives of massed-attacks, were trained to be on a tight leash. They would have to call back, if things do not go as planned. If they don't call back, the paki HQ must assume they are lost or went either rogue, causing (what they assume) as uncalibrated damage. "uncalibrated damage" = Parakram ver 2.0 and beyond. So they are asked to call back and they complied.

"strategic brilliance" at work, to put it mildly

Yet one of them called his mother, not exactly standard operating procedure.

In addition to what you said, my guess is that with the certainty of death some of them also cannot resist breaking protocol and reaching out that one last time to their loved ones.

[shiv]

^^^ Last pic above ... I don't see many bullet holes!

There is evidence of a fire - soot near edge of roof and column tops and that wooden box.

[kit]

more specifically why were they given cellphones that could be traced easily ..why not satellite phones / encrypted phones ..i don't think the ISI is that stupid ! .. something doesn't quite add up ... with their level of training ..it points to a deeper plot than it looks

[kit]

i think this was more or less like a message to India .. hey look we can strike you at will ..but know its us who do it .. and have a plausible deniability ..the seeming "bungling" may not be

[durairaaj]

Few thoughts:
1) Despite available intelligence, why did NSA did not inform the Punjab cops? Is it because he already knew that Punjab cops are compromised?

2) NSA did not take security measures beyond the air base, instead lay in waiting. Is this to find the hidden hands involved in the operation?

3) Why did Pakistan has to sacrifice some of the crucial assets such as an SP of police border state, civilian workers inside the base, BSF employee overseeing the consignment transaction? does this mean ISI learned that IB already knew about some of these assets and will be lost for good in near future. So they decided to make a windfall from winter cleansing going on with in Indian ranks. (BSF employee does not seem to be connected with this case. But taken out simply because he was known already)

4) Does this also mean Pakisthan has more hidden hands at higher level that they are fine with loosing some jokers in stopping the bonhomie between Nawaz and NaMo.

5) Or Pakisthan's deep state is so terrified of the Bhai-Bhai drama that they think we are going towards a point of no return and decided to sacrifice some jokers as speed breaker.

6) Americans giving too much leeway for Pakistan regarding investigation seems to suggest that their opinion on our securty response is not upto the mark despite having advance warning.

7) Reading about the hidden hands in this operation shudder me to think of what will happen if it is one of our nuclear installation, instead of an airbase.

8 ) Everybody in the anti-India media throwing badlight on NSA (especially during operation) also shows that they are guided to tow this line by some unknown voice.

9) JeM mocking Indian security that we cannot handle 6 terrorists show that there are more terrorists. But they wanted to reduce the search operation going on elsewhere.

[ravip]

[shiv]

more specifically why were they given cellphones that could be traced easily ..why not satellite phones / encrypted phones ..i don't think the ISI is that stupid ! .. something doesn't quite add up ... with their level of training ..it points to a deeper plot than it looks

Those phones were taken from their kidnap victims if I am not mistaken. 8 calls were made to (or received from) Pakistan in quick succession from the phone of a driver. The SPs phone was answered by one of the terrorists and then switched off. Calls were made until the phone batteries were exhausted. This was all in the news. Did you not read what was linked on here?

[Karan M]

+Posting this here since this has relevance to how services may ramp up in capability

I posted this in the other thread.. but met somebody who works with MOD, MOF et al. Long time GOI person, apolitical & focused. For instance he wanted more and more Govt agencies to focus on mission mode programs and incentives to be tied to projects which had a specific time allocation.

Very very positive on Modi.

Says man is a doer, has a clear vision, if anyone voted for him, votes not wasted. Said not very fancy in talking, but knows what he wants and is very focused. Before Modi MOD was babucracy run amuck.

People were missing, nothing got done. After Modi, says things are happening at rapid pace. Says GOI folks have a worry that being seen with pvt sector folks will lead to muck raking (I perceived this as a slam both on the AAP style nautanki and also those morons who'd use this as an excuse to stall acquisitions) says policy being brought in to change that and aim is to now involve industry from day 1 as partners.

Anyways, says thanks to Modi (and Parrikar?) culture at MOD/MOF etc has changed a LOT for the better, especially MOD.

So couldn't discuss Pathankot - too many people and busy conversation, plus BR style jingo questions already necessitated some explanation from my side, so I had to stick to basics.

But that files are moving at MOD and work is getting done, bodes well for our IA/IAF/IN folks getting tools they require.

[shiv]

only stating the obvious ..

why did the terrorists call back to Pakistan unless their handlers specifically wanted to make sure it may well be traced to Pakistan ? ..

what if this was just a red herring ..and a bigger one might be coming up ?

lets take it that Pakistan did indeed "let" the US know who in turn informed the indian intelligence..why ?


who is the one to gain from all this ... was someone scared of irrelevance ? ..changing priorities ? .. the Pakistani general did not exactly get a warm welcome in the US the last time around !

1. They were not given phones
2. red herring is always a possibility but the second attack will have to wait because security is heughtened
3. Pakistan telling US may be utter bullshit - but I do think India and the US have an intel sharing mechanism

[habal]

3) Why did Pakistan has to sacrifice some of the crucial assets such as an SP of police border state, civilian workers inside the base, BSF employee overseeing the consignment transaction? does this mean ISI learned that IB already knew about some of these assets and will be lost for good in near future. So they decided to make a windfall from winter cleansing going on with in Indian ranks. (BSF employee does not seem to be connected with this case. But taken out simply because he was known already)

So it doesn't seem to be any unit affiliated to pakistan army or pakistani state by look of things.
It is using and abusing ISI & state intelligence resources very cheaply, so that means it is against pakistani state as well.
this is a empowered group that has deep roots in pakjab and maybe trying to establish itself as ISIS of south asia.
we just may have to work with the pakistani state on this one.

[shiv]

Pathankot attack aimed at probing Modi govt's red lines: Christine Fair

The Pathankot attack is not a spontaneous response to recent developments; it is a manifestation of the Pakistani national security strategy to pursue its revisionist agenda against India, says C CHRISTINE FAIR, author of Fighting to the End: The Pakistan Army's Way of War, and an associate professor in the Peace and Security Studies Program at Georgetown University’s Edmund A Walsh School of Foreign Service. Fair, who earlier served as a political officer to the UN Assistance Mission to Afghanistan in Kabul, tells Bhaswar Kumar in a telephonic interview that there is a consensus within the Indian security establishment that India lacks the offensive capability to defeat Pakistan in a short war.

The January 2 attack on an Indian Air Force base in Pathankot was allegedly carried out by Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) operatives. What are the dynamics between organisations like JeM and Pakistan’s military and civilian establishments?

Pakistan’s Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) set up JeM as a competitor to the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT), which the ISI had formed earlier. Prior to the formation of JeM, three Pakistani terrorists – Mushtaq Ahmed Zargar, Ahmed Okmar Saeed Sheikh and Maulana Masood Azhar – were released by Indian authorities in return for hostages taken during the hijacking of the Indian Airlines flight 814 in December 1999. Azhar and the two other terrorists, upon their release in Kandahar, were ferried to Pakistan under ISI escort. Within a few weeks, Azhar announced the formation of JeM in Karachi.

LeT and JeM are ideologically distinct organisations. JeM, like the Afghan and Pakistani Taliban, is Deobandi; LeT is Ahle Hadees. Besides, JeM generally conducts suicide attacks, while LeT conducts high-risk missions where the goal is not to die but its operatives would still rather die than be taken captives.

These terrorist groups have an army major assigned to them. It is the majors’ responsibility to ensure the groups’ operatives are trained and they get the required resources. A major can, for example, authorise a small-level attack in Kashmir against an Indian army unit – an offensive that does not have major strategic implications. On the other hand, every attack outside of Kashmir has to have the army chief’s imprimatur, given the likely strategic implications – after all, if the Americans get upset and hold up coalition support funding, it is the army chief who will have to answer.

The Pathankot attack came within a week of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Lahore and the resumption of talks with Pakistan. Have the terrorists and their handlers achieved their goal by creating a hurdle for the peace process?

If the attack is seen as an attempt to derail the nascent peace process between the two countries, it might be a misreading of the way in which Pakistan employs its jihadi assets to secure its strategic interests in the region. The attack on the air base is not a spontaneous response to recent developments. It is simply the latest manifestation of the Pakistani national security strategy to pursue its revisionist agenda against India.

Pakistan has called PM Modi’s bluff. Despite all the rhetoric, there is a consensus within the Indian security establishment – at least among those who draw their conclusions from data instead of speaking from nationalist sentiment – that India lacks the offensive capability to defeat Pakistan in a short war. That is important because there will only be a short war between India and Pakistan, due to the presence of nuclear weapons on both sides, if the former responds to such a provocation. Essentially, Pakistan has called the Indian government’s bluff.

They did it at Gurdaspur, too. The Gurdaspur attack was not in response to the meeting between Modi and Sharif in Ufa. The timing of the Gurdaspur attack is important; it occurred after the reported Indian raid in Myanmar against militants. You will remember the statements issued after the Myanmar raid warning that all other neighbours of India harbouring terrorists would receive the same treatment. You will also remember the Pakistani response to these statements. Gurdaspur was really about calling the Indian government out on its statements and bravado after the Myanmar incident.

Both these attacks – Pathankot and Gurdaspur – were conducted in and around Tier-III cities or small towns. Unlike an attack on a city like Mumbai or Delhi, which will cause a massive uproar and have a galvanising impact on the populace – the Parliament attack, for instance – these were carefully calibrated probes to continue to test India’s red lines. We need to see this in tandem with the attack on the Indian consulate in Mazar-e-Sharif. Pakistan has been testing India’s red lines within Indian territory and in Afghanistan.

When you say that Pakistan has called the government’s bluff, are you referring to Pakistan’s civilian government or its military establishment?

The civilians are irrelevant in this case. This is all coming from the army. There is no “rogue” ISI, either. The ISI reports to the Pakistani army chief.

Don’t you think that the recently revived dialogue process is the only way forward?

India should not be talking to Pakistan at all. Pakistan says it has a legitimate claim on Kashmir, which it does not. The Indian Independence Act of 1947 allowed the princely states to decide their fate. India possesses Kashmir’s instrument of accession. The case of Junagarh and Hyderabad complicates the morality of India’s actions, but that is a different issue.

Pakistan could have made a claim for Junagarh at the UN but it has no claim over Kashmir. Pakistan also did not fulfil the first condition required for a plebiscite under the UN Security Council resolution on Kashmir. Of course, the Shimla agreement obviates that in any event.

As India continues to talk to Pakistan on the issue of Kashmir, it emboldens the Pakistanis and legitimises their narrative domestically. It fosters the belief among Pakistanis that their claim is entertained by India. The Pakistani army gets to tell its people that even the Indians know that they need to talk to us.

If Pakistan wants peace, it could have it by accepting the LoC as the formal border and desisting from sending terrorists across the border. By the way, that would technically be a concession from the Indian side since it has an instrument of accession for the whole of Kashmir. India should be willing to talk only when Pakistan is willing to ratify the LoC as the border.

Every time one of these attacks occurs, the benefit that Pakistan gets is that the international community calls for talks between India and Pakistan for resolving outstanding issues. In other words, the international community imposes a false equivalence between Pakistan and India. If you cannot punish Pakistan for its support to terrorist organisations, at least you can deprive it of any benefit.

The international community will have to change its talking points. If the international community, instead of calling for talks, says Pakistan needs to act like a responsible nuclear power that does not conduct proxy warfare against its neighbours, and that the changing of maps by bloodshed is not acceptable, Pakistan will be deprived of any benefit from such attacks.

According to reports, Nawaz Sharif has called PM Modi and assured him of action against the persons responsible…

This is absolute dramebaazi. Sharif is an irrelevant actor in these matters.

Aside from military funding and support, consider the fact that Hafiz Saeed’s Jamat-ud-Dawa (JuD), the rechristened LeT, gets money from the budget of the Pakistani Punjab’s government, which is run by Sharif’s party. The government said it would run JuD’s educational establishments, so JuD has a line item in every Punjab provincial government budget.

Besides, JeM enjoys political cover from the two factions of the Jamiat ul-e-Islami (JuI).

How can India build an effective deterrence against this form of sub-conventional warfare?

I do not see too many options that India has. It has not made the investments it needs to ensure deterrence against such acts by way of offensive superiority on its international border. India’s current conventional posture on the international border is of defensive competence instead of offensive superiority.

Defence modernisation for such deterrence requires reconfiguring your current military assets, which are bulky and easily detectable, into smaller units that can be forward-deployed much more rapidly without the intelligence footprint that Pakistan can easily detect.

It is about personnel policies. India does not need a huge standing army for such purposes as much as it needs special operators to conduct hot-pursuit missions into Pakistani territory without detection. Currently, India does not have a Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) or “jointness” among the different branches of its armed forces for seamless interoperability. Pakistan does not suffer from these shortcomings; it has “jointness” and it essentially has a CDS in the form of its army chief. Most disturbingly, Pakistan’s position has been significantly bolstered by American military largesse.

Lastly, but most importantly, there needs to be the political will to use these assets as and when required.

This is not a bad time to be an Indian. Successive governments have come to understand that if you remain focused on not having a large confrontation with Pakistan, India’s economy will continue to grow. But, you can have this attitude only if you are willing to suffer several casualties in attacks from Pakistan every year.

We have seen a resurgence of JeM in the recent past...

JeM had been defunct for years after it split in December of 2001. Its leadership was divided over whether they should turn their guns on Pakistan for aiding the Americans in bringing down the Taliban. Azhar said he would not turn against Pakistan even as members of his organisation revolted and went on to join Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP).

Azhar was kept in protective custody for years and allowed to grow his empire in Bhawalpur. The thinking of ISI was that as long as people were loyal to Azhar they would not turn their guns on Pakistan.

As part of its strategy to combat TTP, the Pakistani army contacted TTP commanders and gave them a choice to go back and fight in Afghanistan; this coincided with the elections in Afghanistan. The other important part of the strategy was that the Pakistani army revivified JeM to draw back the original defectors from JeM and redirect them to India.

In a piece I had written for India Today in September last year, I predicted the next attack would probably be conducted by JeM, instead of LeT. My colleagues at the UN who had been monitoring Al Qaida and the Taliban informed me a year ago that the JeM cadre was amassing at the LoC between India and Pakistan.

The move to revivify JeM is very much part of the Pakistani army’s domestic security strategy.

[vasu raya]

some random observations,

maybe those short call backs by terrorists and handlers were also to avoid tracing back to the handlers exact location, OTOH spoofing the handlers is easier if the phone numbers were listened to

Use of walkie talkies once inside the base or in range, the cell towers should be upgraded to be able to listen to frequencies in the wideband as well as triage the radio transmitters.

The attack on air assets means the Lakshman Rekha is now crossed for good and air assets should be used fully in COIN ops, LCH is just in time.

when the UAVs and Choppers are giving thermal imagery, the GPS or IRNSS location of the targets can be transmitted back to the ground troops, enabling snipers or machine gun empacements shooting towards those coordinates even if they don't have visuals.

Maybe Pathankot was a likely location of a S400 system

[sunilUpa]

The Pathankot beginning

The attack on the Indian Air Force base in Pathankot is becoming a big test case for both the prime ministers of India and Pakistan. Indian PM Narendra Modi took a big initiative on December 25, 2015 by meeting his Pakistani counterpart in Lahore. They agreed to restart the peace process with some new initiatives. They also discussed possible threats to the peace process. They assured each other that the process would not be derailed in case of any attack in India or Pakistan and that they would not blame each other without evidence. Their apprehensions came true. Within a few days of the Lahore meeting, there was the Pathankot attack and a real test for the two PMs started. India blamed some Pakistanis for the attack, but never blamed the Pakistani government. Pakistan not only condemned the attack but also termed it a conspiracy against the peace process.

No rash statements, unlike in the past.

On the evening of January 5, Modi clearly told Nawaz Sharif over a phone call that he wanted action against the attack’s mastermind within the next few hours. Nawaz explained that he was not in Pakistan but in Sri Lanka — and that he could take concrete steps only after returning to Islamabad. He praised the maturity shown by the Indian government in not blaming the Pakistani government without evidence. The next day, Pakistan’s army chief, General Raheel Sharif, chaired a corps commanders conference in Rawalpindi and reiterated zero tolerance for terrorist organisations. Nawaz reached Islamabad on the evening of January 6 and, the following day, asked all concerned authorities to verify the information provided by the Indian side and take action. Credible sources in Lahore claimed that the Punjab (Pakistani) police and some security agencies had begun raids in the southern parts of the province in the light of the information provided by India. The focus of the raids was the leadership of the banned Jaish-e-Muhammad (JeM). A big announcement may come in the next few days, but only after the verification of the information provided by India.

There are lots of questions being discussed in the Indian media about the Pathankot attack. The Indian media is criticising Pakistan every hour, but the Indian PM had warned his Pakistani counterpart in Lahore not to make policies according to TV headlines. Nawaz is not concerned about allegations of a “double game” levelled against his government by certain Indian TV channels. He thinks the Indian PM should take care of the Indian media and looks committed to taking action against those who tried to derail the peace process by using Pakistani soil to destabilise the neighbouring country.
Nawaz fully understands that it will be very difficult for the Indian government to begin the foreign secretary-level talks in mid-January, if there is no action against the mastermind of the Pathankot attack. He was warned by certain sympathisers not to blindly act against those blamed by India. The Pakistani PM made it clear that his government will not take any action without verifying the information. But if verified, the culprits will not be treated as enemies of India but as enemies of Pakistan.

Sources close to the PM are expecting a breakthrough on Pathankot within the next few days. This breakthrough may change the political climate in both countries. This “climate change” moment began in Paris last year and Modi’s Lahore visit added some new colours to it. But the Pathankot attack, indeed, embarrassed both PMs. Some critics in Pakistan think Nawaz cannot satisfy India at any cost. If his government arrests someone, India will demand a trial immediately. It will be difficult for Pakistan to prove the allegations in a court of law in a short span of time due to the weaknesses in Pakistan’s legal system. It was even suggested to Nawaz that the culprits be tried in the recently established military courts. The PM instructed the concerned authorities to examine all the laws by which the culprits could be prosecuted as soon as possible.

The national security advisors of India and Pakistan have been in touch for the last several weeks. They are exchanging valuable information, without sharing the same with the media. One must give credit to both of them for establishing a high level of confidence between New Delhi and Islamabad. Their four-hour-long meeting in Bangkok was the beginning of a new kind of diplomacy between the two countries. Surprisingly, they never took the old positions, deciding to move forward in new directions and with new ideas. That was why Modi praised Pakistani NSA Nasir Khan Janjua when he met Nawaz in Lahore. Nawaz, too, had praised Indian NSA Ajit Doval when he met External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj in Islamabad.

Nawaz Sharif and Narendra Modi do not need any Sajjan Jindal to arrange their meetings and telephone conversations. They are successfully operating through their NSAs. The realistic approach of the two NSAs created the space for both PMs to take some new steps and adopt new positions. Nawaz is treating the Pathankot attack as a direct challenge for him. He is aware of the domestic consequences, but he is also confident that all Pakistani opposition parties will stand by him if the evidence against the alleged culprits is strong.

Pathankot is a tragedy for India. But this can be an opportunity for Pakistan to win the hearts and minds of the Indian public by taking some concrete steps in the right direction. After establishing credibility in India, Nawaz can ask Modi to help him by addressing the issue of Kashmir. If they pass a difficult test like Pathankot, they can certainly go through some more difficult tests, such as Kashmir. Pathankot is the beginning. Kashmir may be the end.

Interesting titbits from Hamid Mir. He is very close to PM Shariff, so many of his observations do carry some weight.

[Amber G.]

Meanwhile China says:

China is also a victim of terrorist act. We share the feeling and anger of Indian people. We strongly condemn such terrorist attacks, wherever it takes place

China once again condemns Pathankot terror attack

[Aditya G]

Two service chiefs, NSA, PM in less than 100 square feet.
All the pics have Modi in serious mood.

I pray that behind that somber face is a mind scheming to take revenge. During upa it was easy to simply blame congress and MMS for lack of same. Everyday I wake up with a hope to see newspapers carrying news of the same.

/Rant off

[sunilUpa]

^^ Revenge is not Modi Ji or Doval Ji mantra. They go for root cause, not symptomatic treatments.

[ramana]

Shiv,

Any observations on the age aspect of DSC jawaans? There were sweeping statements like "past their prime" etc. But I don't see any evidence of age being the primary reason for their deaths.

the fact that one of the six terrorists was killed by an unarmed 58 year old DSC Jawan speaks volumes of their fitness.
3 others were killed in combat.

I would like detractors to have faced one on one with the Shooting champion. He could shoot them while blindfolded. Detractors.

Its unfortunate that Lt Gen H.S. Panag called them ragtag and started this path down the rabbit hole.

In future forward ares with DSC will be armed at their stations.

[vasu raya]

And the non use of GPS units this time suggests that Americans were leaning on the Pakis not to get caught with their equipment and risk the flow of aid. The Gurdaspur attack was on 27th July 2015 when they were last caught with GPS sets

[ramana]

In 26/11 US gave wrong coordinates at sea yet could claim they warned India.
Adm. Nirmal Verma sent ships to that area and lost valuable time.

So US warnings are naamke vaste. So they can claim they have done their part.
And US might inform after the infiltration has happened.

[ramana]

Pathankot terrorist attack can become Pakistan's tragedy unlike Hamid Mir is saying.

[Karan M]

Shiv,

Any observations on the age aspect of DSC jawaans? There were sweeping statements like "past their prime" etc. But I don't see any evidence of age being the primary reason for their deaths.

the fact that one of the six terrorists was killed by an unarmed 58 year old DSC Jawan speaks volumes of their fitness.
3 others were killed in combat.

I would like detractors to have faced one on one with the Shooting champion. He could shoot them while blindfolded. Detractors.

Its unfortunate that Lt Gen H.S. Panag called them ragtag and started this path down the rabbit hole.

In future forward ares with DSC will be armed at their stations.

Newer reports state the jawan was 48 years old. That's not far off from serving IA jawans - I have seen reports of 42 and 44 year old subedars leading ops.

He was clearly fit and aggressive.

Our problem is no matter how many people we throw at it, fighting a defensive war we will become a garrison state.

I suspect Modi understands this and is willing to throw TSP a (short) rope and gauge their sincerity.

However, he may well be disappointed and may have to resort to harsh measures.

[ramana]

vasu, Call back could be to give status after taxi arranged by control stopped. they had a deadline to meet up with other 2 already on way at PAFB.

[vasu raya]

if the taxi was hijacked to some destination or maybe directly to PAFB, the SP was also around the pick up area expecting smuggled goods but the same group of terrorists confronted him after the taxi crash? the handlers were able to arrange for alternate transport that quick ... and the SP was waiting around the area for 3 hours for his consignment.

[malushahi]

I was hoping that one of the active participants on the thread would point it out over the last 2-3 days, but could the mods please correct the spelling in this thread's title?

Muchas gracias.

[Rajput]

Everyday I wake up with a hope to see newspapers carrying news of the same.

The same newspapers who are so biased against the Forces and Modi & Doval? Fat chance of that happening. And even if it does, these same newspapers will be chest-beating with "why did we do it??"

Case in point: the Assam Rifles ambush. India went into Burma and nailed the terror camps there. But the newspapers were crying "why did we violate Burma's sovereignity? Why did we violate the International Border???". These ****** are traitors. I was very disappointed to see these scum get access to the Base, the SP, cook, etc. They should have been kept 100km away from the action.

[Anujan]

I suppose the NSA did not trust anyone else from the looks of it .. other than the NSG ..

What if the attack had been like Kaluchak, with hostage taking? Would you still recommend we go in with Army and Carl Gustavs?

[Anujan]

A few things:

Dont trust the "Judicial system is weak onlee" bullsh1t. Pakis are hanging 10 abduls a day after a swift military court hearing. Military courts have been set up after a constitutional amendments to combat terrorism. If they are so serious, why not shift 26/11 hearings to Military courts? Military courts have executed juveniles, disabled people and mentally unstable people. Seemingly courts are not weak for dealing with Baloch freedom fighters?

One of the Paki rags let slip that Nawaz Sharif was deliberating how to show progress in this case without "a domestic boomerang". We know what that means.

Paki Army trained the attackers in their airbase. They let them through, probably gave them intelligence about the layout of the base and how to get there. They are not going to prosecute and sentence their own employees. Just like before every Massa visit of Paki jernails we get a headline breathlessly proclaiming

AL QAEDA NUMBER 3 CAUGHT IN AL-BAKISTAN!!!!!!

and before every Massa congressional hearing about aid to Pakistan there is a coordinated news

AL-BAKISTAN LOST 400 TRILLION BELLION JILLION DOLLARS DUE TO WAR ON TERRORISM!!!!!

before every round of India-Pak talks we are likely to see

NAWAZ SHARIF CONDUCTED MEETING WITH CRORE KAMMANDUS, NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISOR, CHIEF MINISTER OF ALL PROVINCES, DEFENCE MINISTER, FINANCE MINISTER, FOREIGN SECRETARY, FOREIGN MINISTER, MINISTER OF CULTURAL AFFAIRS, MINISTER FOR ENVIRONMENT, MINISTER FOR EDUCATION, POLICE CHIEF, CHAIRMAN OF PAKISTAN AIRLINES, CHAIRMAN OF HABIB BANK, CURATOR OF MINAR-E-BAKISTAN, ABDUL WHO OWNS TEA STALL IN KARACHI BEACH, AND REVIEWED PROGRESS ON 26/11 and PATANKHOT ATTACK AND CONDEMNED IT!!!!!!

[Guddu]

I think GOI has said many times, they were concerned about hostage taking of the families and the foreign visitors, ie their priorities were right, when they selected NSG.

[ramana]

^^ Revenge is not Modi Ji or Doval Ji mantra. They go for root cause, not symptomatic treatments.

Don't get MAD, get even.

[Sid]

more specifically why were they given cellphones that could be traced easily ..why not satellite phones / encrypted phones ..i don't think the ISI is that stupid ! .. something doesn't quite add up ... with their level of training ..it points to a deeper plot than it looks

What are you trying to insinuate?

Can you buy commercial encrypted/ secure phones in India or Pukiland?
If a state issued encrypted com device was found with them, won't that be a incriminating evidence against them?
And do you know what we can & cannot trace?

Everyone can raise such questions, even porkies use such logic to mark every such attack as a false flag attack. They even claimed india was behind 26/11.


Simplest explanation is that they were little clumsy, and won't make similar mistakes again.

[eklavya]

I think GOI has said many times, they were concerned about hostage taking of the families and the foreign visitors, ie their priorities were right, when they selected NSG.

Just ignore anyone who wants to talk about NSG vs IA vs Garud vs DSC. These are all Indian armed forces, all are committed, and all did a fine job.

Also ignore anyone who wants to talk about why it "took 3 days to kill 6 terrorists". It's simple, they were hidden, and if we had tried to move faster through saturation techniques, we would have taken many more casualties. The commanders on the ground made the right decisions, and it is great that PMO provided support, rather than look for a quick PR victory at the expense of soldiers' and officers' lives.

Will lessons be learned? Of course they will. Only an idiot thinks that there is nothing to be learned. But people like Rahul Bedi, Ajai Shukla and Praveen Swami are irresponsible fools (and maybe worse) for criticising the home team rather than focussing on the b*stards in Pakistan that perpetrated this terrorist atrocity.

Also, C Fair is wrong about India's ability to defeat Pakistan in a short war. We can absolutely crush them. But it will have unforeseeable consequences for the economy, etc.

As for strikes against particular targets in Pakistan, that too is eminently feasible and doable. But the tension will ratchet up significantly ... economy, etc.

[Shameek]

Probing Pathankot

A slum and a densely populated colony to the north, villages to the east, and a flyover with a view

The Jammu-Pathankot NH1-A offers the best view. Standing on it, leaning against one of its walls, you can look straight into the Pathankot Air Force Base. Ever since January 1, when suspected terrorists of the Jaish-e-Mohammad laid siege to the airbase, people have been stopping their cars along the flyover to take a look. So these days, the Air Force personnel guarding the entrance have been constantly looking up, angrily waving their rifles at those on the flyover, asking them to stop gawking and move ahead.

[chetak]

And the non use of GPS units this time suggests that Americans were leaning on the Pakis not to get caught with their equipment and risk the flow of aid. The Gurdaspur attack was on 27th July 2015 when they were last caught with GPS sets

About the military issue GPS, such equipment is pilfered regularly by the pakis as the containers carrying military equipment transit through paki land bound for afghanistan.

commercial grade GPS can be easily bought by anyone without any explanation or record. These give results that are just as good with marginal degradation in accuracy but still good enough for the job.

It is the recovered data from the erased GPS tracks that caused the problems for the pakis, not the actual sets themselves.

Stolen military GPS sets (as with lots of other amreki military equipment), ending up in jehadi hands is such a common affair that plausibility deniability is a given.

[Prem]

They expect Leopard to change Dots
Is US hinting at covert operation after Pathankot?

Though the initial US response to Pathankot was seen as "tepid", some quarters feel that the state department spokesperson made an interesting point with a reference to the US' long hunt for Osama bin Laden.Answering persistent questions on January 7 about America giving Pakistan a long rope years after the Mumbai attacks, spokesperson John Kirby said "We obviously want to see all the perpetrators (of 26/11) to be brought to justice...We know that that can take a long time. It took an awful long time to bring Usama bin Laden to justice, but we did. So it can be hard."The response was interpreted as not imposing a timeline on Pakistan, but the transcript of the media interaction is also open to interpretation with regard to just how US ultimately disposed of the Usama bin Laden threat when American intelligence did finally zero in on him.Unable to trust Pakistan's military and worried that the 9/11 mastermind might even be tipped off that his stay has Abbottabad had been blown, US launched a successful undercover operation to eliminate the Al Qaida leader.
Asked whether US expects Pakistan to act against those responsible for the Pathankot attack given that Pakistan condemned the 9/11 attacks just as it did Pathankot now and that bin Laden was found next to a military academy, Kirby side-stepped the question, saying Washington expects a fair and transparent investigation.While India's limitations in carrying out any covert operations to settle scores for an attack on Pakistani soil are clear enough since it cannot command the military might and immunity from retaliation as the US does, the principle of justification is seen as important.
g by the "just war" principles of statecraft, the Pathankot attack does provide India with a "just cause" to rectify a wrong suffered. India would have the right intention and the measure of proportionality will be served if terror camps in Pakistan occupied Kashmir or key Jaish figures are targeted.
However, possibility of the conflict spreading and nuclear-sabre rattling by Pakistan have always prevented Indian leaders from considering military retaliation. They have also seen merit in maintaining India's record of not being an aggressor state. But going by the principle of justifiable retaliation, the Osama bin Laden parallel could, theoretically at least, offer a remedy.

[chetak]

Some more details emerge


Punjab drug menace is a security threat as Pathankot showed

Punjab drug menace is a security threat as Pathankot showed
By G D BAKSHI | 9 January, 2016



Soldiers on the perimeter of the Air Force base in Pathankot on Monday following the confrontation. AFP
All in all, we must be grateful for the sacrifice and valour of our boys, who did a commendable job.
Those who do not learn from history are condemned to repeat it, is a familiar and oft heard adage. Pathankot proved this true yet again. Patterns of the past have seemingly become cast in stone in South Asia. The institutional dynamics of the dysfunctional state in Pakistan, lead it time and again to act in an obsessive-compulsive manner and repeat itself ad nauseam. Thus, the bus journey to Lahore in 1998 had ended in the war in Kargil in 1999. That is why when Prime Minister Narendra Modi made his sudden outreach to Nawaz Sharif on Christmas Day, most security experts braced themselves for the near inevitable backlash from the deep state in Pakistan. The attack took just eight days to materialise.

On the night of 2-3 January 2016, the terrorist organisation, Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) attacked the Indian Air Force base of Pathankot. This was the first airbase that Pakistan had struck both in the 1965 and 1971 wars. The attack this time came not from Pakistani jet fighters, but Pakistan’s asymmetric warfare assets, the so called non-state actors. The aim, however, was the same: to destroy on ground our jet fighters, attack helicopters, ammunition dumps and fuel tanks located in this sprawling airbase. This amounted to an act of war — a dangerous escalation of Pakistan’s proxy war against India. The only redeeming feature in this episode was the heroism of our troops, seven of whom lost their lives to safeguard our strategic assets. Even as the attack was on, the ISI unleashed a second attack on our consulate in Mazar-e-Sharif in Afghanistan. We were saved there by the energetic defense put up by our ITBP (Indo-Tibetan Border Police) boys and the Afghan National Army commandos.

NARCO-TERROR DIMENSION
For some years now, the ISI has been making concerted efforts to smuggle narcotics into Punjab on a mammoth scale. With political connivance, this border state is now flooded with drugs. This is the essential precursor to launching any asymmetric war to destabilise a vital border province. With drugs you subvert the border policing infrastructure, the police and the locals. Drug addiction creates zombies you can exploit to subsequently smuggle guns and ammunition. In 1993, the Dawood gang used its gold smuggling conduits to land arms and explosives for the Mumbai bombing that killed 257 people.
BORDER SEALING DEFICIT: The entire India-Pak border from Kashmir to Kutch has been fenced. It shows up as a wall of light on satellite photographs. The fencing on the Line of Control has been lethal and effective because of the night vision devices (NVD)-equipped ambush parties that are deployed each night. This has curtailed infiltration into Jammu and Kashmir by some 70%-80%. To circumvent this formidable obstacle system, Pakistan has been seeking fresh avenues of ingress, which it has found in the riverine terrain of Punjab. A large number of major rivers and nullahs flow from India into Pakistan — the Beas, Satlej, Aik Nullah and Degh Nadi. These have broad and shifting water courses that cannot be fenced. So they exist as huge gaps in the fencing. These araes are covered by tall elephant grass that further facilitates infiltration. The sub soil is soft and tunnels can be dug under the fence. It is for this reason that the ISI is focusing its major infiltration efforts on Punjab’s riverine tracts, especially in Gurdaspur district, which is also a hub of drug smuggling. The last attack on Gurdaspur also had come via the marshes, west of Bhagwal, along the Jaimal nullah. The present infiltration, apparently, occurred through the same gap. Why was this route not plugged? Why didn’t we mine these riverine gaps to seal them? Media reports indicate that the floodlights and the sensors here were non-functional. If so, why were these not attended to? The Border Security Force in the Gurdaspur sector feels that it is overstretched. Apparently, each battalion here covers a 34 km stretch of the border. In neghbouring Jammu it is said to be just 24 km. Why cannot we focus additional resources on vulnerable sectors instead of a uniform deployment right through? There is an urgent need to review our border sealing postures and deployment. To start with, the riverine gaps must be mined and booby trapped. This will curtail drug smuggling and infiltration.
NARCO-TERROR CIRCUIT: The preliminary phase of this operation clearly bears the narco-terror imprint. An Uber taxi was called via a mobile phone from Pakistan. At 2100 hrs on the night of 31 December-1 January, Ikegar Singh moved out with his Innova vehicle, ostensibly to pick up a patient. Was this actually to pick up a routine drug consignment? He was shocked to find some five heavily armed desperadoes. Somewhere after 2130 hrs, there was a scuffle. The man rammed his car into a tree and tried to escape. He was chased and killed a kilometre away. Gurdaspur is a hive of smuggling activities at night. A Superintendent of Police (SP) SP was travelling around in his XUV along with a jeweller and his cook. Ostensibly a deeply religious man, he had come to put a chador on a local shrine very near the border. The infuriated terrorists waved his car down and hijacked the vehicle. Surprisingly, a little later they dumped the gagged and bound SP and took away his phones. They used these to call Pakistan. Around 0330 hrs, the SP finally got through to his boss, who was surprised to learn that he was at that loaction. Nonetheless, an alert was sounded and nakas (security checkpoints) were activated to intercept the XUV. By 0700 hrs on 1 January the XUV was found abandoned near the airbase. By 1100 hrs, Ikegar’s Innova was also found. Both these vehicles were used by the terrorists. The question is: why weren’t tracker dogs and QRTs (quick response teams) employed immediately to track down these desperadoes and stop them well before they launched their attack?

RE-INVENTING THE WHEEL
By 0900 hrs on 1 January, the local Intelligence Bureau (IB) deputy director in Amritsar was thoroughly alarmed. Calls from the SP’s phone to known Jaish terrorist members in Pakistan’s Bahawalpur had been intercepted. Generalised alerts were issued to all at that stage. The target was still not clear. At 0150 hrs on 2 January morning, the last call was made by a Jaish terrorist to his mother in Bahawalpur, telling her that he was on his final mission. New Delhi was, by now, quite alarmed. At 1530 hrs on 2 January, the National Security Adviser (NSA) held a conference in New Delhi, which was attended by the Army and Air Chiefs and the Director, IB. All military bases in the area were alerted. Guards and pickets were told to look out for the terrorists. The target was still not clear and 2x Special Forces teams and 6x Mine Protected Vehicles (MPVs) were put on standby at Mamun by the Army (this is 10 minutes from the AIRBASE). At 2100 hrs on 2 January, the NSA ordered the NSG team at Manesar to move to Pathankot to be ready to deal with any hostage situation. By 2210 hrs, the first lot of 130 NSG troopers had reached the airbase. By 0230 hrs on 3 January, another 80 more NSG men had arrived there. Apparently, these 200 NSG troopers were headed by the IG Ops, an Army Major General himself. Thus the NSG, a Home Ministry force, was selected to be the lead agency for tackling an attack on a Ministry of Defence Air Force base. But why? Why don’t our standard contingency plans survive the first rush of a crisis situation? Standard SOPs envision that the Army (there are two divisions worth located some 10 minutes away at Mamun) must rush in to protect vital Air Force assets, in case they are attacked by the SSG (as they were in 1965) or by the terrorists. So why were they not involved at the very outset? The whole scenario from here onwards became a welter of confusion, with many spokesmen and ministries speaking in different voices.
The seeming reluctance to use the Army is indicative of a deeper malaise. India’s first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru had felt that India did not need any armed forces, that the police forces alone would suffice. He distrusted the armed forces, especially after the coup in Pakistan. The then IB director, B.N. Malik had initially used police forces to man the Ladakh border against China. The Army had been progressively marginalised and sidelined. The disaster of 1962 had mercifully put an end to that marginalisation. The 1965 and 1971 wars had underlined the dire need for a strong and capable armed forces. We are once again witnessing a puzzling marginalisation of the military. The entire internal security role has been allocated to police and Central police organisations. Heavy casualties suffered each year by the CRPF in anti Maoist operations show their severe limitations for this role in terms of equipment pattern, training and organisational ethos. It is unfair to ask them to undertake offensive counter-insurgency (CI) ops in such dense jungle terrain. Nowhwre else in the world have the police undertaken such offensive counter-insurgency operations. Yet the Army has been scrupulously kept out of the anti-Maoist operations. In the 26/11 attack in Mumbai, the Army had reached within two hours, but was contemptuously kept out and asked to man the outer cordon and wait for the NSG to fly in. It had taken over 12 hours for the NSG to respond. Army units have hands-on experience of such operations in J&K and the Northeast and are eminently suited to conduct such counter-terror (CT) operations effectively and efficiently. Given their far higher numbers and dispersion all over the country, they can react much faster. At the very least, they are more than capable of protecting their own bases and installations. Is it anybody’s case that in the next war the police will protect our armed forces?
A question that is being asked is that if just two teams of the NSG had to be used, why was a two-star general sent with them? Given his rank, he assumed charge of the whole operation. This got two ministries involved in what was purely a Ministry of Defence (MoD) operation. We do not parachute commanders from outside in the middle of a battle. Army units have an organic cohesion that must not be disrupted on the eve of battle. They must fight under their own commanders with whom they have trained. Ultimately, nine columns (over two battalions) of the Army, a platoon of BMP armoured personnel carriers and over six MPVs (Mine Protected Vehicles) were used. Out of the six terrorists, the Army eliminated five. It would have been a much neater command and control arrangement if they had served under their own brigadier (a general was not needed to deal with just six terrorists). The induction of the NSG into an armed forces’ operation at a military base, unfortunately, crossed the lines of communication and led to avoidable gaffes. The operation was declared successfully concluded on the first day itself, when it was, in fact, still very much on. A study of past attack patterns indicate that terrorist assaults on such a well guarded airbase have usually been launched by a minimum of six to eight terrorists. They divide themselves into three or four buddy-pairs to target diverse parts of the base and fragment the defender’s reaction. Hence, an attack by just four terrorists should have sounded innocuous and the premature announcement of the operation’s conclusion could have been avoided.
In hindsight, it would be improper to micro-manage such operations from Delhi. Full latitude must be given to operational commanders on the ground. In no way should their initiative and freedom of action be curbed. The standard operating procedure (SOP) is that an Incident Command Post (ICP) is established on the site, and all operational bulletins are issued locally from there. A single point commander is nominated from amongst the lead force carrying out the operation. In the instant case, it was the Army. The Army has the maximum experience in conducting CI/CT operations. Its expertise must not be wasted on pure considerations of turf. In any case, an AIRBASE is the legitimate turf of the MoD.

THE MILITARY OPERATION
Despite all these initial organisational mix-ups, let me state unequivocally that the military operations part of it was an unqualified success. The aim of the attackers was to destroy the strategic assets at the base, and this was completely foiled. Let us not forget that after attacking PNS Mehran, Pakistan’s Naval Air Station in Karachi, in 2011, the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) managed to destroy aircraft and maritime recce assets worth over a billion dollars. An airbase is a huge and sprawling target. The Pathankot base has a perimeter of over 24 km and an area of 1,900 sqare acres of broken ground and dense vegetation patches. It has MIG fighter aircraft, attack helicopters, ammunition and fuel dumps, a school and thousands of personnel and their families. It has an 11-foot-high wall all around it. The lesson learnt is that over a period of time, a large number of trees have come up in the vicinity of the fence and were exploited by the terrorists to cross it.
Coincidentally, the initial terrorist assault hit the DSC (Defence Security Corps) cook house, where five unarmed DSC boys were killed. The retired soldiers performed heroically. One unarmed DSC boy grappled with the terrorists, snatched his weapon and shot him dead. He was killed by the other terrorists. The terrorists were then immediately pinned down and confined to some 250 metres of the initial penetration. They were completely prevented from breaking out towards the technical area, where the aircraft were located.
The base remained operational and attack helicopter sorties took off regularly to monitor the operations. The next day, the terrorists tried to hide in a dense patch of elephant grass. They were pinned down and eliminated by the Armymen. There was a lull in the firing, but the search operations were continued to sanitise the whole base.
“Fog of war” is a term all military veterans are familiar with. Things take time to crystallise in such operations and there should be no undue haste in calling them off prematurely. The operations continued smoothly. The problem was more in the management of the flow of information. The next day, another pair of terrorists were located in a building where the airmen stay. It took time to evacuate the Air Force personnel and ensure that no hostages were taken. The terrorists had obviously intended to conclude this attack with a prolonged hostage drama. The effort of all such terror attacks is to finally stage a prolonged hostage situation. One of the NSG officers, leading the bomb disposal squad, was, unfortunately, martyred when searching the booby trapped dead body of a terrorist.
To conserve further casualties, the Army then used its BMPs and virtually brought this building down. Rocket launchers were used liberally and the terrorist bodies were blasted to bits. This, in turn, created the problem of digging out the bodies and weapons from the massive quantity of rubble. The Army accepts no claims of kills unless the bodies and weapons have been recovered, and this took time.
Meanwhile, a media hysteria got generated that the operation was taking inordinately long to conclude. This was highly incorrect and unethical. Once the terrorists have been pinned down and immobilised, there is no need for any inordinate hurry as that generally leads to more casualties. Such operations must be conducted methodically and decisions must be left to the commander on the spot. After such an attack, it was essential to sanitise every inch of the 1,999 square acres of the base, to winkle out any terrorist who may still be hiding, or playing possum, as also to neutralise any unexploded ordinance and booby traps left behind. In the instant case, some terrorist bodies caught fire and the ammunition on their person continued to cook off for hours afterwards, leading to uncertainty about all terrorists having been eliminated. That precisely is the fog of war and all those who have been in combat know this well. It does take time to read the battle and the situation takes time to crystallise. There is no need to seek entry into the Guinness book of records on the speed in the conduct of operations. Military lives are precious and must not be wasted by inordinate hurry to show results to a news hungry media.
All in all, our boys of the Army, Air Force, NSG and even the retired DCS personnel did a commendable job. Seven of them laid down their lives to safeguard our strategic assets. Let us celebrate their valour and sacrifice. They deserve the nation’s unstinted gratitude and a little less of carping would serve to raise morale.
However, we must learn our lessons and plug the gaps that may have emerged in the course of this prolonged operation. The drug menace in Punjab has serious security ramifications and must be ruthlessly curbed as a national endeavour.

Maj Gen (Dr) G.D. Bakshi SM, VSM (Retd) is a retired military officer

[Surya]

what a diff

Bakshi calls the DSC our boys

and Panag calls them rag tag -

[ramana]

^^^^^
Rohitvats very good timeline and blow by blow account:
-----------------
NARCO-TERROR CIRCUIT: The preliminary phase of this operation clearly bears the narco-terror imprint. An Uber taxi was called via a mobile phone from Pakistan. At 2100 hrs on the night of 31 December-1 January, Ikegar Singh moved out with his Innova vehicle, ostensibly to pick up a patient. Was this actually to pick up a routine drug consignment? He was shocked to find some five heavily armed desperadoes. Somewhere after 2130 hrs, there was a scuffle. The man rammed his car into a tree and tried to escape. He was chased and killed a kilometre away. Gurdaspur is a hive of smuggling activities at night. A Superintendent of Police (SP) SP was travelling around in his XUV along with a jeweller and his cook. Ostensibly a deeply religious man, he had come to put a chador on a local shrine very near the border. The infuriated terrorists waved his car down and hijacked the vehicle. Surprisingly, a little later they dumped the gagged and bound SP and took away his phones. They used these to call Pakistan. Around 0330 hrs, the SP finally got through to his boss, who was surprised to learn that he was at that loaction. Nonetheless, an alert was sounded and nakas (security checkpoints) were activated to intercept the XUV. By 0700 hrs on 1 January the XUV was found abandoned near the airbase. By 1100 hrs, Ikegar’s Innova was also found. Both these vehicles were used by the terrorists. The question is: why weren’t tracker dogs and QRTs (quick response teams) employed immediately to track down these desperadoes and stop them well before they launched their attack?

RE-INVENTING THE WHEEL
By 0900 hrs on 1 January, the local Intelligence Bureau (IB) deputy director in Amritsar was thoroughly alarmed. Calls from the SP’s phone to known Jaish terrorist members in Pakistan’s Bahawalpur had been intercepted. Generalised alerts were issued to all at that stage. The target was still not clear. At 0150 hrs on 2 January morning, the last call was made by a Jaish terrorist to his mother in Bahawalpur, telling her that he was on his final mission. New Delhi was, by now, quite alarmed. At 1530 hrs on 2 January, the National Security Adviser (NSA) held a conference in New Delhi, which was attended by the Army and Air Chiefs and the Director, IB. All military bases in the area were alerted. Guards and pickets were told to look out for the terrorists. The target was still not clear and 2x Special Forces teams and 6x Mine Protected Vehicles (MPVs) were put on standby at Mamun by the Army (this is 10 minutes from the AIRBASE). At 2100 hrs on 2 January, the NSA ordered the NSG team at Manesar to move to Pathankot to be ready to deal with any hostage situation. By 2210 hrs, the first lot of 130 NSG troopers had reached the airbase. By 0230 hrs on 3 January, another 80 more NSG men had arrived there. Apparently, these 200 NSG troopers were headed by the IG Ops, an Army Major General himself. Thus the NSG, a Home Ministry force, was selected to be the lead agency for tackling an attack on a Ministry of Defence Air Force base. But why? Why don’t our standard contingency plans survive the first rush of a crisis situation? Standard SOPs envision that the Army (there are two divisions worth located some 10 minutes away at Mamun) must rush in to protect vital Air Force assets, in case they are attacked by the SSG (as they were in 1965) or by the terrorists. So why were they not involved at the very outset? The whole scenario from here onwards became a welter of confusion, with many spokesmen and ministries speaking in different voices.
The seeming reluctance to use the Army is indicative of a deeper malaise. India’s first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru had felt that India did not need any armed forces, that the police forces alone would suffice. He distrusted the armed forces, especially after the coup in Pakistan. The then IB director, B.N. Malik had initially used police forces to man the Ladakh border against China. The Army had been progressively marginalised and sidelined. The disaster of 1962 had mercifully put an end to that marginalisation. The 1965 and 1971 wars had underlined the dire need for a strong and capable armed forces. We are once again witnessing a puzzling marginalisation of the military. The entire internal security role has been allocated to police and Central police organisations. Heavy casualties suffered each year by the CRPF in anti Maoist operations show their severe limitations for this role in terms of equipment pattern, training and organisational ethos. It is unfair to ask them to undertake offensive counter-insurgency (CI) ops in such dense jungle terrain. Nowhere else in the world have the police undertaken such offensive counter-insurgency operations. Yet the Army has been scrupulously kept out of the anti-Maoist operations. In the 26/11 attack in Mumbai, the Army had reached within two hours, but was contemptuously kept out and asked to man the outer cordon and wait for the NSG to fly in. It had taken over 12 hours for the NSG to respond. Army units have hands-on experience of such operations in J&K and the Northeast and are eminently suited to conduct such counter-terror (CT) operations effectively and efficiently. Given their far higher numbers and dispersion all over the country, they can react much faster. At the very least, they are more than capable of protecting their own bases and installations. Is it anybody’s case that in the next war the police will protect our armed forces?
A question that is being asked is that if just two teams of the NSG had to be used, why was a two-star general sent with them? Given his rank, he assumed charge of the whole operation. This got two ministries involved in what was purely a Ministry of Defence (MoD) operation. We do not parachute commanders from outside in the middle of a battle. Army units have an organic cohesion that must not be disrupted on the eve of battle. They must fight under their own commanders with whom they have trained. Ultimately, nine columns (over two battalions) of the Army, a platoon of BMP armoured personnel carriers and over six MPVs (Mine Protected Vehicles) were used. Out of the six terrorists, the Army eliminated five. It would have been a much neater command and control arrangement if they had served under their own brigadier (a general was not needed to deal with just six terrorists). The induction of the NSG into an armed forces’ operation at a military base, unfortunately, crossed the lines of communication and led to avoidable gaffes. The operation was declared successfully concluded on the first day itself, when it was, in fact, still very much on. A study of past attack patterns indicate that terrorist assaults on such a well guarded airbase have usually been launched by a minimum of six to eight terrorists. They divide themselves into three or four buddy-pairs to target diverse parts of the base and fragment the defender’s reaction. Hence, an attack by just four terrorists should have sounded innocuous and the premature announcement of the operation’s conclusion could have been avoided.
In hindsight, it would be improper to micro-manage such operations from Delhi. Full latitude must be given to operational commanders on the ground. In no way should their initiative and freedom of action be curbed. The standard operating procedure (SOP) is that an Incident Command Post (ICP) is established on the site, and all operational bulletins are issued locally from there. A single point commander is nominated from amongst the lead force carrying out the operation. In the instant case, it was the Army. The Army has the maximum experience in conducting CI/CT operations. Its expertise must not be wasted on pure considerations of turf. In any case, an AIRBASE is the legitimate turf of the MoD.

THE MILITARY OPERATION
Despite all these initial organisational mix-ups, let me state unequivocally that the military operations part of it was an unqualified success. The aim of the attackers was to destroy the strategic assets at the base, and this was completely foiled. Let us not forget that after attacking PNS Mehran, Pakistan’s Naval Air Station in Karachi, in 2011, the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) managed to destroy aircraft and maritime recce assets worth over a billion dollars. An airbase is a huge and sprawling target. The Pathankot base has a perimeter of over 24 km and an area of 1,900 sqare acres of broken ground and dense vegetation patches. It has MIG fighter aircraft, attack helicopters, ammunition and fuel dumps, a school and thousands of personnel and their families. It has an 11-foot-high wall all around it. The lesson learnt is that over a period of time, a large number of trees have come up in the vicinity of the fence and were exploited by the terrorists to cross it.
Coincidentally, the initial terrorist assault hit the DSC (Defence Security Corps) cook house, where five unarmed DSC boys were killed. The retired soldiers performed heroically. One unarmed DSC boy grappled with the terrorists, snatched his weapon and shot him dead. He was killed by the other terrorists. The terrorists were then immediately pinned down and confined to some 250 metres of the initial penetration. They were completely prevented from breaking out towards the technical area, where the aircraft were located.
The base remained operational and attack helicopter sorties took off regularly to monitor the operations. The next day, the terrorists tried to hide in a dense patch of elephant grass. They were pinned down and eliminated by the Armymen. There was a lull in the firing, but the search operations were continued to sanitise the whole base.
“Fog of war” is a term all military veterans are familiar with. Things take time to crystallise in such operations and there should be no undue haste in calling them off prematurely. The operations continued smoothly. The problem was more in the management of the flow of information. The next day, another pair of terrorists were located in a building where the airmen stay. It took time to evacuate the Air Force personnel and ensure that no hostages were taken. The terrorists had obviously intended to conclude this attack with a prolonged hostage drama. The effort of all such terror attacks is to finally stage a prolonged hostage situation. One of the NSG officers, leading the bomb disposal squad, was, unfortunately, martyred when searching the booby trapped dead body of a terrorist.

To conserve further casualties, the Army then used its BMPs and virtually brought this building down. Rocket launchers were used liberally and the terrorist bodies were blasted to bits. This, in turn, created the problem of digging out the bodies and weapons from the massive quantity of rubble. The Army accepts no claims of kills unless the bodies and weapons have been recovered, and this took time.
Meanwhile, a media hysteria got generated that the operation was taking inordinately long to conclude. This was highly incorrect and unethical. Once the terrorists have been pinned down and immobilised, there is no need for any inordinate hurry as that generally leads to more casualties. Such operations must be conducted methodically and decisions must be left to the commander on the spot. After such an attack, it was essential to sanitise every inch of the 1,999 square acres of the base, to winkle out any terrorist who may still be hiding, or playing possum, as also to neutralise any unexploded ordinance and booby traps left behind. In the instant case, some terrorist bodies caught fire and the ammunition on their person continued to cook off for hours afterwards, leading to uncertainty about all terrorists having been eliminated. That precisely is the fog of war and all those who have been in combat know this well. It does take time to read the battle and the situation takes time to crystallise. There is no need to seek entry into the Guinness book of records on the speed in the conduct of operations. Military lives are precious and must not be wasted by inordinate hurry to show results to a news hungry media.
All in all, our boys of the Army, Air Force, NSG and even the retired DCS personnel did a commendable job. Seven of them laid down their lives to safeguard our strategic assets. Let us celebrate their valour and sacrifice. They deserve the nation’s unstinted gratitude and a little less of carping would serve to raise morale.
However, we must learn our lessons and plug the gaps that may have emerged in the course of this prolonged operation. The drug menace in Punjab has serious security ramifications and must be ruthlessly curbed as a national endeavour.

Maj Gen (Dr) G.D. Bakshi SM, VSM (Retd) is a retired military officer

---------------------------------

very clear picture with helpful comments.

Mani complaint is use of NSG in a military base.
NSG SAG is completely drawn from military.
NSG commander was Major General former commander of 26th division which is stationed adjacent to Pathankot air force base. In fact he was former senior to the Brigadier.

Also AOC who is a Lt Gen rank was also present and did not assert rank despite attack on Air Force base.
He let the right people work. Bravo to him.