HVK Archives: Lessons for India
Lessons for India - The Hindustan Times
Raja Menon
()
September 15, 1998
Title: Lessons for India
Author: Raja Menon
Publication: The Hindustan Times
Date: September 15, 1998
The dramatic US strike on the chemicals factory in Khartoum and
the terrorist training camp in Khost, has raised a clamour in
India of why not we? Thomas Pickering's statement that similar
action by India will not be appreciated is the centre piece of
the controversy, with most commentators taking the familiar
paranoic, persecuted Indian line. Lost in the confusion and noise
was a dispassionate military appraisal of the strike and the
practical lessons it offered to the Indian military.
Those familiar with the exploits of American technology used in
Desert Storm may believe that Tomahawk strikes are nothing new.
Actually they are. The current missiles have the same range and
payload, otherwise the newer version represent the results of R&D
into developing a quick reaction weapon to be fired from one of
the US naval ships or submarines, which operate globally, and can
therefore react to sub-strategic conflicts instantly without
developing a local facility. The 70 missiles fired at Khost
navigated entirely at night by the global positioning system
satellite up to the time they made landfall on the Makran coast.
Thereafter they could have used Terrain comparison (Tercom) and
an updating system called DSMAC II. The former involving planning
delays, compares the terrain it flies through with the terrain-
tape it had been fed earlier. Now with DSMAC II, the mission
planning takes a few hours. In this system the missile 'looks'
at some way points with a camera (in this case with an image
intensifier for night use) and compares it to what has been fed
to it earlier, and alters course as necessary.
The missiles fired at Iraq had high explosive heads, aimed at
specific buildings, as was the case this time in the attack on
Khartoum. Since a clearly discernible aiming mark was available
in Khartoum, six missiles sufficed. In Khost, the terrorist
complex of Zhawar Khili Al-Badr contained six separate camps, and
hence the 70 missiles. Here, the warhead was the Combined Effects
Bomblets (CEBs), 166 of them per missile, each weighing 1.54 kg.
Each Tomahawk is capable of releasing the bomblets on three
separate targets and are a mixture of armour piercing, explosive
and incendiary. Since each missile can be programmed to arrive on
target at a fixed time to saturate air defences for simultaneous
air strikes, the effect of a release of 11,620 bomblets at once
would have created a psychological effect, unlikely to be
forgotten by the terrorists, despite Bin Laden's later threats.
It is necessary to describe the broad technical details of the
strike so the people of the country understand what exactly the
US did, and how far we are from doing something similar.
Pickering need not have bothered about the subcontinent because
the speed of planning and the hardware necessary for a
retaliation of this nature are entirely beyond us. The attack on
Nairobi took place on August 7 and the decision to make a strike
was taken on August 14. The entire strike was therefore planned
between August 14 and 20. The key component in fixing the
involvement of Bin Laden was the apprehending by Pakistan
immigration authorities of a bombing suspect travelling on a
false Yemeni passport.
The new system of strike planning involves the conversion of
satellite and aircraft surveillance imagery onto a tape and
downloading the tape via the satellite communications network to
one of the capital ships, in this case the aircraft carrier
Abraham Lincoln. The carrier can duplicate the imagery tape for
use by other ships of the task force on its special computer in
30 seconds. The search narrowed down to Khost because satellite
electronic surveillance indicated increased activity from there
at the time of the Nairobi bombing. Bin Laden has been carrying
with him a commercial satellite communication system called the
INMARSAT, a system also operated by the Indian Navy for use from
outlying posts.
The strike throws up a number of lessons. It is indicative of the
use by a country of the best that its technology can make
possible in the pursuit of its national aims, and combine it with
a decision-making system and force deployment pattern that is
adaptive to the specifies of a situation. For India, the country
most affected by terrorism, it is a lesson in applying national
will and national talent to solving a canker that has afflicted
us for more than ten years. Even today, we talk glibly of 57
training camps or 90 training camps used for training Kashmir
terrorists, but cannot produce one photograph of a camp either to
show to the people of India or to use in preparing a case for the
UN, the US Congress or the world court.
It is not that we are entirely without resources. The Indian
satellite photographs marketed in the US have the best resolution
of commercial photographs available in the world. The Mig-25s
with the Air Force are still a front-line photo reconnaissance
aircraft in Russia. The country has acquired one of the best UAV
systems in the world, which the Israelis use regularly to update
their intelligence of the terrorists that bother them. But the
stories that emanate from Kashmir are indeed depressing. Despite
all the talk of info-warfare, networking and working towards a
digitized battlefield, digital maps of J&K have still not been
introduced.
The state is probably one of the three where the low temperatures
at night would ensure that surveillance with Forward Looking
Infra-Red (FLIR) would provide rich dividends, especially in Doda
where the presence of militants in open country would stand out
as discernible 'hot spots'. The skies over J&K should be thick
with FLIR-fitted helicopters by night. But this would mean the
introduction of global positioning system sets which give a read-
out of the holder's geographical position to an accuracy of 80
metres, and is available in any electronic store in the US. But
it would appear to be a herculean task, considering that it took
the Defence Minister's personal intervention and the presence of
two chiefs, three secretaries and three generals to introduce
binoculars and night vision glasses for the troops in Siachen.
What is wrong with our system? The people at the sharp end, the
infantry, seem adequately motivated, well led and keen to get on
with the job, but losing a man a day can go on for too long
unless the costs of terrorism in Kashmir are raised-dramatically.
At present the strategy is no strategy - the belief that over
time the ill-equipped troops will tire out the ISI and the
foreign mercenaries. We need not go overboard as the Americans
did in Vietnam with technology, but there is need for a
reappraisal of the manner in which the Kashmir situation is being
handled both internally and externally. There is a need to
recreate a system with clear levels of accountability and
responsibility. Why can't the Army commander, Northern Command,
have a capital budget? Can't a Lieutenant General commanding a
quarter million troops buy binoculars or a GPS?
The absence of adequate photo reconnaissance, of land attack
cruise missiles, of heliborne FLIR and aircraft of the kind the
Americans brought into Kashmir when the foreign militants were
kidnapped are all symptoms of a larger malaise in the command and
control of the Indian armed forces. All the capabilities
mentioned here are funded by one service for use in another
medium - the Tomahawk by the navy for use over land, photorecce
and heliborne FLIR by the air force for use in land battles and
heavy EW assets by the army for counter-insurgency. As long as
individual services spend the greater part of its money on single
service priorities, national tasks will be neglected. The army
has to look beyond concentrating on massed divisions, the air
force on shooting down aircraft and the navy on sinking ships,
because the war that they are planning for may never come.
In the meanwhile, the serious counterinsurgency operations in
Kashmir with a never ending supply of foreign militants should
not be fought on half power, with only a small percentage of the
country's resources behind the men doing the fighting. A
diplomatic initiative can only ride on the back of the threat of
a military initiative and the latter can only be created with a
different force structure. Hot pursuit does not mean infantrymen
running across the border, but the option given to the government
to punish Pakistan militarily for terrorism. Although not
permitted by international law, sufficient precedences exist,
particularly as Pakistan denies involvement and PoK is disputed
territory.
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