Some Organisational, Operational & Media Takeaways from Pathankot

In the early hours of 24 Jul 2001 a fourteen man LTTE suicide squad infiltrated an airbase near Colombo and destroyed eight military aircraft on the tarmac which included three jet fighters. Another seven aircraft including two fighter aircraft were damaged. The attackers then crossed over to the civil airport and destroyed three Airbus airliners and damaged two more. All 14 LTTE were killed. Four Sri Lankan soldiers were killed and 12 injured.

On 22 May 2011 about 15 militants of the Pakistani Taliban attacked the Pakistan Naval Air Station at Mehran. They destroyed two very expensive P3C Orion Maritime surveillance aircraft. Four militants were killed, five injured, four taken prisoner and two escaped. A total of 18 military personnel were killed and 16 were wounded.

On 8 June 2014, 10 militants of the Pakistani Taliban attacked the airport at Karachi. They damaged three airliners and destroyed a huge warehouse of NATO supplies. All 10 attackers and 16 security/airport staff were killed and 18 security/airport staff were wounded.

Compare these with two attacks which have taken place on our airfields so far. The first was on 22 Oct 2001 at Awantipora in Kashmir. Four militants who tried to break into the airfield were killed. One Border Security Force (BSF) jawan and one civilian were killed and two security personnel injured. The second was at the Pathankot airbase from 01 to 04 Jan 2016 which resulted in the elimination of the six attackers. There were seven fatal casualties to security personnel and approximately 20 or more personnel were injured. There was no damage to any aircraft or equipment.� Statistically, compared to the attacks in Pakistan and Sri Lanka, India has either been fortunate or the security has been better. As reported by the media, in the Pathankot attack only two security personnel were killed in direct combat with the terrorists of whom one was from the Defence Security Corps (DSC) and one was an IAF �Garud� Commando. Four were unarmed DSC personnel gunned down in a cookhouse. One officer died while clearing the area where a booby trap was placed. A number of NSG men were injured by the splinters of this explosion.

Throughout the two main days of intense operations the true picture was not clear. The media was conjecturing from interviews with people on the fringes of the action, making deductions from the sounds of gunfire or trying to interpret the sketchy briefings given to them by officials who themselves were not clear about the conduct of operations. The takeaway from this was clearly that, when there is a multiplicity of security agencies involved, there has to be a lead agency which can give the correct answers which ipso facto means that they know what they are doing. Such answers to the press should be without compromising security of ongoing operations and in a manner that gloom and despondency is not allowed to even show its face. It should also be done without ill-informed bravado verging on the ludicrous, which when exposed leads again to frustration as the citizens wonder how a few terrorists can stand in the face of massive force. Examples can be quoted from the headlines/news items in our press such as �IAF Neutralizes Terror Attack�[i], �Choppers Flush Out Terrorists�,[ii] �Pathankot Base Attacked, Air Force Retaliates with Mi-25 Helicopters�.[iii] All this has been commented upon in great detail by a number of defence analysts or journalists in every newspaper or news channel since the attack. The lesson which has been learnt in hindsight is that when an attack is on a military target and is being handled by the military the correct course of action is for the military and its hierarchy to be the lead agency. With confusion of the lead agency and every agency involved hoping to get the credit for foiling the attackers there were gaffes galore. Senior spokespersons from the Home Ministry were giving statements without knowing the difference between the air force and DSC personnel and stating that six air force personnel had been killed. It was only by the third day that an officer from the army was permitted to give a statement to the media. The statement came across as correct, to the point, and cleared doubts while keeping the security intact for ongoing operations. He was able to do so because he knew what was happening as he was conducting the operations. Lastly, the recurrence of such an attack within six months, more or less in the same sector in which the attack on 27 Jul 2015 at Dinanagar took place, points to systemic inadequacies in the border guarding procedures of the BSF which need to be addressed.

There were two forces involved in Pathankot about whom it is essential to be clear to draw lessons. These are the DSC and the Garuds.

The DSC is a Corps of the army. It is a security force maintained and organised on the Army model. It provides security to all Ministry of Defence installations including DRDO/Ordnance factories.� Its personnel are subjected to the Army Act. They are tasked to guard against sabotage and pilferage. The personnel are armed with small arms upto Light Machine Gun only. DSC jawans are army veterans. A number of them are from fighting arms and have seen active counter insurgency/terrorist operations. Army jawans retire between the ages of 35 to 50 depending upon at what age they have joined and what rank they reach. Therefore even in the DSC many of them are not as old as in the police forces. Admittedly their offensive ethos gets degraded as their job is purely guarding of defence installations. Psychologically they are �retired� and may not willingly want to court danger. Retired combatised tradesmen from the army (cooks, washermen, barbers etc) can also join the DSC as �General Duty� soldiers. Such category of personnel would be in very small numbers but nevertheless their reaction in the face of a terrorist attack may not be the ideal because of the nature of their primary duty while in the army.

The Garuds[iv] are the Special Forces of the Indian Air Force raised in 2004. During hostilities, Garuds undertake combat search and rescue (which means extraction of crew of aircraft whose aircraft may be downed or who may have ejected in a hostile area), suppression of enemy air defenses by destroying radars, and other missions in support of air operations. Their peace time role can be counter terrorism, aid during natural calamities and military tasks in the interest of the nation. �Garuds do not guard airfield, they respond to ground threats to airbases and key assets when these are evident or have occurred. The normal security of airbases is usually under the care of the Air Force Police and the DSC. In high threat areas the Territorial Army or in their absence BSF may also be tasked for airbase security in the outer perimeter. The later is also because some airbases are also co-shared by the Airports Authority of India.

The organizational and operational takeaways are:

• Endeavour must be made that the personnel posted in DSC units guarding installations in high threat areas must be from the fighting arms who have seen service in the operational areas of Northern and Eastern Commands or with the Rashtriya Rifles.
• The concept of �Lead Agency� to deal with the crisis must be made clear through specific rules. Such as under:

• The lead in attacks on defence installations must be the Army. This is because the Services have an institutionalized hierarchical chain of command which can operate smoothly even in joint operations. There should be no feeling of inadequacy in handing over the situation to the most readily available or capable organization which can counter the attack.
• In an attack on civilian assets the chain of successive responders should be, firstly, the State Police, secondly, the Central Police Forces (which includes the NSG) and thirdly the Armed Forces. Command of operations upto the Central Police forces can be with the DGP of the State, as all successive officer echelons have a common culture of crisis handling being from the Indian Police Service cadre. Command should devolve upon the military (Army) if either of two conditions are met, first, the major part of the force involved is from the army, and second, if the most crucial part of the operation has to be done by the army.
• As soon as a commander (police or military) realizes that the situation is beyond his capability and the other force is more suitable be must hand over command and come into a support role. This often does not happen because of human tendency to try to retain the likelihood of earning glory.

• There is a requirement of having a Special Operations command which can take under its wings the Special Forces of the three services. In cross pollination of personnel and techniques, tactics and procedures there can be greater accumulation of operational experience. This at the moment is lacking in the Garuds who have not deployed independently for operations in the manner that the Naval Special Forces, the MARCOS, have in J&K in conjunction with the army, and in the Creek Area in Gujarat in conjunction with the BSF.
• The BSF requires to be placed under the Ministry of Defence for better coordination of defensive measures in what is essentially an ongoing Fourth Generation War with Pakistan. If the Coast Guard which is a �sea border� guarding force, is under the Ministry of Defence, it is logical that so should be the forces guarding the Pakistan and China borders.

�The BSF in investigations after the attack were once again retracing the route the attackers took.[v] Once again as at the time of the Dinanagar attack the theory being advanced was that they either came through a tunnel or from J&K.[vi] In his classic 1904 book �The Defence of Duffer�s Drift�[vii], the author Capt (later Major General) Ernest Dunlop Swinton writes about a series of six dreams by "Lieutenant Backsight Forethought" about the defence of a river crossing in the Boer war. The infantry tactics in the early dreams are disastrous. In these Backsight Forethought and his 50 men are ignominiously defeated.� But each time, incrementally, the young officer learns something until in the final defence he is successful. One hopes that like Lieutenant Backsight Forethought the lessons we learn and brainstorm will result in blocking the infiltration routes or means across the International Border and streamline procedures to either foil or better tackle such attacks in the future.