Comment |What went behind IAF's air strike against JeM terror camps?

Abhijit Iyer-Mitra
Moneycontrol Contributor

A successful military operation is usually the tip of the iceberg. It is the culmination of a massive amount of hard work, most of which is unglamorous and done by logisticians and mathematicians.

Here’s what we know so far. Sometime early this morning (February 26), several electronic intelligence gathering aircraft took off without their transponders on, so that commercial air intelligence sites like Flight Radar would not track unusual activity. The one activity the site did track was the Indigenous Airborne Long Range Radar system, mounted atop a Brazilian commercial jet. This plane, first flew north into Kashmir to see that the air situation was clear; that is to say to ensure that Pakistani radars and aircraft were lazing. It knew when to do this, as the entire fortnight, India’s Israeli supplied intelligence gathering aircraft and drones had been up in the air mapping the downtime of Pakistani aircraft and radars and loopholes in their air defence.

The Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS) then turned south to start monitoring the rest of Pakistan, where the bulk of that country’s air forces is concentrated. This was done to prevent any nasty surprises cropping up on the Indian aircraft during the mission. At around this time, we are told, 12 Indian Mirage 2000s entered Pakistani airspace targeting six separate locations.

Again this was also not as simple as it seems. Over the last two weeks, the entire intelligence community would have been scrambled together to determine an optimal target. Once determined, a cost-benefit would have to be done: “What is the cost of one Mirage going down and its pilot falling into enemy hands? Are the terrorists we are going to kill worth that risk and will killing them downstream save us more money than the risk of losing a Mirage”. Once that question was answered, the assessment would go back to air planners who would then look at minimising risk to the point of acceptability.

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This is where the electronic intelligence gathered by India’s Israeli supplied fleet would come into play. This electronic data would be fused together to produce optimal attack times and attack routes. It would also determine what jamming algorithms to upload into the Mirages so it could successfully fool both ground radars and fighters in the air. Essentially, this would mean the strike was a high altitude one, one where the planes did not fly low and around hills to avoid radars, as this would be a dead giveaway. You can after all fool electronics, but you can’t fool good old eyes and ears on the ground, who would easily be able to identify an incoming aircraft in the moonlight.

This operation, however, was not carried out merely by the Mirages. The MiG 29s and Sukhois would have all been kept in a state of high alert across the border, should something go wrong. Moreover, in case of battle damage, an entire support fleet of tankers (to refuel aircraft that were losing fuel) combat rescue helicopters (to rescue shot down pilots if possible) and transport aircraft to supply emergency spares if needed, would have all worked like clockwork. The amount of detailing that goes into this is simply mind-boggling. But the more important detailing is what goes into keeping these massive logistical operations a secret. For example, how did the air force manage to mask a significant northward movement of Indian assets without Pakistani intelligence picking it up, or fifth columns in the corridors of power or out in the fields from observing and reporting? This is as much a triumph of counterintelligence and masking as it is a military achievement.

With defensive formations in place, the Mirages would have stealthily crossed the border, jamming frequencies increasing or decreasing depending on if they were scanned or not. More importantly, they would not have taken off from fields in Kashmir to avoid alerting locals to an imminent strike. They would have taken off from Punjab or Delhi so that their presence would not be seen as unusual. This is why the IAF’s Il-78 aerial refuelers had been up in the air since a few hours after midnight.

At a precise pre-determined time, the Mirages would have dropped their precision bombs, which invariably would have woken up the neighbours and scrambled the Pakistan Air Force. We definitely have footage of one Pakistani F-16 flying low and shooting flares in an attempt to avoid heat seeking missiles, presumably Indian. This means the Indian aircraft flew in undetected, but were challenged on their way back and fought their way out without losses. All this is a set piece action of how air strikes should be carried out. It achieved total surprise, possibly inflicted heavy damage, deep inside territory where the Pakistanis did not expect to be struck and finally returned to base without a scratch. This also reinforces the lesson that all Indian leaders should learn: that air power, when used precisely and in moderation, achieves far greater results that ground actions.

Finally, it seems our leaders have also grasped the legal dimensions of the use of air power, with Foreign Secretary Vijay Gokhale’s remarks building a solid case for legal pre-emption as opposed to illegal preventive or post facto punitive action. Clearly, this was a carefully coordinated operation involving all parts of government top down, and unusually for India, exceptionally well planned.

Abhijit Iyer-Mitra is senior research fellow, Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies, New Delhi. Views expressed are personal