Re: Out of Kargil
One Indian failure after another.
http://www.indiadaily.com/editorial/1673.asp
**Indian Army admits a series of blunders and critical failures in Kargil report **
Media Release
Feb. 21, 2005
Five years down the Kargil war, the Army has admitted a series of blunders and critical failures that cost with the lives of its 474 officers and men in an “internal assessment report”, documented from top secret operational notes with the military operations directorate. The 250-odd page secret report on the war fought on the icy heights of Kargil between May and July 1999 that has been scooped by the Indian English weekly Outlook in its latest edition is full of sensational revelations like:
*** Senior commanders reached late. There were lapses in command and control.
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There was total intelligence failure.
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It was presumed that an overt nuclear posture would guarantee peace.
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The army was in low intensity conflict mode and unprepared for a conventional war.
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There was a sense of complacency. It was assumed there would be no incursion across difficult and harsh terrain.
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Senior officers were physically unfit. And there was lack of initiative at the JCO-NCO level.
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Troops didn’t have any acclimatisation.
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Northern Command was stretched and troop levels were not adequate. **
While stressing that three defence chiefs were indecisive and so was then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, the weekly magazine says the secret report not only chronicalises what went wrong but also puts on record what India’s defence establishment has done to ensure that such lapses don’t occur in the future. The secret report, according to the magazine, is a result of the decision to take a dispassionate look at the war and to record its history and disseminate it among top generals of the army was taken two years ago when Gen N.C. Vij took over as army chief. He had witnessed the war at close quarters as the Director General of Military Operations (DGMO), a position that had given him the first knowledge of the secret operational notes. Gen. Vij got the documents compiled for the benefit of the army’s senior commanders to learn “valuable lessons of the art of war”-a war that was fought in recent times and won, albeit after paying a heavy price. The report is full of the critical failures that happened at various levels. Senior commanders failed to deliver, the intelligence set-up proved ineffective, battalions were led by people too old to climb razor-edge peaks in sub-zero climes, rifles that were introduced midway through the war created problems and the delay in deploying air power during the conflict prolonged the war.
INTELLIGENCE FAILURE: According to the army’s assessment in the report, one of the biggest lessons of the Kargil war was that there “was a sense of complacency among the officers and men”. It was believed at the command level and on the ground that the “terrain was so difficult that there would not be any incursions”. The army’s “winter posture” had led to vacating a few critical posts. This was coupled with the fact that nearly “a 130 km stretch between Turtuk and Zojila had no sensors”. The “winter air surveillance operations (WASO)” is described as “at best, not very effective.” The assessment also recognises another factor that caused much heartburn within the army’s higher echelons-the fact that there were no inputs from the Research & Analysis Wing (RAW), whose prime task is to gather foreign intelligence. While RAW did manage an “intelligence scoop by intercepting a call between Gen Pervez Musharraf and his chief of staff”, there were no initial inputs on the extent of incursions into Kargil. The fact that there were “no ground sensors” on the 130 km stretch also adversely affected the army’s ability to preempt the incursions. It has also been put on record that Military Intelligence was unable to “analyse certain inputs”. For instance, there were reports of “large-scale animal transport movements on the Pakistani side of the LoC”. However, military intelligence summarised that these were undertaken to replenish ammunition for the Pakistani artillery regiments. Lessons: A range of new technology has been introduced, including regular flights by unmanned aerial vehicles.
UNFIT SENIORS AND LAX JUNIORS: The assessment points out that with an older profile of “commanders at the battalion and brigade level”, the army was literally gasping for breath. Two commanding officers of infantry battalions were moved out as they were physically unfit to deal with the demands made by the rugged terrain, high altitude and the rigours of war. The report also points out that equivalent Pakistani commanders were “younger by three to four years.” A sizeable proportion of the 474 killed during the war were young commissioned officers (lieutenants and captains) who had just passed out of the Indian Military Academy and had joined their respective units. The high casualty rate among them has been largely attributed in the assessment to the “severe lack of initiative in the junior leadership”, specifically among Junior Commissioned Officers (JCOs) and Non-Commissioned Officers (NCO) who are platoon commanders. They were also found to be averse to taking risks. Finally, if the war was won, the report says, it was due to the “courage and leadership of the young (commissioned) officers” who “carried the bulk of the burden”.
yeah pp! IA is so cool they even play war games to win medals with handycams, soldiers cum part time actors and tomato ketchup!