The nation will have to take the toll of valiant men and three flying machines at Kargil in its stride, says N K Pant appeared in the OBSERVER, June 9, 1999

The Indian army on its own would have certainly taken a considerably long time in evicting quite a large number of well-trained mercenaries along with Pakistani regular troops who, in a well-conceived plan, had surreptitiously infiltrated and deployed themselves on our side of the Line of Control (LoC) on the higher reaches of Drass-Kargil-Batalik area. The Pakistani troops who had infiltrated into the area in a joint operation with Islamic militants had taken positions of advantage on very high ridges, ranging from 13,000 to 20,000 feet. They were difficult to neutralise by ground action alone. The Indian Air Force (IAF) in its army in Operation Vijay launched to encircle and flush out the heavily armed well-entrenched intruders. Even now after so much air effort in which two combat aircraft and one helicopter have been lost, the army authorities estimate that it could take between two to four months or even more to dislodge the Pakistani intruders from their well-entrenched positions in this strategic area.

The first wave of air attack in which both fighter aircraft and helicopters took part was launched in the morning hours of May 26, 1999. Since then the IAF was playing a vital role in the operations in Kargil by softening the targets with intense air strikes to enable the army to move forward.

The terrain where infiltration has taken place is an extremely inhospitable territory located on ridge line geographically forming part of Ladakh subsidiary range of the Karakoram mountains in the western Himalayas. It is indeed a Herculean task to position troops round the year in the region which may at the most suit professional mountaineers to test their endurance and grit. As such, the usual practice for the Indian army had been to vacate the inaccessible posts during the winter months to avoid heavy layers of snow and blizzards. The strategic importance of the region lies in the fact that NH 1A linking Srinagar with Leh passes through Drass-Kargil-Batalik axis. The LoC runs parallel to these locations on the west and at places it is as close as 8 km from the highway, exposing the traffic to heavy shelling by hostile gun positions. Furher north, the line merges with 80-km-long Siachen glacier where Indian defensive positions have been maintained for almost two decades under Operation Meghdoot.

With the well-stocked enemy strongly dug in, it would have been sheer wastage in terms of manpower to depend solely on infantry and artillery to eject the intruders and hence use of air power was absolutely unavoidable to achieve the military objectives. On the first day, IAF launched over 40 strike missions using MiG-21, MiG-23 and MiG-27 aircraft from its Srinagar and Avantipur bases in the Kashmir valley for pounding the infiltrators' positions while MiG-29s provided the air defence cover.

The MiGs were pressed into service to strike at targets at a previously untested altitude because the IAF was confident that they would perform well. On the subsequent days, IAF pressed into service Mirage-2000 multirole aircraft to provide electronic counter measure (ECM) support to the strike aircraft. In the days prior to the air campaign, the fighter aircraft and army aviation corps Cheetah helicopters had been used in the air surveillance missions. In the subsequent days, air power has successfully been utilised to interdict lines of communications, logistics camps, supply depots and storage sites.

Since the infiltrators are billeted on ridges at altitudes of 15,000 to 18,000 feet, IAF aircraft have been launching bombs and rockets while flying at subsonic speed above these perilous heights. Though veterans of air combat advocate carpet-bombing and concentrated attacks by cluster bombs for better results, official sources have denied such tactics. Air Marshal P Singh, formerly Air Officer Commanding-in-Chief of Western Air Command and highly experienced fighter pilot, estimates 60 per cent success rate in the air campaign despite absence of enemy air opposition in the area owing to difficult terrain. This was corroborated by Air Marshal P S Brar, the present Vice Chief of the Air Staff, who said that it was difficult for fighter aircraft flying at 1000 kmph to spot targets and hit them. But this had to be done to soften the infiltrators and their bunkers. The IAF tactics have generally been to press in armed helicopters after the fighter jets have softened the targets. The vagaries of weather such as cloud cover and untimely snow and rainfall have also hampered joint air offensive by aircraft and helicopters.

In contrast to the state-of-the-art US Apache attack helicopters which have been positioned in Albania but not used in the nearby Kosovo theatre for fear of losing them to the Serbian ground fire, IAF has indeed taken a daring step in improvising MI-17 freighter helicopters into gunships and operationally deploying them against the intruders armed with deadly heat-seeking shoulder-fired stinger missiles.

Though the air force has MI-24 and MI-35 attack helicopters in active squadron service, these have not been designed for high altitude roles. Hence, such technical ingenuity of converting the tactical medium-lift helicopter into a deadly rocket-firing machine and then using it has become integral to battle field success in the dizzy Karakoram heights. The MI-17's capability to hover over an area and scan for infiltrators' hideouts despite the presence of shoulder-fired stinger missiles with the opponents gives the hovering machine an edge over fast flying fighter aircraft in pounding enemy positions in such type of mountainous terrain. The pilots have devised their own techniques to evade hits by stinger missiles. In order to outmanoeuvre these, the pilots first fire flare-dispensers to deflect the heat-seeking stingers and then home in on to the targets with their assorted bomb load. Indian army's intense pressure on the intruders and winning back of several positions by Indian army is a fine example of coordination and daring team effort by aircrew and soldiers in the fiercest of air-ground combat.

The deployment of fighter aircraft in general and helicopters in particular in Drass-Kargil-Batalik air operations has proved to be the most vital aspect in war planning especially in the high mountains in the vicinity of the LoC where there is precious little space aircraft manoeuvrability. In such a kind of scenario where the highly deceitful enemy has taken us unawares, the initial shocks and losses are bound to occur and the nation and armed forces will have to take the toll of the valiant men and their three flying machines in their stride. But their heroic combat flying skills coupled with the soldiers' matchless will to fight in order to recover the lost ground have already started yielding the desired results. It is only a matter of time that the enemy will get trapped in the quagmire of its own sadistic creation.