Monday, 8 December 2014

There's a new terror threat in Kashmir

Uri terrorists were as well armed as NSG commandos.

| 2-minute read | 08-12-2014

Two items caught my attention from a neat line of assault rifles, ammunition and food packets, the army recovered from six dead Lashkar Taiba terrorists in Uri on December 5: a pair of sawn-off shotguns. Barrels chopped off to make them lethal in confined spaces, stocks removed for easy concealment. Why shotguns, one would ask, when the terrorists had far more effective AK-47s? I sent the picture to a friend in the special forces. His short response startled me. "Shotguns for opening locked/ latched doors. Indicates change in training/ equipping". It then struck me where I had seen shotguns being used. At the National Security Guard (NSG) training area in Manesar where commandos blasted away door hinges and locks to burst into rooms during hostage-rescue training. A 12-gauge shotgun pressed against door fittings delivers a concentrated burst of pellets that will shatter door fittings in a way that an assault rifle cannot.

I then recalled the eerie CCTV footage of the four terrorists at the Taj, kicking at hotel doors to capture hostages. Over a two hundred guests were saved because they barricaded themselves inside The Chambers.

Except these terrorists at Uri were not carrying the shotguns to rescue hostages. Most likely, to capture them. At the Uri camp, they were fortunately neutralised before they actually got a chance to use the "door openers" or the 25 shot shells. But they did use one or more light anti-tank rockets which they carried, to destroy the guard bunkers of the army unit in Uri; military-style ready to eat meals specially packed to withstand a march through three feet of snow and temperatures of eight degrees below zero where they crossed the Line of Control. They had two night vision binoculars and four radio sets. In short, everything an Indian army special forces team would carry into a mission.

As five terrorists hit the camp from two directions at 3 am, a sixth terrorist was positioned on the road outside. He ambushed a Quick Reaction Team Gypsy carrying Lt Colonel Sankalp Kumar. The jeep overturned killing the officer and a soldier. It would be another few hours before the six terrorists could be neutralised, fittingly, by an army special forces unit.

The 15 Corps Commander Lt General Subrata Saha’s December 7 statement in Srinagar that “the terrorists were highly trained, like special forces, to carry out the attacks” marks an ominous rise in the profile of cross-border terrorists. Terrorists who, like the ten who struck at Mumbai on November 26, 2008 are not just well motivated, but equipped, trained and tasked like the commandos they are pitted against.

The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of DailyO.in or the India Today Group. The writers are solely responsible for any claims arising out of the contents of this article.

Writer

SANDEEP UNNITHAN@sandeepunnithan

The writer is Deputy Editor, India Today.

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Friday, 5 December 2014

China's submarine noose around India

Submarine game: How China is using undersea vessels to project power in India's neighbourhood

Sandeep Unnithan December 4, 2014 | UPDATED 10:53 IST

Click here to EnlargeFour decades after the 1971 India-Pakistan war, India's intelligence agencies are once again scanning a stretch of coastline in southern Bangladesh. Cox's Bazar was rocketed and strafed by INS Vikrant's fighter aircraft to cut off the enemy's retreat into the Bay of Bengal. Today, 43 years later, it sets the stage for China's dramatic entry into India's eastern seaboard.
Assessments from the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) and naval intelligence say the Bangladesh Navy will station two ex-Chinese Ming-class submarines on bases that are less than 1,000 km away from Visakhapatnam, home to the Indian Navy's nuclear powered submarine fleet and the Defence Research and Development Organisation's (DRDO) missile test ranges at Balasore.
The developments on India's Arabian Sea flank are equally ominous. Intelligence officials say that over the next decade, China will help Pakistan field submarines with the ability to launch nuclear-tipped missiles from sea. Submarines, analysts say, are China's instrument of choice to not just challenge the Indian Navy's strategy of sea domination but also to undermine India's second-strike capability. These developments have been accompanied by a flurry of Chinese submarine appearances in the Indian Ocean this year-Beijing sent two nuclear submarines and a conventional submarine. Two of them made port calls in Colombo, triggering concern in New Delhi.
Toehold in the Bay
"No one interested in geopolitics can afford to ignore the Bay of Bengal any longer," geopolitical analyst Robert Kaplan wrote in a seminal essay in Stratfor in November. "This is the newold centre of the world, joining the two demographic immensities of the Indian subcontinent and East Asia." For India, the Bay of Bengal is the launch pad for a 'Look East' policy that has received renewed attention under Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
The Indian Navy is enhancing force levels at its Visakhapatnam naval base even as it has begun building a secret base for a proposed fleet of nuclearpowered submarines at Rambilli, south of Visakhapatnam. Equipped with the 700-km range B05 submarine launched missiles, the Arihant-class submarines will have to patrol closer to the shores of a potential adversary. But equipped with the 3,500-km range K-4 missiles currently being developed by the DRDO, the Arihant and her sister submarines can cover both Pakistan and China with nuclear-tipped missiles from within the Bay of Bengal, providing the "robust second-strike capability" as stated in India's nuclear doctrine.
Inputs suggest Bangladesh has acquired land and fenced locations at the Kutubdia Channel near Cox's Bazar and the Rabnabad Channel near West Bengal. Kutubdia, intelligence officials say, is likely to feature enclosed concrete 'pens' to hide submarines. The possibility of Chinese submarines using this base provides a fresh equation to the strategic calculus.
"Our submarines become susceptible to tracking from the time they leave harbour," says veteran submariner and former Southern Naval Command chief vice-admiral K.N. Sushil (retired). "But a far more worrying strategy is China's ability to be able to threaten our assured second-strike capability. That effectively tips the deterrence balance."
Chinese Han-class submarine Changzheng 2 in Colombo.West Coast Worries
Of greater long-term worry to Indian analysts is a strategic submarine project China finalised with Pakistan in 2010. Intelligence sources say this three-part programme will transform the Pakistan Navy into a strategic force capable of launching a sea-based nuclear weapons strike. Pakistan will build two types of submarines with Chinese assistance: the Project S-26 and Project S-30. The vessels are to be built at the Submarine Rebuild Complex (SRC) facility being developed at Ormara, west of Karachi. Intelligence sources believe the S-30 submarines are based on the Chinese Qing class submarines-3,000-tonne conventional submarines which can launch three 1,500-km range nuclear-tipped cruise missiles from its conning tower. A Very Low Frequency (VLF) station at Turbat, in southern Balochistan, will communicate with these submerged strategic submarines. The Project S-26 and S-30 submarines will augment Pakistan's fleet of five French-built submarines, enhance their ability to challenge the Indian Navy's aircraft carrier battle groups and carry a stealthy nuclear deterrent. "Submarines are highly effective force multipliers because they tie down large numbers of naval forces," says a senior naval official.

Steel sharks on silk route
Speaking in Indonesia's Parliament last October, Chinese President Xi Jinping articulated a "21st century Maritime Silk Road". His vision calls for investments in port facilities across south and south-east Asia to complement a north Asian route. This year, the People's Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) put steel into Xi's vision. In February, a Shangclass nuclear-powered attack submarine made China's first declared deployment in the Indian Ocean. This was followed by port calls made by a Han-class submarine in Colombo to coincide with a state visit by President Xi and a visit by a Song-class conventional submarine in November.
China's heightened activity in the Indian Ocean region is underscored by investments in a new port in Gwadar at the mouth of the Strait of Hormuz, Hambantota port in Sri Lanka, a container facility in Chittagong and Kyaukpyu port in Myanmar. "Such developments have sharpened China's geopolitical rivalry with India, which enjoys an immense geographic advantage in the Indian Ocean," says Brahma Chellaney of the Centre for Policy Research. "Aspects related to their (Chinese) deployment in international waters are part of securing their maritime interests," Navy chief Admiral Robin K. Dhowan told journalists in Delhi on December 3.
China's new military posture reflects the 'Malacca dilemma' faced by the world's largest oil importer. Close to 80 per cent of China's crude oil imports of 11 million barrels per day, the life blood of its economy, is shipped through the narrow Malacca Strait. Any disruption to this could threaten its economic growth. "Hence, China's economic interests in the Indian Ocean have now taken on an overt military dimension," says an intelligence official.
Naval intelligence officials who correctly predicted that China would use anti-piracy patrols as a pretext for deployments in the Indian Ocean feel vindicated. Their prognosis of this game of 'weiqi'-a game of Chinese chess which uses encirclement, is gloomy. "A full-scale Chinese deployment in the Indian Ocean is inevitable," an admiral told India Today.
"You can only watch it and prepare yourself for it." The preparations include acquisitions of long-range maritime patrol aircraft such as the US-made P8-I Poseidon, investment in anti-submarine warfare and inducting new submarines and helicopters to fill up critical deficiencies in force levels.

Measured Response
China's submarine thrust into South Asia coincides with Narendra Modi's renewed emphasis on securing India's perimeter. "India's response has to be nuanced, a mixture of coercion and largesse," says Jayadeva Ranade, a former RAW official and member of the National Security Advisory Board. While the Manmohan Singh-led UPA government scoffed at encirclement theories, the new Government is clearly concerned over the creeping Chinese presence.
National Security Adviser Ajit Doval voiced India's concerns at the 'Galle Dialogue' in Sri Lanka on December 1. He cited a 1971 United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) resolution mooted by Sri Lanka calling on the "great powers to halt further escalation and expansion of their military presence in the Indian Ocean".
India's defence diplomacy has been severely limited by its inability to offer military hardware to offset the Chinese presence. Over half the military hardware of Bangladesh and Sri Lanka are of Chinese origin. In 2008, India called off a plan to transfer the INS Vela to the Myanmar Navy when it discovered the vintage Russian-built submarine was past its service life.
When plans to transfer hardware materialise, they are too feeble to make a difference-a solitary helicopter such as the one gifted to Nepal by Modi in November and a small ex-Indian naval patrol craft gifted to Seychelles recently. Often, there is a demand for capabilities where India itself is deficient. Bangladeshi officials stumped Indian Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) officials last year when they asked India, and not China, to provide submarines. The Indian Navy is down to just 13 aging conventional submarines. The MEA suggested Bangladesh buy Russian submarines instead. Their efforts are yet to bear fruit. It is a gap China willingly fills.
- Follow the writer on Twitter @SandeepUnnithan.

Monday, 1 December 2014

Cdr Khan's revenge

1971 war: Commander Khan's revenge

The death of the Vikrant draws the curtain on the 1971 war’s most spectacular chase.

POLITICS

| 5-minute read | 01-12-2014

SANDEEP UNNITHAN

@sandeepunnithan

As I write this, contract labourers in a Mumbai scrapyard, are slicing away with blow torches at the Indian navy’s greatest warship, the Vikrant. The slow death of the Vikrant rings down the curtains in an elaborate game of smoke and mirrors that began this month, 43 years ago.

On November 14, 1971, the PNS Ghazi, a US-built submarine loaned to the Pakistan Navy, slipped out of Karachi harbour.

War with India was imminent. The Ghazi, helmed by commander Zafar Muhammad Khan, would be in place to fire the opening salvo. Where that salvo would be fired, was a secret known only to commander Khan and a handful of his comrades on shore. Khan was a well regarded submariner. He had been executive officer of Pakistan’s first new-build submarine, the PNS Hangor commissioned in France two years earlier by commander Ahmed Tasnim. Khan’s executive officer, Lt Cdr Pervaiz Hameed, had served as the Hangor’s navigating officer. There were 92 crew on board.

The Ghazi’s destination was not Mumbai, home to the Indian navy’s powerful Western fleet, which she sailed past on November 16. Her knife-life hull glided around peninsular India and Sri Lanka before she entered the Bay of Bengal. She traversed the 2200 nautical miles with ease. The Diablo had a 11,000 nautical mile (17,000 km) range, being specifically designed to transit the Pacific Ocean.

Locating the target for her torpedoes and mines, was the only issue. On November 23, the Ghazi entered a patrol area codenamed Zone Mike: Madras.

The Ghazi was on a blood hunt. Her quarry was the pride of the Indian navy: its sole aircraft carrier the INS Vikrant.

Just where on the east coast the Vikrant was, the Pakistan navy was not sure. But they knew why she was there: a crack in the carrier’s boiler had reduced the Vikrant’s speed to a limp, barely enough to allow her to launch her deadly warplanes— British-built Sea Hawk fighter jets and French Alize anti-submarine aircraft. The Vikrant was now deployed on India’s east coast where it was thought she would be safe from the Pakistani submarines.

The Ghazi prowled off Chennai for three days before a signal from commodore Submarines, Karachi on November 26 electrified commander Khan. “Occupy Zone Victor with all dispatch. Intelligence indicates carrier in port.”

It was the message Khan had been waiting for. Zone Victor was Visakhapatnam.

The Ghazi arrived here on November 27. Commander Khan hunched over the notched crosshairs of his periscope, scanned the coast for a week. There was no sign of the Vikrant’s distinctive 600-feet long silhouette. He then began laying his trap. A series of two-metre-long cylindrical containers — deadly "influence mines" on the muddy seabed at the mouth of Vizag harbour. Each mine was an aluminum container with a half-ton of high explosive. When the Vikrant or any other warship passed overhead, its magnetic field would trigger the mine off. The resulting column of water would leap out of the sea and shatter the warship.

On the night of December 3, the people of Visakhapatnam were awoken by a thunderous explosion. The blast came from out at sea but the shockwave rattled windows ashore. It could not be explained. At daybreak, fishing boats reported life jackets and other debris. Divers onboard a naval patrol craft sent out to investigate, reported a Pakistani submarine sitting on the seabed. The forward section of the submarine had been blown out. When the divers cut open the hatch, bloated bodies of six crewmen floated out. Divers who entered the conning tower recovered maps, charts and signals that precisely detailed the Ghazi’s final voyage. It was clear what had happened. The Ghazi had suffered a catastrophic internal explosion. One of its deadly mines had either been jammed in a tube and gone off, or she had accidentally triggered off one of the mines she had laid. The warrior had fallen on its own sword even before the war had begun.

The Vikrant, meanwhile, steamed out of her hiding place in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands over 1000 miles away. On the morning of December 6, three days after the Ghazi blew itself up, the Vikrant launched the first of several air strikes against coastal installations in East Pakistan. The carrier prevented the seaborne escape of the Pakistan armed forces garrison.

The Indian navy manufactured an elaborate story to back the claim that its warship, the INS Rajput, had sunk the Ghazi. The navy’s official history states that the elderly World War II era destroyer, laid up for decommissioning at Vizag, had rolled down depth-charges which had killed the submarine. In any event, the navy did not allow a detailed investigation into the Ghazi’s sinking and refused offers from the United States and the Soviet Union to raise the vessel.

Exactly a decade ago, I was lucky to have become one of the few civilians to have actually seen the Ghazi.

I was on a Gemini inflatable off the coast of Vizag peering into a colour monitor. Over 30 metres below me, a naval diver stood on the wreck of the submarine and pointed a camera, recording what he saw. Over three decades underwater had stripped away the submarine’s outer pressure hull, its barnacle encrusted surface virtually indistinguishable from the seabed. The expedition which could not have been possible without the assistance of the Indian navy helped me to scrape together evidence to solve one of the biggest naval mysteries of recent times. Pictures, sonar images and testimonies of the divers suggested the Ghazi sank after an internal explosion.

The expedition came five years after I ran a successful campaign at the Indian Express which briefly threw it a lifeline to the Vikrant. Bal Thackeray’s Shiv Sena-BJP government gave the historic warship a Rs 6.5 crore grant. But the grant extended the warship’s life only for a decade.

Successive state governments lacked the enthusiasm or the vision to pursue the project. And even the Indian navy, which tended the warship for nearly two decades after her 1996 retirement, washed their hands off.

In a few weeks, the Vikrant will be atomised. Her role in the 1971 war will be consigned to history books, her valuable steel will be melted into bars, the anonymous building blocks of multi-storeyed buildings and bridges of a new India. The tragic commander Khan remains on board the Ghazi, on "eternal patrol" off Vizag. He has finally had his revenge.