Twenty-five to thirty military posts and civilian settlements were physically attacked by teams of 40-50 Hamas fighters who had infiltrated by ground, sea and air using vehicles, motorcycles, dune-buggies, boats, paragliders, para motors and hang gliders. This preparation was for some time, Hamas was trained, equipped and assisted by a number of Arab countries.
Apparently the Israel defence system was caught off guard. It is sure that the entire game plan by the Arab country and cause of the apparent failure of Israel will be revealed. But one principle must be understood that an attacker can execute his plan at the time, place and force of his choosing so an initial dent on the defender’s line of defense is inevitable.
Looking at the issue from India’s perspective, it is important that we infer our lessons from this attack and use the learnings to plug the gaps in our security apparatus as we can’t rule out a similar attack on our territory, considering that we have hostile neighbours on both sides.
We too have been victims of terror attacks and military intrusions for a long time and we have been found napping every time. Be it the militants arming themselves to teeth inside the Golden Temple in 1984 or the Kargil intrusion, Parliament attack, 26/11 Mumbai terror attack, or attacks on Uri army camp, Pathankot Air Force base, attack on para military forces in Pulwama, we have a long history of intelligence failure, lack of timely action and overall failure of multiple security channels.
If the Hamas terrorists could breach the one of the most heavily guarded borders with such impunity, one can be rest assured that our enemies have taken cue from it and are planning to stage a similar kind of assault to bring Kashmir dispute back in focus since peace is returning to the strife-torn valley.
In this era of low-intensity warfare, where the enemy is using its proxies to fuel insurgency in human settlements to inflict maximum casualties, India has to be weary and strengthen its defence systems, especially the air defence technology, have more sensors and deploy more force to man the porous borders.
A limited operation launched from across the border to cause ‘shock and awe’ is very much possible.
In the Middle-East, the conflict between Hamas and Israel is religious and ethnic in nature and battle of revenge by Hamas, survival for Israel and matter of eviction of Israel by the Arab countries as they take the establishment of Jews in Israel has been unduly thrust upon them, forced by the Britain, supported by United Nations in association of US.
Most of the fighting states are tiny in size and population in comparison to India and India’s neighbour. The scale of operation between Hamas and Israel, which is a matter of existence for these countries. A similar type of ideology works across the border, where the enemy has been training and funding extremist groups to ‘liberate Kashmir’.
Whether the war is big or small, what has been learnt from this short but sharp war are – gathering and updating of all-round intelligence for continuous assessment of military situations. Every action of the enemy will have to be critically assessed and not ignored, for example, Hamas had openly been carrying out the rehearsals which led Israel to believe these as dummy or fake.
Battles will be three dimensional with the air force having greater involvement, covering larger areas with more destruction capabilities, and having capability to change the course of the battle.
With the advent of missiles, rockets, drones, gliders, besides very high quality air crafts, will have to be at the highest standard of alertness with a very high quality air shield. Maximum destruction will be caused from air.
Enemy preparation level monitoring and its deployment assessment need to be continuously updated. Besides attaining overall superiority in striking capabilities, one should be able to create superiority of force against the enemy at the likely battle areas. Artificial Intelligence capability will be able to thwart enemy superiority at the given point of time and place.
In simple words, considering the present geo-political situation where violence is accelerating at an unprecedented scale, not experienced before, with devastating destruction capability – preparation of the defender has to be at the highest level as selection of striking time and place is the prerogative of the enemy.
Our surveillance system, on the borders and inside mainland India has to be extremely robust. The terrorist sleeper cells must be working overtime to execute the plans being hatched across the border to strike us anytime.
On Sunday itself, a blast occurred at a convention in Kerala, which the security agencies failed to anticipate. It means that we have to up the ante.
