The army was 'reluctant' to inform the government about the presence of Pakistan-backed intruders in Kargil in early 1999 and did little initially to jointly plan and carry out operations to evict them, Air Chief Marshal (retired) A Y Tipnis has said.
The army top brass kept saying they could handle the situation but insisted the Indian Air Force should provide helicopter gunships to support ground troops -- a request Tipnis turned down several times as he felt helicopters will be vulnerable to missile attacks and the use of air power will lead to an escalation.
'I observed that the ground situation was grave. Army required air force help to evict the intruders. Army Headquarters was reluctant, possibly because it was embarrassed to have allowed the present situation to develop, to reveal the full gravity of the situation to (the Ministry of Defence),' Tipnis says in a signed article in the latest issue of Force, a leading defence publication.
'Thus it (army) was not amenable to Air Headquarters' position to seek government approval for use of air power offensively,' writes Tipnis, who headed the IAF during the Kargil conflict.
At two meetings of the three service chiefs on May 23 and May 24, 1999, then Army chief Gen Ved Malik 'appeared to get agitated' on the reluctance to use helicopters.
At the second meeting, when Tipnis indicated that helicopters will not be deployed without government approval, he writes that Malik 'stormed out' of the room, saying, "If that is the way you want it, I will go it alone." Malik was not immediately available for comments.
The IAF went into action on May 26, 1999, after its deployment was cleared by the Cabinet Committee on Security.
Tipnis writes that at a meeting of the CCS on May 18, 1999, the army could not give a 'satisfactory answer' to a question from the then External Affairs Minister Jaswant Singh about an 'assessment in respect of the enemy's intentions.'
'It was apparent the army had not applied its mind to this aspect; they were engaged in getting out the intruders without having quite established the nature of the intrusions or the identity of intruders,' he writes.
'I felt strong sympathy for the Army Headquarters staff. Having been caught off guard in the field, they were unable to make up for their initial lapse, due to inadequate intelligence and possibly indifferent involvement from the command headquarters,' he writes.
Tipnis indicates he was 'troubled' by the 'total lack of army-air force joint staff work' since the time the intrusions in Kargil were reported in early May.
'When the army found itself in difficulties, information/intelligence had not been communicated by Army HQ, in any systematic manner to the Air HQ. There had been no call for a joint briefing, leave alone joint planning, both at the service and command headquarters; just repeated requests for armed helicopter support,' he says.
Noting that 'proper joint staff-work' could have helped both sides appreciate the strengths and limitations of each other, he writes, 'There had been no joint deliberations at any level.'
The CCS took note of Tipnis' reservations about the use of air power at several meetings and then prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee finally authorised the use of the IAF at a CCS meeting on May 25, 1999. Tipnis writes that Vajpayee, however, turned down his request seeking permission to cross the Line of Control during operations.
At a meeting with Tipnis on May 14, 1999, then army vice-chief Lt Gen Chandrashekhar said his force was 'capable of throwing back the intruders on its own' and 'air support will hasten the process.'
Chandrashekhar felt that political go-ahead was necessary only in case fire-support was being provided by fighters; use of helicopters...was an in-house services' headquarters' decision," Tipnis writes.
But Tipnis again turned down the army's request, saying "government authorisation was mandatory."
The Indian Air Force lost a Mi-17 helicopter, a MiG-21 and a MiG-27 jet and five personnel in the early days of the Kargil operations before it began using precision-guided munitions to destroy enemy positions and supply dumps from a great height.
IAF officials had earlier claimed their operations in Kargil were hampered by the lack of intelligence and Tipnis hints at this in his article. He says MiG-25 strategic photo-reconnaissance aircraft had to be specially modified to enable them to gather information about the intruders.
Tipnis himself flew in a Mirage 2000 jet during Operation Safed Sagar, the IAF's codename for its operations in Kargil, and participated in a mission against the enemy position on Tiger Hill. "It will be a gross under-statement to say the experience was unforgettable," he writes.
At the conclusion of the article, Tipnis, however, acknowledges, "It was the Army's leadership in this operation, we were only in support."
