Airpower in India's 1999 Kargil War

Abstract

For 74 days in mid-1999, India waged an intense war against intruding Pakistani forces on the Indian side of the Line of Control dividing Kashmir in the Himalayas. The Indian Air Force (IAF) was a key contributor to India's eventual victory in that war. Among other things, the IAF's combat performance showed how the skillful application of air-delivered firepower, especially if unmatched by the other side, can shorten and facilitate the outcome of an engagement that might otherwise have persisted indefinitely. It also showed that a favorable position in the conventional balance remains strategically useful even in conditions of mutual nuclear deterrence.

Key Words:

• Kargil War
• Indian Air Force
• Air Warfare

Acknowledgements

For their helpful comments regarding several earlier versions of this article, I wish to thank Air Marshal (Ret.) V.K. Bhatia, Major General (Ret.) G.D. Bakshi, Christopher Clary, Colin Gray, Air Marshal M. Matheswaran, Air Marshal (Ret.) Vinod Patney, Admiral (Ret.) Arun Prakash, Air Vice-Marshal Arjun Subramaniam, and Ashley Tellis.

Notes

¹The most authoritative treatment of the IAF's evolution from an Indian airman's perspective is the magisterial valedictory volume encapsulating a career's worth of involvement with the subject by Air Commodore Jasjit Singh, IAF (Ret.), Defence from the Skies: Indian Air Force Through 75 Years (New Delhi: Knowledge World 2007).

²A full treatment of that more closely watched campaign, which lasted from 24 March to 9 June 1999, may be found in Benjamin S. Lambeth, NATO's Air War for Kosovo: A Strategic and Operational Assessment (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, MG-1365-AF 2001).

³Preeti Kumar, ‘Sustaining Air Bridges’, Strategic Affairs (New Delhi) (Oct. 2008), 8.

⁴For an informed account of the motivations that most likely underlay this calculated initiative, see Shaukat Qadir, ‘An Analysis of the Kargil Conflict 1999’, RUSI Journal (London) 147/2 (April 2002), 24–7.

⁵Government of India, National Security Council Secretariat, Kargil Review Committee, From Surprise to Reckoning: The Kargil Review Committee Report (New Delhi: Sage 2000), 96–7.

⁶Pushpindar Singh, Himalayan Eagles: History of the Indian Air Force, Volume III: World Air Power (New Delhi: The Society for Aerospace Studies 2007), 108.

⁷The term ‘joint’, in standard military usage, refers to the cooperative involvement of two or more armed services in a combat, peacekeeping, or humanitarian operation.

⁸For a well-researched assessment of the ground fighting conducted by the Indian Army during the 74-day counteroffensive, see John H. Gill, ‘Military Operations in the Kargil Conflict,’ in Peter R. Lavoy (ed.), Asymmetric Warfare in South Asia: The Causes and Consequences of the Kargil Conflict (Cambridge: CUP 2009), 92–129. See also Capt. Marcus P. Acosta, US Army, ‘High-Altitude Warfare: The Kargil Conflict and the Future,’ thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in National Security Affairs, Monterey, CA, US Naval Postgraduate School, June 2003.

⁹Air Commodore Arjun Subramaniam, IAF, ‘Kargil Revisited: Air Operations in a High-Altitude Conflict’, CLAWS Journal (New Delhi) (Summer 2008), 186. The journal is a publication of the Centre for Land Warfare Studies in New Delhi.

¹⁰Acosta, ‘High-Altitude Warfare’, 58. This contention drew much of its claim to veracity from an early assessment by an Indian civilian defense writer in an article that appeared shortly after the war ended alleging that once the extent of the Pakistani intrusion was discovered, the IAF at first ‘side-stepped requests by the army to attack the infiltrators’ and agreed to lend its support to the ongoing fighting only after its leadership ‘was presented with a fait accompli and pressed [presumably by higher government authority] into making attacks on May 26.’ Rahul Bedi, ‘Paying to Keep the High Ground,’ Jane's Intelligence Review (Oct. 1999) 31.

¹¹Comments on an earlier draft by Air Marshal Vinod Patney, IAF (Ret.), 16 Aug. 2011.

¹²‘Kargil – Daily Progress of Op Safed Sagar,’ <http://vayu-sena.tripod.com/kargil-summary1.html/>.

¹³Air Chief Marshal A.Y. Tipnis, IAF (Ret.), ‘My Story: The Chief of Air Staff on Operation Safed Sagar’, Force (New Delhi) (Oct. 2006).

¹⁴Ibid.

¹⁵Ibid.

¹⁶Ibid.

¹⁷Ibid.

¹⁸Ibid.

¹⁹Ibid.

²⁰Ibid.

²¹Ibid.

²²Ibid.

²³Ibid.

²⁴Ibid. In a tacit affirmation of this recollection by Tipnis of the army's comportment during its initial days of jockeying for bureaucratic position, the army chief, General Malik, later recalled in his own Kargil memoir that ‘on May 17, I asked the DGMO [Director General of Military Operations] and VCOAS [Vice Chief of Army Staff] if I should return to New Delhi immediately. Both advised me that as the situation was well within the capability of 15 Corps and Northern [Army] Command, there was no need for me to do so.’ Ved Prakash Malik, Kargil: From Surprise to Victory (New Delhi: HarperCollins 2006), 109.

²⁵Tipnis, ‘My Story’.

²⁶Ibid.

²⁷Ibid.

²⁸Membership of the CCS consisted of the Prime Minister, Defence Minister, Home Minister, Finance Minister, and External Affairs Minister.

²⁹Singh, Himalayan Eagles, p. 111.

³⁰Air Commodore Ramesh V. Phadke, IAF, ‘Air Offensive in the High Himalayas’, Strategic Analysis (New Delhi) (Dec. 1999), 1606.

³¹Comments on an earlier draft by Air Marshal Vinod Patney, IAF (Ret.), 16 Aug. 2011.

³²Subramaniam, ‘Kargil Revisited’, 187.

³³Air Commodore Kaiser Tufail, PAF (Ret.), ‘Kargil 1999: The PAF's Story’, Vayu Aerospace and Defence Review (New Delhi) 3 (2009), 98.

³⁴Group Captain D.N. Ganesh, IAF, ‘Indian Air Force in Action’, in Air Commodore Jasjit Singh, IAF (Ret.) (ed.), Kargil 1999: Pakistan's Fourth War for Kashmir (New Delhi: Knowledge World 1999), 183.

³⁵E-mail communication to the author by Air Marshal Vinod Patney, IAF (Ret.), 27 Aug. 2011. On this point, as Air Marshal Patney later recalled, ‘I think my insistence to mount CAPs across the [command's entire area of responsibility] at different heights and times to give the message that I was ready and angling for an enlarged conflict helped. It was akin to throwing a glove, but it was not picked up’. (Comments on an earlier draft by retired Air Marshal Vinod Patney, IAF, 16 Aug. 2011.)

³⁶Col. M. Sabharwal, Indian Army, ‘Joint Operations in Modern Warfare’, Air Power Journal (New Delhi) (Spring 2006), 19.

³⁷Gill, ‘Military Operations in the Kargil Conflict’, 114.

³⁸E-mail communications to the author by retired Air Marshal Vinod Patney, IAF, 27 and 29 Aug. 2011. See also the highlights of a briefing given by Patney on 12 July 1999 as reported in ‘Op. Safed Sagar: Western Air Command Operations in Kargil’, Vayu Aerospace Review 2000 (New Delhi) 5 (1999).

³⁹Singh, Himalayan Eagles, 121.

⁴⁰Ganesh, ‘Indian Air Force in Action,’ in Singh (ed.), Kargil 1999, 184.

⁴¹Singh, Himalayan Eagles, 122.

⁴²For a well-documented account of the various conflicting casualty numbers on both sides, see Gill, ‘Military Operations in the Kargil Conflict’, 122.

⁴³Prasun K. Sengupta, ‘Mountain Warfare: The Kargil Experience,’ Asian Defence Journal (Oct. 1999), 44.

⁴⁴Comments on an earlier draft by Air Marshal Vinod Patney, IAF (Ret.), 16 Aug. 2011.

⁴⁵Ganesh, ‘Indian Air Force in Action,’ in Singh (ed.), Kargil 1999, 178–9.

⁴⁶E-mail communication to the author by Air Marshal Vinod Patney, IAF (ret.), 27 Aug. 2011.

⁴⁷Ganesh, ‘Indian Air Force in Action’, in Singh (ed.), Kargil 1999, 180.

⁴⁸Acosta, ‘High-Altitude Warfare’, 62.

⁴⁹E-mail communication to the author by Air Marshal Vinod Patney, IAF (Ret.), 27 Aug. 2011.

⁵⁰Comments on an earlier draft by Air Marshal Vinod Patney, IAF (Ret.), 16 Aug. 2011.

⁵¹E-mail communication to the author by Air Marshal Vinod Patney, IAF (Ret.), 27 Aug. 2011.

⁵²Tufail, ‘Kargil 1999’, 98. GPS is an abbreviation for the American satellite-based Global Positioning System.

⁵³Ganesh, ‘Indian Air Force in Action,’ in Singh (ed.), Kargil 1999, 186.

⁵⁴Prasun K. Sengupta, ‘Mountain Warfare and Tri-Service Operations’, Asian Defence Journal (Oct. 1999), 26.

⁵⁵Singh, Himalayan Eagles, 124.

⁵⁶Subramaniam, ‘Kargil Revisited’, 186.

⁵⁷Comments on an earlier draft by Major General G.D. Bakshi, Indian Army (Ret.), 24 Aug. 2011.

⁵⁸Ganesh, ‘Indian Air Force in Action’, in Singh (ed.), Kargil 1999, 184.

⁵⁹E-mail communication to the author by Air Marshal Vinod Patney, IAF (Ret.), 29 Aug. 2011.

⁶⁰Singh, Himalayan Eagles, 108–9.

⁶¹Group Captain R.G. Burli, IAF, ‘Offensive Air Power in the High Mountains’, Air Power Journal (New Delhi) (Spring 2007), 91–2.

⁶²Subramaniam, ‘Kargil Revisited,’ 185. This experience, it might be noted, was a remarkable precursor to US Central Command's similarly flawed Operation ‘Anaconda’ in Afghanistan in March 2002, in which the land component also sought initially to go it alone and the air component likewise intervened in barely sufficient time to help underwrite a satisfactory outcome in the end. For a full account of the latter experience see Benjamin S. Lambeth, Air Power against Terror: America's Conduct of Operation Enduring Freedom (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, MG-166-1-CENTAF 2005), 163–231.

⁶³General V.P. Malik, Indian Army (Ret.), ‘The Kargil War: Some Reflections’, CLAWS Journal (New Delhi) (Summer 2009), 8.

⁶⁴Ibid., 11.

⁶⁵Air Commodore Jasjit Singh, IAF (Ret.), ‘Kashmir, Covert Wars, and Air Power’, Air Power Journal (New Delhi) (Summer 2005), 83.

⁶⁶Malik, ‘The Kargil War’, 2.

⁶⁷Maj. Gen. G.D. Bakshi, Indian Army (Ret.), ‘Kargil: Dynamics of a Limited War against a Nuclear Backdrop’, CLAWS Journal (Summer 2009), 45.

⁶⁸With respect to the latter measure, in a determined move to help deter Pakistan from escalating the Kargil fighting into a larger war once India responded in force, the Indian Navy went on full alert as early as 20 May and readied itself to blockade Pakistan's ports, principally Karachi, should an assessed need arise. Toward that end, surface combatants configured for conducting missile firing and antisubmarine and electronic warfare were deployed in the North Arabian Sea. In the ensuing Operation Talwar (‘Sword’ in Hindi), India's eastern and western fleets joined assets and blocked the Arabian Sea routes to Pakistan. For a fuller treatment of this effective exercise in lateral escalation, see Vice Admiral G.M. Hiranandi, Indian Navy (Ret.), Transition to Guardianship: Indian Navy 1991–2000 (New Delhi: Lancer Publishers 2009), 63–71.

⁶⁹Qadir, ‘An Analysis of the Kargil Conflict 1999’, 27.

⁷⁰Group Captain T.D. Joseph, IAF, Winning India's Next War: The Role of Aerospace Power (New Delhi: KW Publishers 2008), 155.

⁷¹Quoted in Singh, ‘Kashmir, Covert Wars, and Air Power’, 86–7, emphasis added.

⁷²Air Commodore Arjun Subramaniam, IAF, ‘The Strategic Role of Air Power: An Indian Perspective on How we Need to Think, Train, and Fight in the Coming Years’, Air and Space Power Journal (Fall 2008), 64.

⁷³Singh, ‘Kashmir, Covert Wars, and Air Power’, 80.

⁷⁴Ibid., 81.

⁷⁵Air Marshal Vinod Patney, IAF (Ret.), ‘Air Dominance: Concept and Practice’, Air Power Journal (New Delhi) (Summer 2009), 133, 144.

⁷⁶For the most incisive reflections to date on the many aspects of the Kargil experience as viewed from this perspective, see the chapters by Peter Lavoy, Timothy Hoyt, and Robert Jervis in Lavoy (ed.), Asymmetric Warfare in South Asia.