It's going to be a hear-me-out post, so read at your own risk
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*Udhampur Air Base has No. 153 Helicopter Unit with Mi-17s
*Keep two Mi-17s ready with atleast one always being on Quick Reaction Alert
*Mi-17s are perfect for this as they can carry good amount of people together with heavy loads
*Have 3x six-man teams of your favourite Tier-1 operators.
*Together with 2x snipers (SAKO) and 2x gunners (MAG)
*Add one rocket pod; in case of cover or empty building it'll come handy.
*Another advantage of Mi-17; drop tanks. It'll greatly increase your on station time
*As soon as there's confirmation of hostile activities, you take-off. If weather is not that bad then you'd be anywhere in less than half an hour. Way faster than ground forces and a proper CASO setup
*You have powerful IRs and thermals on the heli so jungle, foliage or rough terrain shouldn't be any advantage for the terrorists. But more importantly you've altitude on your side, you'll get unmatched surveillance capabilities.
*Given the usual loadout of 5.56/7.62 with terrorist the helicopter would be way out of any engagement range.
*But the door gunners and snipers could easily engage them with 338LM or even 7.62x51mm. You also have rockets which can be used if there's no chance of collateral damage.
*If there's absolutely no other option then up to 18 soldiers can fast rope down to engage them or track them on foot.
A reference for what I'm trying to say
View attachment 14961
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Now tell me what all will be the problems in this idea.
One that I'm already aware of is that this whole scheme would lose all its advantages in an urban built-up area with possibilities of hostage.
My 2 cents : ( everything I say, i say as a noob civilian who knows little about how actual operations are conducted in J&K, so veterans or people who know how these kind of operations are carried out, feel free to enlighten or criticise )
1) Helicopter insertions need to be increased. Terrorists ambush our troops, run away and after 2023 Rajouri, prepare an ambush for approaching units. Now almost all of the ambushes post 2023 have been on hill tracks where even the units responding to the attacks will take good amount of time to reach the spot. Time which is sufficient for pigs to hide and lay ambush. Heli insertions can mitigate this, right ? Drop in troops, send troops in whichever direction they intend to go and then return and taxi more troops to whichever desired location.
2) the noise from the chopper is enough to wake up entire valleys. But that can be countered using fake heli-runs across multiple locations to confuse enemy about the location of actual drops. Americans have done this during the entirety of Afghanistan invasion.
3) Now, the biggest issue is heli taking fire from terrorists. Hellfire pointed out on twitter way back, that perhaps of we introduce gunships in encounters, it won't be very surprising for pigs to introduce Stingers. They've done it during Kargil. They don't need to carry Stingers everywhere, just use it once and if that results in downing of a chopper, congratulations. You've hit the morale of the troop and have handed over a strategic win for pigs.
4) Regarding the surveillance using SAR & FLIR, are choppers necessary for that ? I mean even unmanned rotary aircraft and fixed wing UAV should've been doing this after every encounter.
5) In my opinion, just like we have a Rashtriya Rifles type of CI/CT force which operates in grids, by now we should also have had an UAV grid for surveillance across entire J&K, Punjab, Myanmar and Bangladesh border, equipped with all the fancy gadgets.
6) Regarding your suggestion of shooting from Helis using Mini guns or snipers, not possible or very practical. Sniping from choppers only seems practical when you have the pinpoint location of the pigs, otherwise if you only have a window of the possible location of the enemy, then how long are u going to engage the enemy ? How many rounds will you fire before hitting a pig ?
7) and like I said, if the enemy is in the line of sight of a chopper borne sniper, how long before the chopper itself is in the range of a Stingers ? They only need one hit and the entire heli based operations may be asked to be put on hold by administration.
8) i don't think Modi and India using helicopter gunships for rocket runs would be ideal when the Indian administration has been saying since the last 10 years the "everything is normal in Kashmir now". The sight of dark clouds and forests lit up won't exactly send the message of "Normalcy in Kashmir post removal of Article 370", no.matter how good your state propaganda machine is.
9) even if GoI goes ahead with the heli based sniper scheme, do we have good enough snipers (not trying to be condescending but that type of operations require very competent snipers which I don't think we have. Nor do I see GoI trying to fund any program to train such snipers.
10) I've always wanted to know that before the fence was laid across the LoC, when groups of 20-30 pigs crossing back and forth the border wasnt uncommon, how did the SF's mix with the local population after growing beards and wearing traditional Kashmiri attire ? I've read the SF teams would mix with the local population, carry out ops both within and beyond home soil and that our operators would go 10-20 days on such ops.
Can't we continue with such ops now ?
Last question but off topic :
The Kashmiri Muslim population has made a business of giving shelter to foreign pigs and then ratting them out to the army for money. Have Muslims around Jammu become so radicalised that they won't rat out Paki pigs ? If so, why ? Because since 2023 Rajouri ambush, all I've seen are attacks around Jammu. Only a handful.of encounters in Kashmir valley proper and some has resulted in killing of pigs. So what magic spell have former SSG troop cast over the Jammu population ? Or is it that the Gujjar-Bakarwaal nexus is completely in bed with Pak.
Or the simple answer that always stares in the face of hindus ? Muslims want to slit our throats, no matter which year we're in,.no matter how much funding goes to J&K, no matter how much you please the Muslim population !
Sorry for the long rant.
war was all about finding out the position of enemy through gun fights and bombing them from air.
