Defence experts on Sunday stressed that there was an urgent need to further strengthen the existing intelligence mechanism to prevent another Kargil like situation.
Taking part in session titled ‘Lessons Learnt from the Kargil War and their Implementation’, retired Defence Secretary Shekhar Dutt stated that we need to strengthen the intelligence and surveillance at Central as well as State level because no military operation would go successful without quick inputs. All penelist including Lt General JS Cheema and Air Marshal Nirdosh Tyagi called for developing and generating more intelligence organizations to avoid surprise incidents like Kargil.
Dutt said: “To avoid such incidents, we have to develop the common channels of intelligence and surveillance so that actionable information could be provided to our arm forces to assured maximum level of preparedness.” Displaying 2 exclusive videos of air force strikes of Kargil war during the panel discussion, Air Marshal Nirdosh Tiyagi revealed that IAF was not properly equipped or trained for operations at such altitude and our Jets were also not designed for situation like Kargil.
Tiyagi said that Kargil review committee elaborated that long time taken by Army at apex level to realize how grave the situation was and severely affected the operation and deep interdiction could not be carried out due restriction on the crossing of LOC.
“Kargil war would have ended 15 to 20 days earlier if the restriction of crossing the LOC was not there,” he said.
Tyagi said that Kargil conflict demonstrated air power could be effectively utilised at such altitude and it has been also learnt that effective application of air power through proper army-air co-ordination resulted in reduce casualties and compressed time frame for successful ground operation's