FIGHTING AFTER DUSK

There is an urgent need to enhance and upgrade the current night-fighting capabilities of the Indian armed forces, especially that of the Indian Army's regular as well as special forces units, which are currently equipped with highly outdated second-generation night vision equipment, writes AMARTYA SINHA

- AMARTYA SINHA

On September 29, 2016, special forces multiple teams of the Indian Army parachute regiment crossed the Line of Control (LoC) and destroyed a number of terrorist camps located deep inside Pakistan Occupied Kashmir (PoK). The elite troopers moved deep inside hostile territory under the guise of darkness, successfully evading landmines, enemy machinegun posts, and snipers positioned atop observation towers, and took positions within a few hundred metres from the targets before strafing them with machinegun fire and rocket launcher fire and slaying a large number of jihadi terrorists. The entire operation, starting with the incursion and ending with the extraction of special forces commando teams from the target areas, lasted for just a matter of hours. A similar operation preceded the 2016 surgical strikes, when Indian shock troops moved deep beyond enemy lines under the cover of darkness on June 9, 2015 and eliminated dozens of NSCN-K insurgents in Myanmar.