Lt Navdeep Singh: Anatomy of Point Blank Courage

[Omega007]

Buddy, remember that this was happening at night, past midnight in fact, so it must have been pitch dark. They could obviously not use illumination to assist in the firing. In these circumstances they had to wait for the terrorists to come close so that maximum casualty could be inflicted on them. The 'see the whites of the eyes' is just a figure of speech, an ambush waits for the enemy to come into the killing ground, the weapons are sited to cover the killing ground effectively. How far the killing ground will be depends on the visibility. In day time, it may even be 200M to 300 M away, at night......maybe 100 M. In uneven and rugged terrain, maybe even nearer.
Sniper course has very few vacancies, the ghataks may attend a unit level sniper cadre which is not the same thing. But snipers are not ideal weapons for night time ambushes where you want to totally overwhelm the enemy with a heavy volume of aimed fire.
They could have used their skills to eliminate the terrorists with suppresed weapons from longer distances.
How? when you cant see a man at long range at night without illumination, how do you engage him? After the fire fight, all you would find is that the enemy has got away clean by taking cover in the undergrowth and in the folds of the ground. You would be lucky to find the odd blood stains on the grass signifying a possible casualty. Then you would chase him, but in which direction? remember, the terrorists are also trained in camouflage and concealment, he would not present himself as a target till he is real close. The tactics of the terrorists are very sound.

All said and done, Lt Navdeep was bang on the money. There is no way to ensure max kills in a night ambush unless the enemy is allowed to come up close. The only problem with letting the enemy come close is that the ambush party itself becomes vulnerable if they charge at it. These ghataks knew all this. They knew the risk. Long range firing at the terrorists at night without illumination in rugged terrain would have been ineffective. An opportunity lost.

Regards.

I had all you said in mind.But night time sniping isn't a rare thing.There are passive night vision telescopic sights in use by IA.In 2001,an Indian soldier was hit on his lower jaw by a Pakistani sniper during night from a very long distance,though the soldier was lucky to escape alive to dye another day.Same can be done by the Ghataks.

 

[pmukherjee]

I had all you said in mind.But night time sniping isn't a rare thing.There are passive night vision telescopic sights in use by IA.In 2001,an Indian soldier was hit on his lower jaw by a Pakistani sniper during night from a very long distance,though the soldier was lucky to escape alive to dye another day.Same can be done by the Ghataks.

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Yes you could do that. But you would need many trained snipers in the ghatak platoon. A capable sniper is a very valuable and a scarce commodity as it takes a long time to train a sniper. Merely completing the sniper course with a good grading does not mean that he will produce good results in combat.

A night ambush with snipers? Not a bad idea though. Worth trying out. We will need very good night sights though.

 

[Omega007]

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Yes you could do that. But you would need many trained snipers in the ghatak platoon. A capable sniper is a very valuable and a scarce commodity as it takes a long time to train a sniper. Merely completing the sniper course with a good grading does not mean that he will produce good results in combat.

A night ambush with snipers? Not a bad idea though. Worth trying out. We will need very good night sights though.

You do have a very valid point that a good Sniper is a very scarce commodity and more so for IA.But my point was that each of the 32 men doesn't have to be snipers,infact they don't even need a specialised sniper for these missions,instead two Designated Marksmans with Dragunovs and good night vision sniper scopes(available from BEL amd Ordnance factories)would more than do the job.Remember,they don't need to shoot the hostiles from 1.5 km or so.They can do the job from 600 meters to cover their forward assault troopers reducing their casualties and to do that job,a specialised sniper is not needed and also not desirable as these missions need rapid fire support which is not possible with manual bolt sniper rifles.
REGARDS.

 

[pmukherjee]

You do have a very valid point that a good Sniper is a very scarse comodity and more so for IA.But my point was that each of the 32 men doesn't have to be snipers,infact they don't even need a specialised sniper for these missions,instead two Designated Marksmans with Dragunovs and good night vision sniper scopes(available from BEL amd Ordnance factories)would more than do the job.Remember,they don't need to shoot the hostiles from 1.5 km or so.They can do the job from 600 meters to cover their forward assault troopers reducing their casualties and to do that job,a specialised sniper is not needed and also not desirable as these missions need rapid fire support which is not possible with manual bolt sniper rifles.
REGARDS.

Buddy, ok so we have two snipers in the ghatak platoon who locate the 12 terrorists at say 600 M at night and each fires one shot at his target. Two terrorists are down but the sharp crack of the Dragunov in the still of the night will ensure that all remaining 10 terrorists will vanish into the thin air. So when the two snipers look again through their night sights, they will see nothing. That is if the snipers are really good and get hits the first time, remember, hitting a target at 600 M is not easy even during the day. The likelihood of the terrorists dragging away their dead or injured is very high if they are 600 M away and you would take time to approach the site cautiously. Also, by asking the snipers to engage at 600M, you would ensure that no other weapon in the ambush party is effective. Even LMGs have an effective range of just 500 M and they cant fire effectively at that range at night. Moreover at this time of the year in the Gurais area near the Krishanganga you would definitely see a lot of fog. How do you engage at 600M in fog?

All that stuff is bookish and academic, the question to ask is, as a young officer with pure adrenalin in the veins for blood, who does not want even one terrorist to get away, how far would you be when you opened fire? That is the whole point.

 

[Omega007]

Buddy, ok so we have two snipers in the ghatak platoon who locate the 12 terrorists at say 600 M at night and each fires one shot at his target. Two terrorists are down but the sharp crack of the Dragunov in the still of the night will ensure that all remaining 10 terrorists will vanish into the thin air. So when the two snipers look again through their night sights, they will see nothing. That is if the snipers are really good and get hits the first time, remember, hitting a target at 600 M is not easy even during the day. The likelihood of the terrorists dragging away their dead or injured is very high if they are 600 M away and you would take time to approach the site cautiously. Also, by asking the snipers to engage at 600M, you would ensure that no other weapon in the ambush party is effective. Even LMGs have an effective range of just 500 M and they cant fire effectively at that range at night. Moreover at this time of the year in the Gurais area near the Krishanganga you would definitely see a lot of fog. How do you engage at 600M in fog?

All that stuff is bookish and academic, the question to ask is, as a young officer with pure adrenalin in the veins for blood, who does not want even one terrorist to get away, how far would you be when you opened fire? That is the whole point.

You probably didn't read what I said buddy.I told those 2 Designated Marksmans(not Snipers)will provide long distance cover from their suppressed Dragunovs for their forward assault troopers who are at a much closer proximity to the hostiles with their GPMGs and Assault rifles.And the 600 meter is not constant,depending on the weather and terrain,they can be placed even at 200 meter with say12x sights.My point was to provide the assault troopers with some cover fire from outside the view of the hostiles,so that who are providing cover can continue to do so without any disruption from enemy retaliatory fire.
Regarding to the killing of only 2 at one time,well,that's why I recomended Dragunov and not a Mauser SP66 or a Heckler&Koch MSG-90.The sole purpose behind the Dragunov was to give the shooter the capability to take on targets without taking his eye off from the scope.That's why it's semi automatic and the shooter doesn't need to **** it and lose his track.I also mentioned this by saying a pure sniper is undesirable for these kind of missions.
REGARDS.

 

[Abingdonboy]

A tragic loss of life. Bur whilst I don't want to take anything away from this hero, what is so special about him? Scores of other similarly brave men have fallen in similar circumstances without little but an afterthought on the nightly news. If we are to pay homage to this one man we must to ALL. They are all soldiers. All men. All fathers. All sons. All husbands. All brothers. All Indians.



RIP sir.


This seems to sum up my sentiment:
"We Sleep Safe In Our Beds because rough men stand ready to visit violence on those that would do us harm."