Army-IAF row during Kargil revealed

New Delhi: The Army was ‘reluctant’ to inform the government about the presence of Pakistan-backed intruders in Kargil in early 1999 and did little initially to jointly plan and carry out operations to evict them, retired Air Chief Marshal A Y Tipnis has said.

The army top brass kept saying they could handle the situation but insisted the Indian Air Force should provide helicopter gunships to support ground troops – a request Tipnis turned down several times as he felt helicopters would be vulnerable to missile attacks and the use of air power would lead to an escalation.

"I observed that the ground situation was grave. Army required air force help to evict the intruders. Army headquarters was reluctant, possibly because it was embarrassed to have allowed the present situation to develop, to reveal the full gravity of the situation to the Ministry of Defence," Tipnis says in a signed article in the latest issue of Force, a leading defence publication.

"Thus army was not amenable to Air headquarters' position to seek government approval for use of air power offensively," writes Tipnis, who headed the IAF during the Kargil conflict.

At two meetings of the three service chiefs on May 23 and May 24, 1999, then Army Chief General Ved Malik "appeared to get agitated" on the reluctance to use helicopters.

At the second meeting, when Tipnis indicated helicopters would not be deployed without government approval, he writes that Malik "stormed out" of the room, saying, "If that's the way you want it, I will go it alone." Malik was not immediately available for comments.

The IAF went into action on May 26, 1999 after its deployment was cleared by the Cabinet Committee on Security.

Tipnis writes that at a meeting of the CCS on May 18, 1999, the army could not give a "satisfactory answer" to a question from the then External Affairs Minister Jaswant Singh about an "assessment in respect of the enemy's intentions".

"It was apparent the army had not applied its mind to this aspect; they were engaged in getting out the intruders without having quite established the nature of the intrusions or the identity of intruders," he writes.

"I felt strong sympathy for the Army Headquarters staff. Having been caught off guard in the field, they were unable to make up for their initial lapse, due to inadequate intelligence and possibly indifferent involvement from the command headquarters."

Tipnis indicates he was "troubled" by the "total lack of army-air force joint staff work" since the time the intrusions in Kargil were reported in early May.

"When the army found itself in difficulties, information/intelligence had not been communicated by Army HQ, in any systematic manner to the Air HQ. There had been no call for a joint briefing, leave alone joint planning, both at the service and command headquarters; just repeated requests for armed helicopter support," he says.

Noting that "proper joint staff-work" could have helped both sides appreciate the strengths and limitations of each other, he writes, "There had been no joint deliberations at any level."