A surgical strike is a military attack which is intended to damage only a legitimate military target, with no or minimal collateral damage to surrounding structures, vehicles, buildings, or the general public infrastructure and utilities.
Operation Blue Star
As an defence person I resonate the term because most of the military tasks are designed to minimise the damage to the environmental proximity. During one of such operation was carried out on Golden temple in 1984 called blue star operation in Amritsar. Being a part of the operation, I used to visit Golden temple along with my crews after few sorties hovering over shrine, but we were not allowed the uniform because the crowd may be horrified or dislike the uniform at that particular moment as the shrine was attacked by arms and ammunitions including Army tanks. Most of the citizens visited temple for watching bullet strains and physical damage done to the holy shrine.
Our helicopters were used to lift and reach casualties to hospitals on priority basis during the operations. The Sikh community was totally annoyed and therefore, one of the security guards murdered the prime minister after the operation. We were strictly instructed to plan sorties to fly with two pilots with never be two of them Sikhs as they might revolt. In fact all the Sikh pilots in our crews were so cordial and cooperative that we never faced any unusual happenings.
Operation Blast Track
The subject operation was carried out in 1987 in Leh and Ladakh when enemy moved their 250000 soldiers to the borders. We operated within our LAC (Line of Actual Control) but the experiences were amazing when there was 15000 feet altitude with very low level of oxygen and temperature was below 15 degree. With 10 meters of walking we felt like running 100 meter dash and breathing almost led us to nearest military hospital if we exaggerated. The water tankers with heaters were used to supply water to the troops as everything became solid in freezing temperature. When tanker did not arrive in time we use to pick up snow, put it in container and made water out of it for natural calls. Every liquid was in solid form accept kerosene and whisky as their freezing temperatures were quite lower. Both the substances were dire need for survival. One of the villagers, a senior citizen gave surprising experience of war time as he had seen dead soldiers with guns in hands hidden half in snow. Later on they were flown to their home places in tricolour when reported to nearest Army units.
War And Peace
Defence force is thought to be nothing but preparation of war. But it is myth. The forces are very much useful in casualties also during internal disturbances like Taj attack or the flood relief operation. Choppers are also used to convey not only VIPs from one place to another but also convey doctors for treatments of needy persons at remote places. I recall one of such operation for conveying lady doctor in Kutch of Gujarat during 1990. The incident is better remembered as I used to fly every Tuesday over my home place. Helicopters are also used for certain civil projects. We flew to Dalhousie in Himachal Pradesh during a hydro electrical project for constructing a bridge between two mountains. Air Force charged hourly basis for sorties of the aircrafts flown for conveying materials like cement, irons and other constructing equipment.
I love young student after the inspiration from former supreme commander Dr APJ Kalam and therefore I decided to catch them young and build better version of themselves to build a strong nation. I am founder of Digital Eagle Academy with a mission to train younger students from 16 to 19 years to induct them in shoot, dive and fly categories in Armed forces with psychological techniques. As an outcome they will be commandos, sailors and flying pilots as per their aptitudes.
Jai Hind.
