The meticulously planned October 7 blitzkrieg by heavily armed Hamas militants, belonging to the al-Qassam brigade from Gaza, into Israel, has the Indian military establishment worried.
The reason is that a new threat element has surfaced which could be used by militants in Kashmir and elsewhere to stage copycat attacks against the security forces.
“The scale and intensity of the attacks in Israel has surprised everyone. We are looking deeply into this element of attacks by fighters flying on paragliders,” a top source in India’s military establishment told THE WEEK when asked about the first impressions of the Hamas attack in Israel and its lessons for India. “From now on, we will have to factor in this mode of attack when we plan our security grid,” the source added.
The implications of the escalating conflict, the lessons to be learnt and the new modes of attack—like paragliders—in this case, will all be part of the deliberations of the Indian Army Commanders' Conference (ACC) when they meet for a week-long conference from Sunday.
This is not the first time paragliders have been used to attack the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF). On November 25, 1987, Palestinian militants attacked an IDF post near Lebanon’s southern border flying into Israeli airspace on paragliders. Six IDF soldiers were killed and at least seven others were injured before the paragliding militants were shot dead.
The other important issue expected to be among the top agenda points in the ACC is the soon-expected breakthrough in the India-China military talks, especially in the backdrop of the approaching winter, which takes an extreme form in the eastern Ladakh mountains.
The ACC would be held in hybrid mode till Wednesday, after which they would be meeting in person.
The ACC is held for a week twice a year, usually in March-April and October. It is an important event in the planning and execution process of the Indian Army that takes a 360-degree look at the current emerging perspectives on issues relating to operations, logistics, administration, human resources and welfare.
To ensure due diligence, decisions are taken through a collegiate system comprising army commanders and senior officers.
The two Asian giants—India and China—are locked in a more than three-year-old border face-off along the Line of Actual Control (LAC)—the de facto border between the two countries.
The LAC straddles one of the most inhospitable and difficult stretches on the planet with the average altitude being more than 4,000 metres where oxygen is scarce and winter temperatures plummet up to minus 30-40 degrees centigrade.
Besides the difficulties posed by the very harsh winter, what makes a breakthrough likely is the "marked cordiality" between the two sides during the 20th round of talks that took place on October 9 and 10.
Till now, the earlier rounds of talks have resulted in effective disengagement in five of the seven friction areas along the LAC. The disengagement took place first in the Galwan Valley in July 2020, followed by Pangong Tso and Kailash ranges in February 2021, in Gogra in August 2021 and finally at PP 15 in September 2022. The current talks are for the disengagement in the balance friction areas in eastern Ladakh i.e., Depsang and Demchok.
More than 1,20,000 soldiers of India and China--the world’s two most populous countries--remain in active deployment along the LAC ever since a series of border brawls broke out between both sides, from April 2020 onwards, leading to the brutal Galwan Valley incident of June 15, 2020, which saw the loss of at least 24 lives on both sides.