From Kargil to Pulwama: Real-time actionable intelligence is a must for India's national security

“Humne maana ki taghaful na karoge lekin, khaq ho jaayenge hum tumko khabar hone tak” (No doubt that you will respond without least delay [to my woes], but by the time you hear them, I would be no more).   This couplet by the legendary poet Ghalib sums up the perils of information delays. The same would be true about intelligence in the military domain. Intelligence, in any form - information intelligence, image intelligence, signal intelligence, or electronic intelligence - is composed of three distinct components: gathering, processing, and dissemination. Enough gathering, quick processing, and timely dissemination to the appropriate location. Kargil Committee Report – From surprise to Reckoning - records, “The Review Committee had before it overwhelming evidence that the Pakistani armed intrusion in the Kargil sector came as a complete and total surprise to the Indian Government, Army and intelligence agencies as well as to the J&K State Government and its agencies. The Committee did not come across any agency or individual who was able clearly to assess before the event the possibility of a large-scale Pakistani military intrusion across the Kargil heights”.   Exactly two decades later, the Pulwama attack in Feb 2019 and Galwan incident in June 2020 were again attributed to gaps in intelligence. Foreign Policy publication dated 27 August, 2020, went to the extent of reporting that “China was taking advantage of India’s intelligence failures”. According to reports, a repeat of the Galwan incident was successfully avoided later due to timely intel provided by the US under the new intelligence-sharing agreement signed in 2020 between the Indian and US governments known as the Basic Exchange and Cooperation Agreement on Geospatial Cooperation, or BECA. This was widely heralded as a triumph of meaningful cooperation between India and the United States in the sharing of actionable intelligence. The fact remains, however, that timely intelligence on Indian territory had to come from the United States. Intelligence Failure or Inadequate Intelligence? On the surface, intelligence failure and inadequate intelligence appear to be synonyms, but a hazy understanding of the distinction between the two can lead to incorrect corrective action.  Intelligence failure could imply that intelligence was available but was not implemented either due to insufficient analysis or organisational inefficiency. Inadequate intelligence, on the other hand, may indicate a lack of resources to acquire the desired intelligence. It is critical to distinguish between the two because the corrective action for each is different. The absence of intelligence prior to a military disaster is frequently and loosely referred to as intelligence failure, but inadequate resources could also be a factor. The exact cause needs to be examined carefully. Intelligence Gathering - Resources The emphasis here is on resources rather than sources because the former can be identified while the latter cannot be commented on for obvious reasons. All forms of intelligence are valuable, but image intelligence is the most reliable source for identifying changes that lead to an event and subsequent operational planning. Do we have sufficient image intelligence? Lack of intelligence leading to Kargil incursions led India to purchase Heron and Searcher UAVs from Israel for all the three services, which are still operational, though their number has reduced owing to a few crashes. While these platforms offer good reconnaissance capability, both in day and night, they lack the surveillance capability provided by a Global Hawk kind of platform in terms of quality, coverage and persistence. Moreover, they do not have satcom connectivity thus limiting their range  owing to line of sight operations. It is also pertinent to understand the subtle difference between reconnaissance and surveillance. While reconnaissance involves more of confirmation of presence or absence of something perceived to be there, surveillance is to find new things out of nothing and with no prior information. If a torch is enough for the former, search light would be necessary for the latter. High resolution satellites are necessary for mounting credible surveillance. There are very few Earth Observation Imaging satellites launched by India, and even fewer radar satellites. EO satellites have the limitation of only providing images at specific times of the day and in good weather. Radar images, while available at all times of day and night, are extremely difficult to interpret and invariably require a visual image reference for correlation. Another issue is the long gaps in revisit time caused by the smaller number of satellites. Round-the-clock surveillance is impossible without a sufficient number of both EO and radar satellites. Fighter planes like the SU-30 or Jaguar can conduct reconnaissance missions, but they are severely limited by the need to stay within our own borders during peacetime. Another challenge is the lack of long on-station time required to conduct meaningful reconnaissance. Intelligence Processing  Good intelligence is often a prerequisite for military success. Irrespective of how formidable a weapon system is, it would still be necessary to know the enemy’s location, capabilities, and intentions. Actionable intelligence has to be gleaned out of huge data available. Operations in peace time and in contested space are two different things. Intelligence Surveillance Reconnaissance capabilities that work well in counter terrorism or permissive environment cannot be superimposed in a contested high threat environment. The processing will have to be done at super-fast speed.  Millions of devices will be providing information during an active operation and it will be humanly impossible to extract all the actionable intelligence from gibberish. Software solution in terms of Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning  application is necessary. Plethora of information flowing in from different sources and laborious sifting creates a cry wolf situation at times. To achieve speed, size of the strainer holes keeps increasing and resultantly vital pieces of information also get filtered out as trash which can cost the nation dearly.  Software assistance can draw attention to the most valuable inputs amongst huge data and raise red flags. Suitable algorithms will have to be generated for the purpose. AI/ML applications in intelligence processing will also eliminate human biases such as cognitive bias and confirmation bias, in which people tend to believe what they want to believe. It is reasonable to assume that Russian leadership was influenced by such biases when assessing intelligence on Ukrainian resistance. The goal is not to delegate decision-making authority to software. Humans will still make decisions, but software can assist them by searching through much larger amounts of data much more quickly. Leaders must be enabled to make decisions with speed for which they must be able to analyse intel with speed. Intelligence Sharing  India may lack intelligence gathering resources, but it certainly has an abundance of intelligence agencies. Apart from RAW and IB, each of the three services has its own intelligence wing. Furthermore, the Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA) was established in 2002, and National Technical Research Organisation  was established in 2004, specifically to fill intelligence gaps as a result of the Kargil Committee recommendations. All of these agencies conduct regular coordination meetings and share useful data with one another, though many would be hesitant to share it in depth due to source confidentiality. It is not the sharing of information at these meetings that is important; rather, it is the timely dissemination of information at the end point.   Former IB Chief AS Dulat hinted at the Military Literature Festival in Chandigarh in 2018 that intelligence on the Kargil intrusions existed prior to the conflict4. Same was corroborated very recently, around mid-April 2023, by the former RAW Chief Vikram Sood in conversation with Smita Prakash in her podcast5. He states that multiple inputs were available from different sources regarding the incursions in Kargil sector, which were duly submitted. Why these inputs did not reach where they should have, or did not attract due attention, or were not acted upon with the seriousness they deserved -  is typically a case of organisational intelligence failure. The challenge in future will be even more complex where it’s not only intel dissemination but dissemination of Intel in real time that would be paramount. The intel cannot travel in files or in Compact Discs. It will have to ride on the web for which a common medium of intelligence sharing and dissemination amongst all the agencies would have to be in place. In the age of information sharing to build Space Situational Awareness or Maritime Domain awareness in QUAD, lack of real time common intel picture within the country cannot be justified.   Way Forward To be a credible partner in the world’s intelligence sharing mechanism, India must develop credible capability to contribute meaningfully. Space-based intelligence resources must be improved. Because it is profitable, the emphasis remains on launching an increasing number of communication satellites. India must increase its space presence in imaging satellites while also increasing its surveillance persistence by inducting a sufficient number of HALE (High Altitude Long Endurance) unmanned platforms.     AI/ML application tools must be developed to process information quickly and commanders must be trained to assimilate that with equal speed. A common format and medium must be developed for real-time sharing of actionable intelligence at the point of action. In a war, the demand for real-time actionable intelligence is only just, and like justice - intelligence delayed is intelligence denied. The author is a retired fighter pilot, former Air Advisor at High Commission of India, London and Director General (Inspection & Safety), Indian Air Force. Views expressed are personal. Read all the  Latest News ,  Trending News ,  Cricket News ,  Bollywood News , India News  and  Entertainment News  here. Follow us on  Facebook ,  Twitter  and  Instagram .