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Border wars and brinkmanship
By Dr. Rodney W. Jones Friday, December 16, 2011 - 5:31 PM
Pakistan's immediate reaction to the tragic November 26 air attacks on two check posts located barely 400 meters from the Afghan border in Mohmand tribal agency, which killed 24 Pakistani soldiers, was to declare that the attacks were "unprovoked aggression" and convey impressions to the local media that the attack was a premeditated assault by U.S and NATO forces in Afghanistan. This aroused a nationwide furor, further roiling an already tense relationship and leading to immediate retribution against American military and political interests in Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Soon after the incident, Pakistani army officials reportedly changed the rules of engagement for forward-based units on the country's western border, authorizing them to fire on any such air intrusions without having to seek permission from senior commanders or headquarters, and indicated that air defenses would be beefed up in that sector. But amid the hue and cry within Pakistan, some also questioned why Pakistan's large and expensive military forces had not responded with air defenses to protect the posts, especially since the army claimed the supposedly "unprovoked" NATO aircraft attacks had lasted up to 2 hours. Why were Pakistani Air Force (PAF) fighter aircraft not scrambled and dispatched to the scene? Did the PAF prudently stay out of an army screw-up (if, as U.S. officials insist, Pakistani forces fired first), or did they just not get the word? It would have been an acute irony if Pakistan had sent up its American-built F-16 fighters against American helicopters or slow-flying AC-130 gunships being used against the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan.
In fact, the furor masks the fact that Pakistan's close-in air defenses along the border with Afghanistan are thin, and long-range radars facing Afghanistan are not always on , as they were hardly needed in the past, except against Soviet air forces during the Afghan occupation of the 1980s. Ground-based radars' line-of-sight detection provides virtually no early warning against low-flying aircraft coming through gaps in the mountains, either, although triangulation of their beams coupled with GPS coordinates of mapped border locations may allow them to judge whether an aircraft has crossed into Pakistani air space. Whether they did on November 26 is not yet clear, since the firing on the posts could easily have been at standoff range, behind the Afghan side of the Durand Line.
The bulk of Pakistan's fixed site and other long-range ground radar constituting the national air defense system (ADGES) are oriented primarily to detecting threats from India, along the Line of Control dividing Kashmir to the north, or coming across the main Indian border along the east, and provide, from southern locations surveillance of potential threats from the Arabian Sea. They also provide general surveillance of high-altitude traffic from Afghanistan but are not oriented to close-in mountain border surveillance. Most of Pakistan's large numbers of low-altitude radar, anti-aircraft artillery and surface-to-air missile (SAM) launchers travel with armored and mechanized divisions and independent brigades deployed to counter a possible Indian invasion. Pakistan has a large inventory (about 1,900 as of 2010) of transportable anti-aircraft guns of various types and calibers, and also has concentrations of such AA guns and SAM defenses around air bases and sensitive facilities in the interior. The PAF operates the national air defense system from a command center in Chaklala (on the outskirts of Rawalpindi) through a network that contains high- and low-level ground radars.
Recent PAF acquisitions also include three Swedish (Saab 2000 Erieye) and two Chinese-made ZDK-03 airborne early warning and control (AEW&C) aircraft, which have 360-degree vision and look-down radars that can detect aircraft at any altitude, as long as they are not hidden in ground clutter. Their primary missions are regarded as strategic, i.e., early warning, air defense and close-in, ground-based missile surveillance. And the PAF also deploys Pakistan's mainstay air defense weapons, namely fighter aircraft with air-to-air interceptor missiles.
The vast majority of Pakistan's estimated 3,150 ground-based air defense missile systems in 2010 were in the low-altitude MANPADS (man-portable air defense systems) category, though some heat-seeking, low altitude types (such as the Crotale) are mounted on vehicles. The shoulder-fired missiles are in the same general category as the American-made Stinger missiles that the Afghan mujahideen used to bring down Soviet aircraft in the 1980s. The Pakistani army deploys a contemporary assortment of these types of infra-red, or heat-seeking, short-range missile systems, including some 2,500 Chinese Mk1/Mk2 (an adaptation of the Russian SA-7) and HN-5A, 230 French Mistral, 200 Swedish RBS-70, as well as 60 up-to-date Stingers (Raytheon FIM-92A).
It would be very easy for Pakistan to shift additional anti-aircraft machine guns and to introduce these shoulder-fired missiles to its western region, and reports suggest that the army is actually doing that now. However, if Pakistani front line border posts are equipped with these systems and expected to use them against any air intrusion -- accidental, pre-notified, or otherwise -- there are almost certain to be further accidental collisions and disruptions of U.S.-Pakistani cooperation. If U.S. aircraft accidentally stray into Pakistani territory and take ground fire from anti-aircraft guns or missiles, they will almost certainly retaliate as a standard operational procedure. Second, Pakistan would face the threat that some of these advanced missiles could get into militant hands, which would put not only U.S./NATO aircraft, but also Pakistani aircraft, at serious risk, and also broaden suspicions in the West of Pakistani complicity with militants. Stinger proliferation to militants might further deter the Pakistani military from establishing control over its tribal territory, and would, in effect, provide insurgents with yet additional cover in safe havens in Pakistan. Third, Pakistani firing of Stinger-type missiles against U.S. aircraft operating in Afghanistan may be seen as acts of war against the United States. While the Pakistani public increasingly views America's war on terror operations in Afghanistan as "not Pakistan's war," they may be locked by escalation into owning "Pakistan's war on American forces." It should take little imagination to grasp where that would lead.
The westward deployment of these MANPADS or low-altitude anti-aircraft guns would probably not be able to threaten U.S. drones, because bilateral protocols for U.S. drone activity along the Afghan-Pakistan border already exist and are followed. Normally drones fly at altitudes above the ceiling of shoulder-fired missiles, and their infra-red signatures, even at low altitude, are much more difficult for infra-red sensors to detect than those of manned aircraft. Drones may not even be readily detectable by Pakistan's existing ground radars in the region. By diverting AEW&C aircraft with advanced radar to that region, however, Pakistan probably could detect and shoot down drones with fighter aircraft and, possibly, in the unlikely event they were relocated to the tribal region, target them with its small number of high altitude SA-2 missiles. But these contingencies, which would disturb Pakistan's preferred strategies and air defense deployments against India, seem far less likely than the prospect of further (accidental or not) air-to-ground or ground-to-ground clashes between NATO and Pakistani troops. Risking the loss of Pakistan's scarce 4th generation fighter aircraft and pilots in cross-border shoot-outs with U.S. forces would be a recipe for further disaster.
Although the U.S. Central Command's assessment of the Mohmand incident is still a week away, the findings will likely blame communications breakdowns and fog of war confusion, exploited by deceptive firing from militants close by Pakistan's border posts, for the tragic case of friendly-fire. This was after all the most lethal, but not the first, cross-border incident of its kind. This may turn out to be one case where the extremist tail did wag the dog.
Lessons will be gleaned from this incident, but the crucial ones concern the vital importance of transparent military-to-military communication and information-sharing on the activities of militants, and dedicated measures of mutual support for efforts to run them to ground. Neither side can afford to be responsible by inconsistent strategy for taking the lives of the other. Technical measures for avoiding collisions that have not yet been exploited include the use of reprogrammable, identification-friend-or foe (IFF) transponders. When placed with personnel at Pakistan's forward check posts and support installations, these should serve to ward off inadvertent fire by US forces, supplementing existing communications protocols. Frequently updating codes should protect these instruments from theft and successful spoofing use by militants.
Beyond that, both sides must get back to basics on harmonizing policies on the future of Afghanistan. This would include pursuing as far as they prove viable the so-called "reconciliation" negotiations with those insurgents who might be induced to withdraw from combat in favor of participation in the Afghan political process. Secretary Hillary Clinton's recent visit to Islamabad warmly invited Pakistan to be a central player at the front end of this process, a process and role which Pakistan itself has long urged. Moving forward with relevant bilateral working groups developing road maps and strategies could help calm ruffled feathers while, importantly, working together for peaceful, internationally-supported outcomes in Afghanistan that will also satisfy Pakistan's legitimate long-term interests.
Dr. Rodney W. Jones is President of Policy Architects International in Reston, VA, and an expert on security in South Asia.
By Dr. Rodney W. Jones Friday, December 16, 2011 - 5:31 PM
Pakistan's immediate reaction to the tragic November 26 air attacks on two check posts located barely 400 meters from the Afghan border in Mohmand tribal agency, which killed 24 Pakistani soldiers, was to declare that the attacks were "unprovoked aggression" and convey impressions to the local media that the attack was a premeditated assault by U.S and NATO forces in Afghanistan. This aroused a nationwide furor, further roiling an already tense relationship and leading to immediate retribution against American military and political interests in Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Soon after the incident, Pakistani army officials reportedly changed the rules of engagement for forward-based units on the country's western border, authorizing them to fire on any such air intrusions without having to seek permission from senior commanders or headquarters, and indicated that air defenses would be beefed up in that sector. But amid the hue and cry within Pakistan, some also questioned why Pakistan's large and expensive military forces had not responded with air defenses to protect the posts, especially since the army claimed the supposedly "unprovoked" NATO aircraft attacks had lasted up to 2 hours. Why were Pakistani Air Force (PAF) fighter aircraft not scrambled and dispatched to the scene? Did the PAF prudently stay out of an army screw-up (if, as U.S. officials insist, Pakistani forces fired first), or did they just not get the word? It would have been an acute irony if Pakistan had sent up its American-built F-16 fighters against American helicopters or slow-flying AC-130 gunships being used against the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan.
In fact, the furor masks the fact that Pakistan's close-in air defenses along the border with Afghanistan are thin, and long-range radars facing Afghanistan are not always on , as they were hardly needed in the past, except against Soviet air forces during the Afghan occupation of the 1980s. Ground-based radars' line-of-sight detection provides virtually no early warning against low-flying aircraft coming through gaps in the mountains, either, although triangulation of their beams coupled with GPS coordinates of mapped border locations may allow them to judge whether an aircraft has crossed into Pakistani air space. Whether they did on November 26 is not yet clear, since the firing on the posts could easily have been at standoff range, behind the Afghan side of the Durand Line.
The bulk of Pakistan's fixed site and other long-range ground radar constituting the national air defense system (ADGES) are oriented primarily to detecting threats from India, along the Line of Control dividing Kashmir to the north, or coming across the main Indian border along the east, and provide, from southern locations surveillance of potential threats from the Arabian Sea. They also provide general surveillance of high-altitude traffic from Afghanistan but are not oriented to close-in mountain border surveillance. Most of Pakistan's large numbers of low-altitude radar, anti-aircraft artillery and surface-to-air missile (SAM) launchers travel with armored and mechanized divisions and independent brigades deployed to counter a possible Indian invasion. Pakistan has a large inventory (about 1,900 as of 2010) of transportable anti-aircraft guns of various types and calibers, and also has concentrations of such AA guns and SAM defenses around air bases and sensitive facilities in the interior. The PAF operates the national air defense system from a command center in Chaklala (on the outskirts of Rawalpindi) through a network that contains high- and low-level ground radars.
Recent PAF acquisitions also include three Swedish (Saab 2000 Erieye) and two Chinese-made ZDK-03 airborne early warning and control (AEW&C) aircraft, which have 360-degree vision and look-down radars that can detect aircraft at any altitude, as long as they are not hidden in ground clutter. Their primary missions are regarded as strategic, i.e., early warning, air defense and close-in, ground-based missile surveillance. And the PAF also deploys Pakistan's mainstay air defense weapons, namely fighter aircraft with air-to-air interceptor missiles.
The vast majority of Pakistan's estimated 3,150 ground-based air defense missile systems in 2010 were in the low-altitude MANPADS (man-portable air defense systems) category, though some heat-seeking, low altitude types (such as the Crotale) are mounted on vehicles. The shoulder-fired missiles are in the same general category as the American-made Stinger missiles that the Afghan mujahideen used to bring down Soviet aircraft in the 1980s. The Pakistani army deploys a contemporary assortment of these types of infra-red, or heat-seeking, short-range missile systems, including some 2,500 Chinese Mk1/Mk2 (an adaptation of the Russian SA-7) and HN-5A, 230 French Mistral, 200 Swedish RBS-70, as well as 60 up-to-date Stingers (Raytheon FIM-92A).
It would be very easy for Pakistan to shift additional anti-aircraft machine guns and to introduce these shoulder-fired missiles to its western region, and reports suggest that the army is actually doing that now. However, if Pakistani front line border posts are equipped with these systems and expected to use them against any air intrusion -- accidental, pre-notified, or otherwise -- there are almost certain to be further accidental collisions and disruptions of U.S.-Pakistani cooperation. If U.S. aircraft accidentally stray into Pakistani territory and take ground fire from anti-aircraft guns or missiles, they will almost certainly retaliate as a standard operational procedure. Second, Pakistan would face the threat that some of these advanced missiles could get into militant hands, which would put not only U.S./NATO aircraft, but also Pakistani aircraft, at serious risk, and also broaden suspicions in the West of Pakistani complicity with militants. Stinger proliferation to militants might further deter the Pakistani military from establishing control over its tribal territory, and would, in effect, provide insurgents with yet additional cover in safe havens in Pakistan. Third, Pakistani firing of Stinger-type missiles against U.S. aircraft operating in Afghanistan may be seen as acts of war against the United States. While the Pakistani public increasingly views America's war on terror operations in Afghanistan as "not Pakistan's war," they may be locked by escalation into owning "Pakistan's war on American forces." It should take little imagination to grasp where that would lead.
The westward deployment of these MANPADS or low-altitude anti-aircraft guns would probably not be able to threaten U.S. drones, because bilateral protocols for U.S. drone activity along the Afghan-Pakistan border already exist and are followed. Normally drones fly at altitudes above the ceiling of shoulder-fired missiles, and their infra-red signatures, even at low altitude, are much more difficult for infra-red sensors to detect than those of manned aircraft. Drones may not even be readily detectable by Pakistan's existing ground radars in the region. By diverting AEW&C aircraft with advanced radar to that region, however, Pakistan probably could detect and shoot down drones with fighter aircraft and, possibly, in the unlikely event they were relocated to the tribal region, target them with its small number of high altitude SA-2 missiles. But these contingencies, which would disturb Pakistan's preferred strategies and air defense deployments against India, seem far less likely than the prospect of further (accidental or not) air-to-ground or ground-to-ground clashes between NATO and Pakistani troops. Risking the loss of Pakistan's scarce 4th generation fighter aircraft and pilots in cross-border shoot-outs with U.S. forces would be a recipe for further disaster.
Although the U.S. Central Command's assessment of the Mohmand incident is still a week away, the findings will likely blame communications breakdowns and fog of war confusion, exploited by deceptive firing from militants close by Pakistan's border posts, for the tragic case of friendly-fire. This was after all the most lethal, but not the first, cross-border incident of its kind. This may turn out to be one case where the extremist tail did wag the dog.
Lessons will be gleaned from this incident, but the crucial ones concern the vital importance of transparent military-to-military communication and information-sharing on the activities of militants, and dedicated measures of mutual support for efforts to run them to ground. Neither side can afford to be responsible by inconsistent strategy for taking the lives of the other. Technical measures for avoiding collisions that have not yet been exploited include the use of reprogrammable, identification-friend-or foe (IFF) transponders. When placed with personnel at Pakistan's forward check posts and support installations, these should serve to ward off inadvertent fire by US forces, supplementing existing communications protocols. Frequently updating codes should protect these instruments from theft and successful spoofing use by militants.
Beyond that, both sides must get back to basics on harmonizing policies on the future of Afghanistan. This would include pursuing as far as they prove viable the so-called "reconciliation" negotiations with those insurgents who might be induced to withdraw from combat in favor of participation in the Afghan political process. Secretary Hillary Clinton's recent visit to Islamabad warmly invited Pakistan to be a central player at the front end of this process, a process and role which Pakistan itself has long urged. Moving forward with relevant bilateral working groups developing road maps and strategies could help calm ruffled feathers while, importantly, working together for peaceful, internationally-supported outcomes in Afghanistan that will also satisfy Pakistan's legitimate long-term interests.
Dr. Rodney W. Jones is President of Policy Architects International in Reston, VA, and an expert on security in South Asia.
