Mumbai Attacks and their impact

[J Wolfsberger]

You have a mothership (any cargo ship), a handful of dedicated Jihadist lunatics who are very well trained and armed, a few rubber raiding crafts, and a limited support base in the target city to conduct your target reconnaissance and even guide you to your target(s) if required. There are large Muslim populations around the globe from Tokyo to London to Miami etc., and out of that population base it only takes a couple of converts to radical Islam to provide the required support.

Or a terrorist group in the US obtains weapons from a drug cartel or organized gang. Their surveillance activities would be indistinguishable from daily, normal commercial activity.

Here's the scenario, you're the police chief, it's your town, it's 2230hrs, surprise, you now have 10-15 Jihadists running around executing a well rehearsed plan, now respond. Respond with what? Local police? Are they grossly overweight (indicates they are not dedicated) and poorly trained? The national guard? Normally not trained for this type of response, and it would take hours to mobilize them. Federal forces? How long would it take for a credable response?
...
The Los Angeles police department is relatively well trained and equipped, and I think most of us remember the challenges they had responding to two bank robbers armed with high powered rifles and effective body armor. My point is that police forces, just like military forces, are trained and equipped (barely) for probable threats. The Mumbai attacks were not a probable attack until last week.

The common misconception is that the police are there to protect you. In fact, most of their training is oriented toward cleaning up the mess afterward. I expect that's just as true in India as here in the US. The ordinary police in Mumbai who went up against the terrorists, matching pistols against grenades and assault weapons, deserve the highest regard for valor. The same would happen here.

In fact, I suspect it would be worse. The Indian government had the troops and processes in place (however efficient or not) to fairly quickly employ appropriately trained personnel in response.

We don't.

[Bob's World]

I think we should pull our analysis back to the operational/strategic level. Sure it is fun to discuss the tactics employed, but what really matters is how this event will shape the larger dynamics of the region.

1. India has tremendous friction with it's own Muslim popuace (some 150M, who are largely left out of the recent economic rise of the Nation. 13% of the total populace, they only represent 3% of government positions as an example).

2. With the pressure of the current global economic crisis, will India seek to shift the focus from their own faults and failures by attempting to blame Pakistan for this attack? (Ok, this is already happening)

3. With the U.S. already in a tenuous position in Pakistan as we attempt to sort out an effective scheme of engagement there that allows us to get a handle on a Pashtun problem that is slipping away, while at the same time not alienating the new government there; how do we play an escalation of animosity between Pakistan and India? (Particularly when both of those Governments have terrible policies in place that create tremendous frictions within their own populaces; both have Nukes; and both are looking for external parties to blame as the problems escalate; and they have in no way resolved the issues that keep these neighbors in a state of near-war)

4. Unlike the U.S., when we had an external terror attack on 9/11; we did not possess a large, disenfrancised local populace that was sympathetic to the causes of the attackers, India does. We could absorb a strategic disaster like launching a completely unrelated invasion of a traditional enemy's territory in the name of retaliation and national security. What happens internal to India if they try a similar gambit? What credibility do we have to talk them down from such a policy given our own recent actions?

Major terrorist attacks happen in India all the time. This one has succeeded in gaining the type of media attention and visibility that all such attackers seek as their primary goal for waging the attack in the first place. The attack itself has little relevance. What matters is how this is played from here.

[Ron Humphrey]

As to the "who will blame who" in efforts to sidetrack popular frustrations.
Can't see any way this won't happen considering historic practices which apparently noone likes to learn from(didn't that end up being a big part of what brought about WWI?); how about something different for a change.

Perhaps everyone could actually blame the idiots who keep pulling off these attacks. Extremists!

Maybe thats too much to ask for

[Ken White]

I agree with most of your postulations but question this one:

...4. We could absorb a strategic disaster like launching a completely unrelated invasion of a traditional enemy's territory in the name of retaliation and national security. What happens internal to India if they try a similar gambit? What credibility do we have to talk them down from such a policy given our own recent actions?

Three points.

A 'stategic disaster' is in the eye of the beholder -- I haven't seen one since the Brothers Kennedy decided to boost the US economy by sending me to Laos a long time ago.

Not at all a completely unrelated invasion, rather a very poorly publicly justified effort. It was a response to a large number of ME provocations, attacks and probes against US interests worldwide from 1979-2001 and it was sorely needed and long overdue; something needed to be done and do recall that Afghanistan is not in the ME. It may have been poorly planned (and whose fault is that?) and executed (same question?) but something was needed. While most of the west did not and does not understand that, the ME (and most of Asia) understood it for what it was; you will have noted that European hearth objections were heartfelt and different from the pro-forma mumbles out of the ME and Asia. The major problem with the action in Iraq as a totality and the rest of the world was an incredibly poor job of stating the rationale. The major problem with total effectiveness of the overdue response to probes from the ME was in the execution. That happens...

Back to the actual thread and point at hand. To answer your question quoted, no one including the Indians knows what would happen internally; and our credibility in the world has not been great since I started paying attention in 1947 or so. It has fluctuated over the years but it has never been adequate to jawbone other nations into doing much they they didn't want to do (unless we bribed them, that works -- sometimes). Been that way for years and I see no change in that.

Nor am I at all certain why we should be excessively concerned with 'talking them down' from a policy they are probably not going to adopt. In the unlikely event they adopt such a policy, it will be (as is too often true here) more a result of domestic politics than anything else -- and that milieu is a little too opaque for most of us to sort -- and I'm pretty sure that pressure would trump anything we tried.

[davidbfpo]

Yet to absorb the latest contributions. There are now coments on how any other city would have reacted and here is an ex-SAS CO's comments: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/ukne...-SAS-says.html

davidbfpo

[Icebreaker]

Attached is a link to a pretty good "To Do" List for changes in India to help them deal with future Mumbai-style attacks:

http://www.rediff.com/news/2008/dec/...ings-to-do.htm

As a civilian I think they make good sense, but I would like to get other's prespective on two things:

1. What do others think of the above "To Do" List?

and

2. How can ten (10) men, even armed with automatic weapons and grenades, hold off hundreds of commandos and police officers for sixty (60) hours?

[Ken White]

...2. How can ten (10) men, even armed with automatic weapons and grenades, hold off hundreds of commandos and police officers for sixty (60) hours?

but provide an answer to this. Easily.

What room or rooms in what buildings? Intelligence and / or technology available to the commandos and police to determine said locations? Their familiarity with each others work processes and ability to cooperate? Hostages involved? More importantly, respective levels of training. Most importantly level of dedication of the ten and their willingness to die to complete their mission.

Not at all difficult to do. Sixty hours is really pretty good time. Fighting in cities is never easy...

This LINK was just one of the buildings involved, it alone could easily take over a day to clear after the assault team arrived (12 hours away) and got prepped (another 4-6 hours minimum).

[bismark17]

I can only speak to local oriented Law Enforcement in the U.S. but I don't think anyone is ready for something like this other than possibly Israel but their society tolerates a level of security that wouldn't work here. At least until we have something along these lines.

We are all about containment. For the most part we only carry sidearms and thin body armour. Our training is all about containing a situation to put the subject into a fixed place to allow the SWAT team to begin their operation. We don't really train for scenarios like this and it's assumed that our SWAT teams would be the ones having to run and gun with this kind of adversary. Obviously, if it does happen it will be the front line patrol officers having to do it. Active shooters are a major threat both from the operational and tactical perspective. Look at what happened with the former Ranger tabbed suspects that took on the FBI in that infamous shoot out in Miami.

I am fortunate to work for a Department that has an outstanding Firearms training unit that does look at current events and changes their training based upon them. We do train for multiple threats and active shooters trying to roll your flanks and such. But, it's still tough to be confident about dealing with something along these lines.

We are very risk adverse due to the amount of litigitation that is part of our day to day operations. This has changed to some extent due to our school or Mall shooter scenarios but it's an extreme command and control issue to deal with multiple entry teams running around in a fixed location. There is going to be extreme chaos and it's hard for me to imagine anyone could do much better under those circumstances. In this particular case the Police were directly targeted so their command and control was screwed from the get go.

On a positve level, I think we are better prepared than we were prior to the Hollywood shootout where the suspects were heavily armored and carried long guns. It spurred Departments across the nation to develop patrol rifle programs and improve active shooter training which are good things.