Surgical strikes: How the world conducts them and how India did it

In general military parlance such strikes would have been considered as part of a covert counter-terrorism operation

Indian armed forces conducted surgical strikes in the early hours of Thursday across the Line of Control (LoC), involving not more than 100 commandos, in what is seen as a paradigm shift in how this government plans to deal with terrorist camps across the border. 

The term "surgical strike" has been prevalent in the international media since the days of the Gulf War, and it came to typify operations conducted by the US thereafter. 

Going by the generally accepted definition offered by experts, a surgical strike comprises a swift, intelligence-driven attack on a specific target or targets with minimum collateral damage to structures, infrastructure or civilians in the target's vicinity.

The operation can involve special forces units on the ground, strikes conducted by military aircraft or vessels. 

How India conducted its strikes

As reported earlier, Thursday's surgical strikes involved "less than 100 commandos in groups of 20 each" who "targeted five points two to three km beyond the LoC". During the press conference, it was revealed that the strikes were conducted based on specific and credible intelligence. 

Coming days after the deadly Uri attack, India was able to cause "significant" casualties among the terrorists targeted in the operation. As reported earlier, however, the exact number of those killed and equipment destroyed was not made public. Sources also said that no helicopters or fighter jets were used in the operation.

In general military parlance such strikes would have been considered as more of a covert counter-terrorism operation rather than a surgical strike. 

However, India has in the past deployed precision guided munitions (PGMs) against military targets. The Indian Air Force's Operation Safed Sagar during the Kargil conflict saw use of such weapons. 

A NDTV report on the air force's role in that conflict said: "... They dropped laser-guided bombs on targets at an altitude of more than 17,400 feet above sea level. In doing so, they demolished the Pakistani post atop Tiger Hill...."

There has, however, never been any report or claim in public knowledge of the use of such weapons to target terrorist training camps across the LoC.

How the big hitters do it

The US and Russia, with varying degrees of success, have been conducting surgical strikes in Syria for some time now, hitting extremists and ISIS targets with PGMs. 

The US in particular has been using its armed drones for targeting specific leaders of various terrorist organisations, especially the al-Qaeda; however, given reports of numerous civilian casualties attached to such strikes, the claims that such operations are surgical strikes have rung hollow for countries like Pakistan and Afghanistan.  

For Western countries, and through much of the war on terror in the post 9/11 world, surgical strikes have been synonymous with "smart bombs" and military aircraft hitting legitimate military targets which are surrounded by civilians and located in populated areas.

However, media reports and studies have often disputed exactly how effective these operations are in terms of eliminating the intended target and in mitigating civilian casualties.

An article in the Time Magazine, from 2012 when the new threat on the horizon for America was a nuclear Iran, illustrates the limitations of surgical strikes. 

Titled "The myth of 'surgical strikes' on Iran", the report elaborated on the impact on Iranian civilians if the US or Israel opted for surgical strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities. 

Citing an academic report which examined military operations against Iran's then growing nuclear programme, the news report cautioned: "Iran has built its nuclear facilities in major urban centres making it impossible to carry out surgical strikes without killing large number of civilians."

In the above scenario, surgical strikes referred to the use of PGMs.  

Even as India announced to the world that it had conducted such strikes against terrorist launchpads across the LoC, another report, this time from The Guardian, said that a drone strike on Wednesday morning meant to target ISIS fighters in eastern Afghanistan ended up killing 15 civilians instead, according to the United Nations. 

Another Guardian report from 2014 illustrates how precision and surgical strikes might not always be as clean as they are billed to be. The report said that in the pursuit of eliminating Pakistani Taliban commander Qari Hussain, the US ended up killing "128 people, 13 of them children", by the time it finally got Hussain with a hellfire missile launched from a drone in 2010.