Note no. 469	29-Aug.-2008
Sri Lanka: LTTE's Air Raid on Trincomalee and the Offensive Operations – Update No. 151 Col R Hariharan The night raid by two light aircraft of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) air wing on the Trincomalee naval base on August 26, 2008 may be termed as moderately successful. The two aircraft were similar to the ZLIN piston-engined ones that had raided Katunayake air base on March 27, 2007 and in the subsequent attacks on Palali air base on April 24, 2007 and the Anuradhapura air field on October 22, 2007. As in all the four air raids earlier they evaded both the ground fire and the chase by Sri Lanka air force fighters to return safely to their home base. There had been discrepancies in the reports on the raid both in the number of casualties and on how the LTTE raid was conducted out. Broadly the raid went somewhat like this. Around 9 PM the LTTE aircraft flew in undetected and managed to sneak into the air space of the high security zone of the naval complex housing the Eastern Naval Headquarters and the Trincomalee dockyard. After dodging the anti aircraft gunfire when they were detected, one aircraft managed to drop two improvised bombs. Though the Eastern Naval Headquarters was not struck, at least four sailors were killed when one of the bombs struck a sailors' billet. Ten to 20 persons (depending upon the source of the report) were reported injured. It seems the intruding aircraft were detected a little late to engage them by fighters. Evading the anti aircraft fire   the LTTE aircraft flew off after the strike on the sailors' barracks. As in the earlier cases, one bomb did not explode. In retaliation the air force fighters took off to hunt the raiders but could not succeed in doing so. After that the air force bombed Iranamadu air strip and its assets. Though the defence spokesman called it an abortive raid, it was not wholly so. The LTTE raiders succeeded at least partially in fulfilling their mission. And they managed to inflict casualty on the security forces while escaping unscathed. Two inquiries are being held apparently to find out how the LTTE planes managed to infiltrate through the air defence network without detection and carried out the raid. Though the raid did not create the panic reaction among the public seen last year after the Katunayake raid, it will surely give a psychological lift up to the sagging morale of the LTTE's support network both at home and abroad. So far they had to console themselves only with the rhetoric of the political commissar Nadesan on the impending LTTE response to the successful Sri Lankan offensive going on now for two years. The raid will also come as a shot in the arm for LTTE's defenders in frontlines who had been having a tough time for the last few months as the offensive gathered momentum. A far as the Sri Lanka public is concerned they appear to be taking it in the stride as one of the necessary evils of pursuing the military option. Thus the LTTE air raids appear to have lost their public threat potential enhanced by the very audacity of their ability to carry out such a raid well away from the LTTE home grounds in Wanni. Otherwise, the air raid would be classified as a small scale raid daringly carried out. But in comparison with the scale of the happenings in the battlefronts of the north, the air raid does not have the potential to cause significant impact on the ongoing operations. Except for tasking a special commando force to seek and destroy the LTTE's secret hangars in Wanni as the operation progresses, no other special action would probably be taken at the battlefront.  The LTTE operational planners probably know this limitation. The pressure on them must be mounting as the security forces advance had been causing exodus of civilians in thousands from battle zones. So they probably carried out the air raid for want of any other manageable operational task that could create some impact immediately. At the same time, operationally the raid gives some interesting insights – The ability of the LTTE air wing to penetrate the airspace in high security zones remains undiminished, despite the counter measures taken so far. As discussed in my earlier articles on the subject, light aircraft with small radar signatures, flying below the horizon can escape early radar detection. This is more so if they follow a flight path hugging the coastline contours to escape early detection. To overcome this weakness the anti aircraft defence network should include integrated ground observer posts along likely air ingress routes. This is a very time tested civil defence method against air raids in vogue for over seventy years! However, to be successful it needs committed people with well rehearsed procedure for identification and reporting. On detection, the anti aircraft guns need to put maximum number of shots in the air in the fastest time to get a hit. In a night raid visual firing is fraught with serious limitations as the city lights in the horizon confuse the vision. This will again require a lot of practice firing. In the past also the fighters had never been able to chase and kill the raiding aircraft. This is not surprising. Rarely will the fighters be able to respond in time unless they are positioned in operational readiness platforms (ORP) on the runway at the airfield. The mute point is, do such occasional raids by light aircraft merit tedious ORP status involving expensive hi-tech fighters designed for not only air combat but also ground support operations in counter insurgency? Only the security chiefs can answer this question. It is surprising that despite the large number of modern surveillance and early warning devices available to monitor the intruding aircraft from take off to reaching target area, the LTTE pilots had always managed to prevent detection till the last moment when they gain height. Perhaps the security forces would do well to study the successful tactics of these "amateur fighter pilots" a little more seriously to eliminate the air threat. There has been high rate of failure of the improvised bombs of the LTTE. This would show the LTTE has not been able to refine both the aerodynamics of the bomb design and the use of appropriate fuses to reduce the strike failure rate. I would only reiterate that such air raids of limited fire power are more effective only when carried out in tandem with ground operation. This was proved in Anuradhapura air base raid last year. The chances of the LTTE carrying out such a coordinated ground-air raid is more likely now than ever before, given the growing tail of administrative echelons of the advancing forces on long lines of communication from Kandy upwards. Looking at the well planned operations so far, the security forces would have already catered for such a possibility in their contingency plans. (Col. R Hariharan, a retired Military Intelligence specialist on South Asia, served as the head of intelligence of the Indian Peace Keeping Force in Sri Lanka 1987-90.He is associated with the South Asia Analysis Group and the Chennai Centre for China Studies. E-mail:colhari@yahoo.com)
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