The Wider Repercussions Of A Daring Air Raid
This publication previously reported how the Tamil Tiger Air Wing terrorist group launched a completely unexpected air raid on Bandanaraike International Airport, Colombo, Sri Lanka, using two Zlin 143 light attack bombers (“Expecting the Unexpected”, April 2 issue).
On March 26, these airborne “freedom fighters”, as they see themselves, suddenly materialized at low level and dropped three 100lb bombs on the Air Force barracks. They killed three airmen and injured 17 others in their midnight raid.
It was like a replay of the attack on the World Trade Center, but writ small. The repercussions of the Tamil Tiger attack, however, are writ large.
The bold venture has been debated at length by the Sri Lankan parliament, with accusations and recriminations flowing freely back and forth. The controversy provides universal lessons about airport security.
The Sri Lankan Air Force had indications as early as October 2005 that the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) had acquired an offensive air capability. The knowledge was rooted in an incident over the Northern Jaffna Peninsula. An Israeli built Searcher Mark II Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) was lost in the skies over guerrilla dominated Wanni on October 19, 2005.
Air Force officials claimed publicly that it had happened due to a “technical fault” while on a “training mission.” The LTTE, on the other hand, responded with a claim that media reports that the UAV was downed “either by a radar guided gun or by an airborne attack” were mere speculation. To some, the LTTE’s vehement denial had appeared a little disingenuous at the time.
Usually, a terrorist organization will claim credit notwithstanding that it might actually have been an accident. It now appears that the LTTE was trying to hide any “premature” exposure of their air strike capability. Very defensively, they deflected any suggestions that one of their aircraft might have shot down the UAV.
According to Colombo’s Sunday Times of October 23, 2005: “The Searcher Mark II was 23 nautical miles north of the Air Force base in Vavuniya cruising at an altitude of 10,000 feet at a speed of 75 knots. Just then, staff at the Ground Control Centre saw pictures disappear from the television screen. Three different warnings suddenly appeared simultaneously across the screen. One warned of engine failure, the second indicated a generator failure and the third a communications failure. On no prior occasion when a UAV was lost had all three warnings appeared on the monitor at the same moment. More importantly, the communications link was powered by a battery that worked the onboard day-night television camera and it had an endurance of 15 minutes if the generator failed.”
This was indeed strange. Never in the past had all three systems packed up simultaneously. “If either the engine and the generator (or both) packed up, we should still have been left with 15 minutes of battery power to work the TV cameras,” a senior Air Force officer in Colombo told the Sunday Times. The instant failure of the engine, the generator and the battery system, all at the same moment, could occur only if the UAV had been suddenly destroyed.
The Searcher had actually been above 10,000ft and theoretically out of range of the Igla surface to air missiles known to be in the possession of the Tigers. Sri Lankan Air Force higher ups decided to internally attribute the loss to the rebels having acquired a radar-guided gun. They could not definitively deny that the rebels may have attacked the drone with a light aircraft, but it was thought unlikely.
Israeli Aircraft Industries (IAI), maker of the US$2M drone, agreed that the drone’s downing was highly unusual and sent a team to Colombo. The LTTE’s Internet presence (called Tamilnet), however, went out of its way to convince all and sundry that the LTTE had not shot down the UAV.
On October 23, 2005 their website stated: “Media reports that the Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) belonging to Sri Lanka Air Force (SLAF) that came down in Wanni on 19 October was downed either by radar-guided gun or by an airborne attack by the Liberation Tigers were mere speculations and not backed up by concrete evidence, experts contacted by Tamilnet said.”
SLAF officials publicly picked up on the same theme and euphemistically attributed the loss to a technical fault. Despite that, the Sunday Times reporter discovered that both the secret court of inquiry and the team from IAI had concluded from debris showing in the final frames of the UAV’s TV camera footage, that the Searcher II had indeed been shot down.
The reporter also discovered that Air Force Headquarters had then ordered the operators of the UAV to co-ordinate all their aerial operations with the air defense radar. The idea was to obtain a radar detection of any unidentified aircraft in the skies whenever the UAV was airborne. The SLAF was apparently beginning to take seriously the periodic reports of aircraft being sighted over the peninsula.
However, no-one in authority associated the drone attack with a possible aerial LTTE offensive threat to the capital, a resemblance of pre-9/11 complacency.
Aftermath countermeasures are now in effect in Sri Lanka’s capital city. Standby generators in high-rise buildings are not allowed to be armed in case Colombo has to be blacked out suddenly. An Air Defense Cell has been formed in Army HQ and a senior SLAF HQ’s Officer appointed as Air Defense Commander. A ready reaction bomb disposal Team is on standby.
A civil spotter network has been set up and a number publicized for the public to call in any sightings. The Government has appealed to India for more Air Defense radars and air defense weapons. The Sri Lankan capital has been placed on a war footing.
More details of the attack on the Katunayake Airbase have now emerged. After the attack, two K8 trainers were prepared within 20 minutes to chase the attackers. The first one launched; however, the pilot of the second one dropped his side-arm while manning his airplane. It unfortunately discharged, wounding him in the foot and he limped off to his air station’s medical aid post. He was the 21st casualty of the Tiger’s sneak air attack.
While not exactly on a Pearl Harbor scale, the bombing attack has cancelled out the truce. The muted hostilities of the previously undeclared Eelam War IV are now a reality.
After the downing of the Searcher, the findings of its own Court of Inquiry and the IAI Team plus the LTTE’s deniability ploy, the inability of the Sinhalese majority government to see it all coming is yet another object lesson in the total fallibility of intelligence.