Once again and I can not repeat this enough: I want them highlighted, targeted, and destroyed – so spread these articles – tell people about their capabilities – and lets put these fucks in shallow graves.
The last article covered the some of their unfortunate capabilities and skills. Just as a review; below is a quick review of what we discussed
1. Tactical and Disciplined Marksmanship
One of the more concerning element of the attack was the conservative yet very effective marksmanship of the LeT terrorists. This was the first terror attack that utilized bullets, not explosives, to kill 200 plus people…all of which were killed with disciplined shots of two or three rounds per victim.
What’s even more impressive – there were only 10 LeT terrorists involved from beginning to end, the entire operation! Ten…10…2 less than a dozen bad guys surgically killed an overwhelming number of people in 58 hours; not to mention, lit the Taj Mahal, The Jewish House, and the Trident on fire. Only once, they switched from semi-automatic to automatic and sprayed a police vehicle they ended up commandeering. The rest of the operation, they were on semi-automatic making every bullet count.
2. Effective Mission Planning and Execution
After multiple nighttime maritime rendezvous at sea, after the pirating of a fishing vessel, crossing the beach into India, downing disguises, hailing taxis, emplacing IED’s under the taxi drivers seats, and simultaneous denotation of those IED’s – the team acted out the rest of their plan.
The 10-man team broke up into 2 teams. One team was 6 strong (A-Team) and the other was 4 strong (B-Team). B-Team’s mission was to create chaos, distract everyone from A-Team’s mission. B-Team targeted several restaurants and bars frequented by westerners, the train station, and random drive by shootings of other places in Mumbai. All the while, A-Team silently split up into three 2-man teams and took 3 hotels hostage.
Yes, 2 men per hotel – one of which was the Taj Mahal.
3. Cross Border Command and Control
During the entire operation the terrorists were “handled” by Pakistani ISI Intelligence Officers located in Pakistan. There was constant communication, direction, motivation and, of course, prayers in the attackers ears.
The ISI navigated the teams through Mumbai via the Internet and media reports allowing them to avoid obstacles. The ISI provided real time intelligence and early warnings for every move law enforcement made. The ISI talked each member of the team into fighting to the death or killing themselves, with the exception of one survivor.
Now, here is the scary part – their use of commercial technology to hide their communications, navigate their entire operation, and ultimately mission success. Lets get started.
- Garmin Rhinos: After the attack and during the investigation, several Garmin Rhinos were recovered. For those of you that don’t know, the Garmin Rhino is both a personal GPS and line of sight non-encrypted radio (walkie talkie). All of which were loaded with primary, secondary, and escape routes, highlighting the amount of detailed proactive planning that took place. These routes kept the attackers on track and on time with their plan. Another feature that make Rhinos very powerful is the ability to integrate and see the location of other Rhinos within a 5-kilometer radius. This provided incredible situational awareness for all the teams; knowing where each other were in their individual routes.
- Google Earth: A majority of their reconnaissance was done virtually with the accuracy that Google Earth provides. This also provided all the geographical landmarks for the Over the Beach operations, target studies of the bars, train station, and hotels attacked. Google Earth also provided a number of grid coordinates that could be preloaded into their Garmin Rhinos. We all know how powerful a tool Google can be – so do the bad guys.
- Electronic Dead Drops: During the targeting phase; ISI and David Headley of Chicago, Illinois communicated through email dead drops. For those of you that didn’t know – Headley was the point man for the reconnaissance missions into Mumbai. He is a US citizen – who pretended to be a Jew when traveling for his missions. Anyway, he communicated with ISI via multiple email accounts leaving draft messages in fragments across different accounts. He and ISI were very disciplined with this technique – neither party never went back to an email account after checking it. They logged in once; collected the information needed and never went back.
- Skype: Handlers in Pakistan controlled the attackers during the entire attack via Skype calls. Skype, as most of you know, is very secure and non attributable to the point of call origin. This allowed the ISI handlers to control the attackers without interruption or fear of intercept.
- Satellite Phones: All the maritime operations and Over The Beach (OTB) operations allow constant contact between the attackers and ISI during infiltration. ISI insured success with a very thorough communication plan and satellite phones played the biggest part. Very secure and reliable no matter where you are on the planet.
A fair amount of technology was used before and during the attacks the promoted mission success. These tactics and techniques are no joke and prove that our adversaries are far from dumb and advancing every day. Please spread the word!
Be more aware, be more secure, be more vigilant – be the sheepdog!
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