The U.S. military is examining the terrorist attack in Mumbai, India, that took place late last year so that the United States will be better protected in case of similar attacks, according to U.S. Northern Command and North American Aerospace Defense Command chief Gen. Victor Renuart.
On Nov. 26, 2008, terrorists traveling from Pakistan hijacked an Indian fishing trawler and entered Mumbai on a rubber dingy. Three days later, 10 coordinated shooting and bombing attacks resulted 164 deaths and 308 people being wounded.
“I think we’re foolish if we don’t analyze each of these kinds of events to see if there’s a gap or a seam that we might have in our own surveillance or intelligence analysis or even in our execution,” Renuart told Inside the Air Force during a May 20 telephone interview. “There are things that we’ve learned from Mumbai that I think many agencies in government to include [Department of Homeland Security] of course are working to ensure that we don’t have a similar gap in ours.”
Renuart did not go into specific lessons learned from the attacks, but said “prudent military operational planning” will look into the United States’ system for handling such actions, including the terrorists’ means of access and the homeland’s ability to conduct operational security, “to make sure we don’t leave the same vulnerability in the United States.”
The United States “absolutely” has contingency plans to address such an attack, and NORTHCOM would execute “any U.S. national decision to interdict something at sea” through its naval or air components in partnership with the Coast Guard and DHS, according to Renuart.
In the event of a similar attack, Renuart’s NORAD role is to provide the warning of a threat and create a “picture in the maritime domain to decide if a threat is real and how best to address it.” At that time, the general transitions to his NORTHCOM responsibility to make a recommendation to the Secretary of Defense on required enforcement actions, he said.
“We do have the capability to use forces from, for example, my NORAD alert force in an air-to-surface role should that be the decision of the secretary or the president,” the general said, noting the importance of using multirole air-and-ground surveillance aircraft for homeland defense missions. -- Jason Simpson
AIRFORCE-20-21-6