1. The area of operation was spread across 250 km. The troops had to circumvent a lot of pak border infra to reach their objective. Use of helos to ferry troops isn’t unimaginable. As per reports, there were a flurry of helicopter sorties to all sorts of possible infil locations, usually in pairs, to confuse the hell out of anyone keeping a track on them. Use of multiple modes of incursion is totally plausible given the large number of camps hit and mix of Para SF and Ghatak troops being put to use.
2. Launchpads are usually under the umbrella of pak border posts and pillboxes to provide cover fire. Once SHTF, a quick evac becomes crucial. Plus helos can fly near undetected in the terrain at treetop level owing to the topographical features and lack of radar coverage in shadows of mountains.
3. Arty fire is business as usual stuff. Even cross border raids are nothing new. The whole affair was supposed to be public and with a visible bloody nose. There were reports of a raid before this raid that were immediately quashed down by the army. The earlier reports of the Raid coincided with declaration of no fly zone over Pakistani turf and visibly increased Pak military tempo.
Pakistan has played right into the game, if they admit there was a raid, it would be a major loss of H&D and they would have to publicly up the ante in a manner that doesn’t involve non state actors. If they don’t admit there was a raid, that’s a green light to India to keep carrying out raids like these. Indian side expects infiltration, they have been dealing with it for the last 30 years. They have put up mechanisms in place to dissuade infiltration, multiple border fences, infra red sensors, ground motion sensors, infrastructure that took billions of dollars and decades to put in place. Pakistan OTOH neither has the time nor budget to prepare for two way traffic instead of the one way they were very used to.
That’s a lot of information.
I don’t know which sectors were involved, I have heard 5 and 7. But I can tell you one thing. No one heard any helis around bhimber and samahni (in the dead of the night), the two sectors I have seen mentioned in papers. And this information does not come from journalists, most of whom can’t even tell you where these areas are, but locals who happen to live in these areas. Having said this, of course one cannot deny that these helis may have had super stealthy silencers or they were not used in these areas. Of course there was a lot of cross border firing at the time, but that is the norm there, and life goes on almost as per normal.
My conclusion, as far as these two sectors are concerned, is:
Either there was overhype in Indian media or these ops were conducted in such a way that locals are not aware of anything.
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