Every year, since long 2 life
changing and world eyeball attention grabbing events are remembered. One is the
9/11 terrorist attack in USA and the other 26/11 terrorist attack in India.
People write various memories of that day and owing to a concatenation of
circumstances I had some involvement of the events of 26/11 and share those
experiences and my own opinions. I claim no expert knowledge but just share
various observations, hearsay comments and with 10 years gone by hopefully this
has passed what is called the statute of limitations. Also this is not meant to
malign or cast aspersions but to share my opinion based on whatever little
knowledge I have in layman terms.
On that fateful evening I was
working in a role in the defence industry and so had begun to understand
various security issues at a more professional level. One of the products that
we sold was the Bullet Proof Jackets (BPJ) to the various security agencies in
India.
Firstly, a slightly important educative
digression. The BPJ is a misnomer as understood by the layman as a phrase to
describe a product. It’s a Jacket, expected to provide protection against
bullets. However the word Proof is misleading as commonly understood. This
product is not Bullet Proof but in reality Bullet Resistant. This means that
one can still get killed easily as will be explained below.
Nextly imagine a security personnel
and the likely threats they may face in their daily jobs. This can range from
someone who may punch them, to using a stick, knife, sword, pistol, handgun,
automatic high power gun or a sniper rifle. Now each of these are as different
from each other as chalk and cheese technically. Even within a particular
category there can be variations. So whatever is the protection one is supposed
to be wearing it will work ONLY against the specific threat for which it is
designed.
For example you can be wearing a so called BPJ and get knifed to death
easily. Sorry it may not protect you. If a local police force procures a BPJ
that protects against the pistols and handguns used by local goons and then
uses that against sophisticated guns of terrorists, bullets will go in like a
hot knife through butter. One may as well use a newspaper for protection.
Even within a pistol/handgun
depending upon the kind of ammunition used there are huge variations. A product
designed to protect against soft nosed bullet will fail against a hardened
bullet. A product designed for say a MP5 gun can fail against a AK47 and that
which is designed for AK47 soft bullet can fail against a hard bullet. Now how
about its performance in water when used by the Navy?
You have protective gear worn by security personnel to handle riots, preplanned commando assaults, unexpected terror attacks, outright war like situations and each of these are so different in design, performance, protection, cost that the fact is that we in India just do not have the money or attitude to plan for this variation.
Now how much of a body is it
supposed to protect ? Front and back or just front ? The sides ? The neck? The
groin ? Upper arms ? Head ? Forehead ? All or just a few ? Based on all this
the total weight can vary anywhere between 5 kgs to 13 kgs and costs anywhere
between Rs. 25,000 to Rs. 150,000 or more.
Now add to this the fact that
a soldier or policeman can be a male/female and is supposed to be fighting an
adversary and the whole situation gets even more complex in terms of design,
weight, flexibility, when they need to carry other stuff like ammunition etc.
To most the knowledge and understanding of such aspects comes from watching a
TV show like 24, Law & Order, NYPD Blue or the typical Bruce Willis Die
Hard movies. Reality is so far removed from reel in such matters that its not
even funny the level of ignorance it breeds. They are fertile ground for
WhatsApp university graduation even if they add to the body of knowledge.
Now lets take a ideal, even if
impractical situation where one designs a protection that encompasses
everything listed and is also lightweight – the cost is likely be so high that
it becomes impractical to use because if damaged, you discard it. This apart
from the fact that after a certain shelf life also one may need to discard it. In
the real world especially where the military is concerned these aspects are
well understood and just to provide a theoretical scenario.
Imagine a house, inside which
there are armed terrorists and need to be stormed. The first folks who enter are
very likely to lose lives, so they get maximum protection so they can shoot
first and clear the way. The level of protection as each subsequent member
behind comes in reduces so that a larger group has minimum weight, maximum
everything else to prevail in a given situation. In short any BPJ for that
matter is like the proverbial cat with nine lives. It does not protect you from
instant death unless you are using the wrong product, but gives you that extra
chance to save yourself in combat.
The sheer limitations of the experts in the field compounded by limited understanding of the administration, complicated by many a insensitive political class and a jingoistic public together make a deadly combination when it comes to matters defense and security.
The next part in this saga is linked below.
Part 2 of this blog
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