The Mumbai attack represents the merger of the terrorist and the iG. For five days, from Nov 30 to Dec 1, somewhere between 10 and 40 operatives captured and held the world’s attention by pulling off at least seven attacks in the high visibility heart of Mumbai, India.

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The Guerrilla Element. The Mumbai attackers employed old-fashioned guerrilla tactics. They used speedboats for rapid insertion. They were broken down into several small assault teams. They hit soft targets and they used small arms, grenades, and explosives in their attacks.

The Terrorist Element. The attack was very visible; there was no attempt at stealth. They took hundreds of hostages, some of whom they tortured and killed. The casualty figures were around 170 with another 300 or more maimed (none of these figures are final at the time of this writing). The targets were not political or military; as usual, the victims were non-combatants. The sites they attacked were not government buildings, they were innocuous civilian hangouts like the Leopold Café, the Chhatrapati Shivaji train terminal, the Oberoi Hotel, the Trident Hotel, the Taj Mahal Hotel, and the Chabad House Jewish Center (the only nonpartisan objective). The attackers were members of the Deccan Mujaheddin, an AQ affiliate that apparently operates out of the tribal regions of Pakistan. They were not executing a guerrilla hit-and-run, their goal was clearly to wreak as much death and destruction as possible.

The iG Element. News reports claim that the attackers carried handheld GPS navigators, the tool that probably guided the speedboats to their insertion points and then would get the teams very quickly to their targets. No more landing at the wrong pier or running to the wrong building. No more taking the wrong turn down the dead end alley, now you can get where you have to be when you have to be there. (Fox News Report, "Technology Gave Mumbai Terrorists Tactical Edge," Wednesday, December 03, 2008)

They also carried satellite phones and BlackBerrys ("Gunmen Used Technology as a Tactical Tool, Mumbai Attackers Had GPS Units, Satellite Maps," Emily Wax, Washington Post Foreign Service, Wednesday, December 3, 2008). These would obviously enhance command and control and mission coordination. The Mumbai mob used satellite phones and Voice over Internet Protocol (VOIP) in Pakistan, thus making their calls hard to trace. Once the attacks were underway the terrorists took victims’ cell phones and swapped the SIM cards to further confuse anyone hoping to intercept their communications. The teams could have easily reported all the way back to Pakistan given these tools—no more waiting breathlessly in a cave with the shortwave on and a cup of chai in your hand! These devices would eliminate the time-honored tradition of synchronizing watches or waiting for the initial casualty-producing burst that kicks off the entire operation. My guess— just a hunch—is that there were probably multiple observation posts manned by spotters who could vector assault teams to their targets and away from Indian security forces. Once on the ground, the attackers monitored the Indian response by watching TV. They also may have monitored Internet reports, blogs, YouTube and other sources of streaming and constant situation updates.

Reports state that the Mumbai mob used the Internet to dig up information on their planned objectives. Apparently they downloaded what they needed, then burned mission CDs containing detailed maps and Google Earth images of their targets. The only terrorist captured has told police that he was shown video and satellite images of the targets before the attack! No more paying off desk clerks and cab drivers to snap drive-by photos or pace off intersections—simply go on line and do a cyber recon. Welcome to point-and-click mission preparation and rehearsal.

An internal security expert at the Center for Policy Research in New Delhi, India, told the Washington Post that, "they were not sailors, but they were able to use sophisticated GPS navigation tools and detailed maps to sail from Karachi to Mumbai."

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