Its been 4 days since the 100 girls went missing, as the Nigerian army desperately search for the missing girls. The Nigerian Air Force is deploying a dizzing array of resources and assets to join the search for the missing school girls who are between the ages of 11 and 19.
The first wave of equipment dispatched are the most sophisticated aerial surveillance system in the NAF:
ATR-42 Maritime Patrol Plane.
Beechcraft King Air 350i Electronic & Reconnaissance (ELINT) Plane.
Utility /Multipurpose Helicopters
Followed shortly are the combat element of the operation :
NAF Special Forces Regiment
CH-3 Rainbow Armed Drone.
In a symbolic gesture of commitment, Chief of Air Staff Abubakar Sadique temporarily relocates to the Nigerian Air Force Base at Maiduguri, from where the search and rescue efforts are being coordinated.
This is not the first time Secondary school girls gets abducted. In April 2014, 276 female students were kidnapped from Government Secondary School in the town of Chibok, in Borno State, northeast Nigeria. But unlike in 2014, the Nigerian military seem better equipped to conduct complex search and rescue operations of this nature.
Sorry to burst your bubbles, I don’t think the deployment of ‘eyes in the sky’ will help much, massive deployment of HUMINT is the only solution to such problems. The area of interest is just too vast and contains thousands of hideout. We just have to acknowledge the immensity of the problem at hand and deploy enough resources to solve it. DMI should have ‘assets’ in every other village in the North East who will notify the Joint Command if the village head farts or his son gets home an hour later than usual. We must find a way of ensuring that at Lear 70% of the funds voted for Lafia Dole is spent on it. God bless Nigeria.
LikeLike
The immense size and vastness of the area makes HUMINT utterly useless. It’s just too vast. This is where signals intelligences and round the clock surveillance, especially at night comes in. Its easier fir aircraft or drones with thermal imaging to pick up unusual movements of people from stand-off distances than human agent’s prowling 66,000 sqr kilometre forest looking for the girls? Cmon !
LikeLike
I simply do not believe that BH loaded 110 girls into a Mi-8 or C130s, those girls were loaded into at least 10 vehicles. That kind of operation would have involved nothing less that 20 to 30 vehicles (including Technicas) and those vehicles must have passed by villages on their way to and from Dapchi. If DMI had put sufficient ‘assets’ on the ground (spies in the villages), no way BH would have gotten away without anybody noticing. It’s not as if they are really keen on Stealth anyway. If I were BH terrorists was to split the girls into smaller less conspicuous groups (of say 5 girls or less handled by one or two men) and scatter them temporarily. I doubt if an ATR crew or a CH-3 operator will pay a special attention to a Famer going to the farm with his four daughters carrying baskets on their heads. Of course he’s looking for a group of 20 to 30 heavily armed men at the back of technicals positioned in front and st the back of some buses.
I sincerely hope and pray BH is dumb, move the girls about en mass so we can get our girls back. This is one abduction too many!
LikeLiked by 1 person
Your points are valid to a degree, but you are missing the big picture here. Before rescue operations can be carried there must be accurate intelligence and real-time information on the situation. These intel must be carried out inconspicuously from standoff distances, lest Boko Haram finds out and takes measures to thwart any attack. Stand-off Intel can only be carried out by surveillance planes, ELINT capable platforms, drones and satellites.
Before U.S seals carried out the operation that killed Osama, he was under 24 hours round the clock surveillance from Reaper drones and sattelites for years. That mission was a success because of the real time info gathered thanks to ELINT.
LikeLike