Final checks on the AK-47 rifles. Final checks on the stacks of ammunition magazines and grenades stuffed into olive-green knapsacks. The four men shoved fistfuls of almonds into their mouths, chewing quickly in the darkness and swallowing. Small, light, and packed with energy, mountain almonds were as essential to them as their weapons. The high-protein bites would have to sustain them for at least the next eight hours.

Dressed in deceptive Indian Army combat fatigues and shaven clean to blend in, the men emerged from their hidden launch point below a ridgeline overlooking a vast expanse of frontier territory. Under complete darkness, they trekked nearly one kilometre down to the heavily guarded Uri Brigade base in Jammu and Kashmir, close to the Line of Control. Their mission was not unique. Indian military facilities had been attacked by Pakistani terrorists before. Just eight months earlier, in January 2016, another four infiltrators had stormed the Pathankot Air Force base, killing seven security personnel before being eliminated.

But these men were unaware that what they were about to do would change India like nothing else had in the past twenty-five years. It would push the country across a military point of no return. Above all, it would awaken a monster Pakistan arrogantly believed would remain asleep forever.

Before sunrise, the four infiltrated the Uri Army camp with precision, clearly guided by handlers who had ‘wargamed’ the attack using maps and models. They moved swiftly towards tents where Indian soldiers were sleeping. By the time the sun rose, chaos had engulfed the camp. Seventeen soldiers were already dead. Two more succumbed later in hospital, bringing the toll to nineteen. In a valley long accustomed to the spillage of blood, the Uri ambush stood apart. It was not only the scale of casualties but also the arrogance of the attack that ignited unprecedented anger. Families were still grieving the Pathankot martyrs when this fresh wound was inflicted.

Confident as always, Pakistan likely assumed India’s wrath would be restricted to outrage and diplomatic protests. This was the pattern they knew well. But this time, they made a devastating miscalculation. India would use precisely its reputation for inaction as a weapon to deliver a revenge never seen before.

By the morning of 18 September, blanket coverage of the Uri attack dominated television screens and the internet. A chill ran through Delhi’s Raisina Hill as emergency meetings were convened in the country’s most secret war rooms. Prime Minister Narendra Modi and National Security Adviser Ajit Doval presided over one such high-level meeting.

It was here that two secret decisions were made: (1) India would retaliate militarily to deliver a crushing response to Uri, and (2) the Prime Minister and ministers would publicly maintain the façade of restraint until the mission was complete. A carefully crafted political masquerade began the very next morning.

Meanwhile, hundreds of kilometres away in Siachen, Maj. Mike Tango, a young Special Forces officer, sat grimly watching television images of the Uri camp. The calm on his face hid the fury consuming him. Uri was his area, his hunting ground. Away on a two-month mission in the glacier with a small team, he felt a knife in his heart as familiar images flashed before him.

As second-in-command of an elite Para-SF unit, Maj. Tango had spent a decade in Jammu and Kashmir, with more than twenty successful anti-terror operations behind him. But this morning was different. “We knew the balloon had gone up. This wasn’t a small incident. There was no question of sitting silent. This was beyond breaking point,” he later recalled.

The call he expected soon came from his Commanding Officer. Gathering his men, Maj. Tango rushed back to the Valley, reaching Dras that very night of 18 September—a date seared into their memory.

The following morning, the masquerade began. Former Army Chief Gen. V.K. Singh urged restraint, saying India could not act on emotion. Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar declared the Uri soldiers’ sacrifice would not go in vain, calling for “firm action” without revealing details. Junior ministers were assigned the role of striking a fiery tone. Subhash Bhamre, Minister of State for Defence, declared bluntly that it was time “to hit back.”

By 19 September, two more top-level meetings took place, one chaired by Home Minister Rajnath Singh, who had cancelled his Russia trip, and another by Prime Minister Modi himself. Army Chief Gen. Dalbir Singh was handed a clear political directive: the Special Forces now had permission to plan and execute a retaliatory strike with full government backing.

History was being written. In the next 24 hours, the Army would prepare a devastating revenge plan. By 20 September, Maj. Tango’s team had reached Srinagar, and Lt. Gen. D.S. Hooda, Northern Army Commander, held in his hands a detailed list of mission options. These plans, encrypted and precise, were ready to be placed before the government.

The Countdown to Revenge — From Uri’s Ashes to the Final March Across the LoC

“We just needed clearance. In the SF, we are war-ready at all times. When we are not in operations, we are preparing for them. There’s a purpose behind everything we do,” Maj. Tango said, his voice steady and reflective of a soldier’s instinct to live in readiness.

At Army Headquarters in Delhi, the atmosphere was tense but determined. Vice Chief of the Army Staff, Lt. Gen. Bipin Rawat—who would later become the Chief—was leading the planning with unwavering focus. For him, the tragedy of 18 September was not only a national wound but also a personal one. As a young Captain in the early 1980s, he had commanded a Gorkha Rifles company in Uri, later returning as a brigade commander in one of the most volatile areas of the Kashmir Valley, and years afterward as a Major General to lead the 19 Division in Baramulla. Now, decades later, his experience in the region, combined with his infantry training, gave him an intimate understanding of what lay ahead. Unknown to him at the time, his decisive role in shaping India’s response would soon weigh heavily when the government later chose him to lead one of the largest armies in the world.

Inside those guarded rooms, the options were carefully laid out in columns. The first column listed the potential targets across the border. The second marked their exact distance inside Pakistan-occupied Kashmir. The third contained intelligence about terrorist numbers and the infrastructure at each site. The fourth catalogued men, equipment, logistics, and back-up support required. But it was the final column that cut to the heart—it gave the possible casualty figure India could expect for each strike. Some entries showed the prospect of zero casualties if resources were maximized, while others predicted definite losses, in some cases double digits.

“The options provided were as specific as possible. The government would have to take a decision based on these inputs, which included probable casualty count. We spared no details,” Maj. Tango recalled. The list was reviewed through the tightest chain of command, with “need to know” rules enforced at every level. Intelligence Bureau and RAW officials added their assessments, and a consolidated brief was placed before the government.

By 20 September, Maj. Tango had reached Srinagar. He went directly to a special operations room where his Commanding Officer, who had just returned from Uri, was waiting. The bond between them stretched back a decade, when his CO had been the team leader guiding a young officer named Mike. Now, with Mike as second-in-command, the Colonel addressed him with a gravity that carried hesitation: “Chhote, serious matter hai.”

Orders had come posting Maj. Tango out of the valley to a new course elsewhere in the country, a month later. Such officers were jokingly described as “PONI”—posted out, not interested. But for him, there was no question of detachment that morning.

“I was given the option to either stay back and monitor the operation, or lead the operation and go in. It didn’t take me a moment to decide,” he said later. Looking his CO in the eye, he pressed further, “Sir, aap tension mein lag rahe ho. How can you be in a dilemma, sir? Just give me the order. No hesitation.” Then, with a half-smile, he added: “Jis cheez ke liye SF join kiya tha, woh mauka ab aaya hai aur aap option de rahe ho.”

Twenty minutes later, Maj. Tango and his 19 men were packed into squad vehicles, rushing on a seventy-kilometre drive to Baramulla. By midnight, they arrived at a post on the LoC in Uri. The secrecy was such that even the soldiers chosen to execute the mission had no knowledge of what exactly awaited them. Their COs had given only one order: move to forward posts in Uri, Kupwara, and Rajouri sectors and wait on twelve-hour notice.

Tango and his team advanced silently on foot to avoid detection. Helicopters were out of the question—mountain echoes would betray them instantly, and flying close to Pakistani positions was too dangerous. The night of 20 September carried a different charge. Morale was high, spirits unbroken. Their very presence at the LoC signaled offensive intent. As Maj. Tango later said: “When SF men get close to the LoC, alarm bells ring on the other side. No matter how much you try to mask your arrival, there’s something about SF soldiers. They just know.”

Across the LoC, two more Para-SF teams were moving into position: one in Poonch and another in Kupwara. Each had its designated launch pad. The terrain was hostile, mountainous, and unforgiving. But the weather in September was still mild, giving them a window before winter closed in. Among the reinforcements was a special Ghatak platoon, formed with soldiers from the units that had lost comrades in the Uri attack. Their terrain expertise was invaluable, and their presence ensured the mission was as much about retribution as it was about strategy. For them, every step forward was an act of remembrance.

Yet, even as India prepared for a historic retaliation, Pakistan fanned the flames. On 21 September, at the United Nations General Assembly in New York, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif once again raised the Kashmir issue. Less than four days after Uri, his words poured salt on open wounds:

“Peace and normalization between Pakistan and India cannot be achieved without a resolution of the Kashmir dispute. . . . Our predictions have now been confirmed by events. A new generation of Kashmiris has risen spontaneously against India’s illegal occupation—demanding freedom from occupation. Burhan Wani, the young leader murdered by Indian forces, has emerged as the symbol of the latest Kashmiri Intifada, a popular and peaceful freedom movement, led by Kashmiris, young and old, men and women, armed only with an undying faith in the legitimacy of their cause, and a hunger for freedom in their hearts.”

These remarks, glorifying a slain militant commander and justifying unrest, only deepened the sense of urgency in Delhi and within the Indian Army’s ranks. The countdown to an unprecedented mission had already begun.

The Message That Changed Everything — From Sharif’s Words to the Final Orders

The message was unmissable. Not only had Sharif dispensed with any bilateral decency of referring to the Uri attack, he had in fact found it fit to venerate a man India had designated a terrorist, and whose group had been responsible for hundreds of terror attacks on Kashmiri civilians. No one had expected Sharif to offer anything more than the usual diplomatic platitudes about how India and Pakistan are both victims of terror. But they had not expected the bare effrontery of choosing to invoke an enemy of the Indian state. In India, while public anger turned into a virtual call to war, Sharif’s insolent speech was the confirmation the political leadership needed that their political masquerade was working. But the true master stroke in the elaborate theatre would be delivered 3 days later. And the man to deliver it would be the Indian Prime Minister himself.

On 24 September, at 1755 hours, thousands gathered for a public rally in Kozhikode, Kerala. The Prime Minister, silent since the Uri attack except for tweets, had the media’s gaze fixed on him. What would he say about Uri? Would he respond to Nawaz Sharif, a man he had cheerfully diverted his helicopter to visit in Lahore less than a year before? Would the Prime Minister satiate a public that was looking for Pakistan to be taught a lesson? It was time for Modi to play his part in a masterful facade that was now fully in motion:

“A leader [Nawaz Sharif] is reading the speech of a terrorist. I wish to speak to Pakistani citizens.
Before 1947 your forefathers loved this entire land. India is ready to fight a war. A war against poverty. Let India and Pakistan fight a war to end social evils, illiteracy and unemployment. Let us see who wins.”

The media and the public were stunned. This was not the fierce rebuttal many had expected. Instead, it was a call for a different kind of war — one against poverty, illiteracy, and social evils. The crowd wanted fire, but the Prime Minister gave them restraint. It was a deliberate tactic, part of the deception carefully designed to keep India’s true response hidden. To the world, India appeared full of rhetoric but short of real action. Behind the scenes, however, the storm was gathering force.

At the LoC in Uri, Maj. Tango and his men were now on their fourth day forward-deployed. The Special Forces soldiers, trained for action, found waiting harder than combat itself. “We were very calm. Since we were so close to Pakistan Army posts, we had little or no movement. They may have suspected SF presence on the LoC, but being spotted was not an option,” Maj. Tango recalled. Their discipline was absolute. Not a step could be taken without risk, and not a sound could escape in the silence of the mountains.

As team leader, Maj. Tango had personally chosen every soldier in his group. He knew each man’s strength, skill, and courage. Nineteen lives depended on his judgment. The men conducted only small reconnaissance patrols, never straying far. The wait was filled with tension, the kind that makes silence heavier than bullets. Every soldier knew his role, every outcome had been discussed, and yet the anticipation made time crawl. Coordination with the two other Special Forces teams — one at Kupwara and another at Poonch — was crucial, for the strikes had to be synchronized despite differences in terrain and distance.

From their forward post, the soldiers also heard the Prime Minister’s Kozhikode speech. They knew External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj was to address the United Nations General Assembly within two days. Her speech was carefully prepared, and its tone was not anger but pain. “Did we impose any pre-condition when Prime Minister Modi travelled from Kabul to Lahore? What pre-conditions? We took the initiative to resolve issues not on the basis of conditions, but on the basis of friendship! We have in fact attempted a paradigm of friendship in the last two years which is without precedent. We conveyed Eid greetings to the Prime Minister of Pakistan, wished success to his cricket team, extended good wishes for his health and well-being. Did all this come with preconditions attached? And what did we get in return? Pathankot, Bahadur Ali and Uri.” The words seemed to express disappointment rather than aggression, but in truth they were part of the larger mask India wore before the world.

On 26 September, the long wait finally shifted. Orders reached the teams: Maj. Tango’s men were tasked with two terror launch pads across Uri, while the other two Special Forces units each received one target. In all, four launch pads — run by the ISI and shielded by the Pakistan Army — were marked for destruction. The soldiers knew the countdown had begun.

Over the next hours, Maj. Tango’s team carried out the most delicate reconnaissance possible. Observation revealed that Pakistani posts overlooking Uri were not especially alert. To add to this, human intelligence played a key role. Four assets — two local villagers from PoK and two Pakistani nationals who had once been part of Jaish-e-Mohammed but turned by Indian agencies — confirmed the details of the targets. This information removed any remaining doubt.

Weapons and equipment were checked for the last time. The men carried M4A1 carbines, Israeli Tavor rifles, grenade launchers, Galil sniper rifles, and night-vision gear. But despite their readiness, Maj. Tango’s chief concern remained. “As Team Leader, my concern was to get all my men out safely. I had chosen the best men for the job. But the one thing bothering me was the de-induction — the return. That’s where I knew I could lose guys,” he admitted. Entering enemy territory was dangerous, but it was the return, uphill under fire, that posed the greatest threat.

On 27 September, shortly before noon, the teams received the final go-ahead. Seven days of tense waiting were over. That night, at 2030 hours, Maj. Tango’s team crossed the Line of Control and began a four-hour trek downhill into Pakistan-occupied Kashmir. Their movement was designed to be invisible. But as they drew near, Pakistani Army posts suddenly fired illumination rounds into the night sky. For the soldiers, it was a moment of dread. If detected, they would be easy prey. Then, as suddenly as it had begun, the light ended. Maj. Tango ordered his men to stay down for twenty minutes before moving again.

A kilometre from the target, he split the team into two groups. His own nine-man team crept forward, but just 200 metres from the launch pad, they froze. Gunfire echoed from ahead. Through his night-vision goggles, Maj. Tango could see it was speculative firing — uncertain bursts, not targeted shots. They had not been seen. Still, it was a warning. He faced a choice: attack immediately or hold back. Slowly retreating, he gathered his men and whispered his decision. They would wait through the night and the following day, hidden in a rocky crevasse under thick cover.

The next twenty-four hours were perilous. The soldiers maintained total radio silence, broken only to receive two final sets of data on their satellite kit — coded intelligence updates and fresh drone images. Both confirmed the situation was unchanged. The decision was sealed. The assault would take place that night.

In Delhi on the evening of 28 September, preparations were underway for the Indian Coast Guard commanders’ conference dinner. Yet the most important guests—Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar, National Security Adviser Ajit Doval, and Army Chief Gen. Dalbir Singh—politely stepped away. Instead of attending the formal event, the three men moved to the military operations room on the first floor of Army Headquarters in South Block for one final review of the historic mission that was about to begin. Their quiet absence signalled how close the operation was. Every minute now mattered, and this last look in the ops room was meant to remove any remaining doubt before the mission commenced.

Outside those secure walls, the media sensed nothing. All attention was fixed on India’s diplomatic push after the Uri attack. New Delhi was rallying support at the SAARC Summit; headlines noted that U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry had spoken twice to External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj, urging India not to escalate tensions. In Gurgaon, a planned concert by Pakistani singer Atif Aslam was cancelled by the administration, citing the “sentiments of armed forces/soldiers at the frontier.” The public picture—angry statements, global phone calls, event cancellations—was deliberate. The carefully arranged “mess” of diplomacy, politics, and public outrage acted as the perfect cover for what was truly underway.

At midnight, less than a thousand kilometres from the capital, Maj. Tango and his men slipped out from their temporary hideout into the darkness and moved back to the positions they had used the previous night. He told his men to stay absolutely still and wait for his signal. Controlling even his breathing, he peered through his night-vision goggles at the terror launch pad lying a literal stone’s throw away. Speculative firing continued from the other side, rolling across the valley in sharp bursts. Then it fell silent.

Maj. Tango did not immediately give the order to move. He had to be sure there was no ambush. If the terrorists were set to trap them, the mission could end before it had truly begun. His team consisted of India’s finest Special Forces commandos, but even they could not fight off a well-placed ambush supported by dominant firing posts with lines of fire from above. After a few tense minutes, he directed the men to split into two squads and crawl forward with him.

At about fifty metres from the launch pad, Maj. Tango signalled his buddy to inch ahead. He pointed to an open patch in front of a forested outcrop—the core of the launch pad. In the green glow of their night-vision devices, two silhouettes stood out: two terrorists on guard.

This was the moment the team had prepared for—the moment when waiting would give way to action, and when tension would settle into the cold calm of battle. From fifty metres, Maj. Tango fired at the two guards and dropped them instantly. He whispered orders to the squads behind him to advance towards the forested launch pad and hit the rest of the terrorists who were certain to be inside. Before the assault element entered the trees, two commandos laid down heavy fire from their concealed positions at the launch pad, giving the assault group clean entry. The men sprinted in a crouch to the hideout and opened up a fierce, controlled burst of fire. Almost every round struck home.

With the open area cleared, Maj. Tango pushed into the forest to join his men. There, he noticed two terrorists moving through the trees to try and attack the Indian team from behind. These were men with commando-style training—using tactics and movements that looked uncomfortably like regular military combat drills. India had seen this grim truth during the 26/11 attacks, and it had remained a pattern with infiltrators. The terrorists at these launch pads were trained like soldiers.

Realising these two would be seconds away from firing at his men, Maj. Tango sprinted straight at them. When they saw him, they threw themselves behind a tree and took offensive positions, ready to cut him down the moment he came into view. The dash had robbed him of precious seconds; there was no time to raise his M4A1 carbine. In that sliver of time before they could lift their AK-47s, he pulled out his Beretta 9-mm semi-automatic pistol. At a distance of barely five feet, he fired a tight series of shots and felled them both.

From the first shot to the final burst, a little over an hour had passed. The pace was relentless. As the teams linked up after clearing two launch pads, they counted only roughly: 20 terrorists appeared down in their sector, a number that would be confirmed days later by India’s external intelligence. Across all four targets, 38–40 terrorists and 2 Pakistan Army personnel were killed. Three separate teams had struck four launch pads across the LoC at the same time. Entry had been coordinated to the minute. Assault and exit were executed in total radio silence, which meant every team was on its own the whole way. With their two assigned launch pads destroyed, Maj. Tango and his men turned east for the LoC.

Now came his greatest fear, in a sharper form than he had imagined. The de-induction—getting out—had to be done with extreme care. The path was known from their inward trek, so it would be faster going uphill. But the entire stretch was vulnerable: Pakistan Army posts would now be alert, hunting for the raiding parties, and eager to block their return.

They faced a hard choice. Take the short, fast route that would almost certainly draw heavy fire? Or choose a longer, more winding track that might offer better cover? Maj. Tango had only moments to decide. He knew even the long route would not fully fool the enemy, as every alarm on that side of the LoC would be blaring. Quick reaction teams were likely already moving. Weighing the risks, he chose the longer, circuitous path out.

The retreat would be rapid but staged. One squad became the fire support group, delivering intermittent covering fire from the slope while the others advanced. It was dangerous—Indian soldiers were outgunned and outnumbered by Pakistani positions above them. What they did have was real-time guidance from an Indian drone back over the LoC, helping them pick the most deceptive and survivable line for their return.

Maj. Tango’s judgement about retaliation proved right. The Pakistan Army opened up with everything short of heavy artillery. Medium machine guns, rocket-propelled grenades, and other munitions hammered the mountainside around the withdrawing Indians. “At one point, the bullets were so close, they were whistling past our ears. There’s a familiar put-put sound when rounds fly very close to your head,” Maj. Tango remembered. “If I were a foot taller, I would have been hit many times over.”

Moving in bursts, the team often had to flatten against the ground as trees ahead were shredded by incoming fire. A particularly exposed sixty-metre patch nearly cost them dearly. There was no natural cover, and they had to slither the entire distance on their bellies, crossing in pairs while rounds struck the earth inches away. Still, they kept going. Before sunrise, they reached the LoC and crossed at 0430 hours. They knew the line itself did not magically block bullets; they still had ground to cover to reach safety. Now, however, Indian Army posts laid down heavy covering fire, allowing the commandos to make the final dash back to the post they had left 36 hours earlier.

Even then, 7.62-mm Pakistani sniper rounds snapped into the dirt within feet of them. At the Uri post, Maj. Tango made his first encrypted radio call to his Commanding Officer. Minutes later, a call came from Lt. Gen. Satish Dua, commander of the Army’s 15 Corps, responsible for all of Kashmir. A counterterrorism specialist himself, he kept it short: a helicopter was inbound to pick up the team. The Uri attack had happened on his watch; among senior officers, he was one of those most eager to get even.

In Delhi, Prime Minister Modi and the national security leadership were informed. Another historic step would follow shortly.

Back at Uri, as Maj. Tango waited, he debriefed on the other two strikes. There had been one injury: a landmine blast had wounded a commando during de-induction in one of the other teams. There were no fatalities. The surgical strikes of 28–29 September were not only among the most audacious and dangerous peacetime actions by Indian forces—they were also among the cleanest. In the options table previously presented to the government, each chosen target carried a probable casualty estimate of 1 or 2 Indian soldiers. By that yardstick, the mission would still have been judged successful even if 4–8 commandos had fallen. Instead, no man was killed and none left behind. On the morning of 29 September 2016, the Para-SF’s already legendary reputation reached a new peak.

A few hours later, an Army Cheetah helicopter set down at a helipad near the Uri post. The pad lay on the leeward side of the mountain, away from continuing Pakistani fire. As Maj. Tango moved towards it, a burst of sniper rounds slammed into the earth ahead, killing a dog. “The dog was walking a few feet in front of me. A bullet smashed right into the poor creature. And I was saved,” he said.

Under fresh sniper fire, he sprinted to the helicopter. The Cheetah lifted in a terrain-hugging profile and flew him to the headquarters of 15 Corps—the Chinar Corps—named after the valley’s famous trees. There, Lt. Gen. Dua had skipped lunch, waiting for the team leader’s arrival. At 1530 hours, the Cheetah landed. Maj. Tango was led straight to the ops room, where his CO stood at the door.

“Chhote!”
“Sir!”

They hugged hard, clapped each other on the back, then stepped back with a wordless understanding. They knew what had just been done; there was nothing more to say.

Then the Corps Commander himself came forward—Lt. Gen. Dua, usually all business, now smiling broadly. As the Major snapped to attention and saluted, a waiter appeared with glasses half-filled with Black Label whisky. “Bring the bottle,” the General told him, “these men eat glasses.” The line, Maj. Tango would later note, was true enough. The bottle arrived. Lt. Gen. Dua poured the whisky straight into the Major’s mouth, and then the Major—five ranks junior to the three-star officer—returned the favour. Only after that brief, raw celebration did the formal debrief begin.

Soon after, an Army Dhruv helicopter arrived to fly Maj. Tango to Udhampur, headquarters of Northern Command, to meet Lt. Gen. Deependra Singh Hooda, who had vetted the final target options before they went to Army HQ and the government. There was more whisky there as well. The team had not eaten for a full day. In the middle of it, one thought kept nudging him: “Koi khaana de do. Saare daaru pila rahe hain.” Food would come later. First, the story of the operation had to be captured and secured.

In January 2017, recognition followed. Five men from the three teams received the Shaurya Chakra; thirteen were awarded Sena Medals for gallantry; and the COs of the two Para-SF units received Yudh Seva Medals for their leadership and planning from Srinagar. At the top of the list stood Maj. Tango, awarded the Kirti Chakra. His citation was clear and proud:

“By his decisive thinking, professional approach, warrior ethos, exemplary leadership and courage beyond the call of duty, Maj. Mike Tango ensured the execution of the task flawlessly with clockwork precision and eliminated 4 terrorists in close quarter combat.”

Life changed after the surgical strikes. “Life has changed completely. It’s more restricted now. But I cannot stop being an SF officer. That’s who I am,” he said, fully aware that, to Pakistan and the groups hit that night of 28–29 September, he would remain a person of interest.

At the time this account was written in 2017, Maj. Tango was 35 years old. He had known since age 6 that he wanted to serve. He remembered sitting at the edge of his parents’ bed in Mumbai, watching the 1980s film Vijeta in silence. “I used to watch the movie once every day for months. I couldn’t pull myself away from it. I knew I had to be in the military,” he said. “My parents freaked out so much that they taped over the Vijeta tape.”

Over the next 12 years, his focus only sharpened. In 2000, he entered the National Defence Academy (NDA) in Pune after failing the test twice. His teenage dream was the Indian Air Force, shaped by Vijeta, but he accepted the Army without regret. He had stepped through the right door: into the military.

As weeks passed, tales from J&K told by a directing staff officer—himself from another elite Para-SF unit—left him spellbound. He had already chosen infantry, convinced he would not fit anywhere else. By the time he finished at the NDA, it was Special Forces or nothing. At the Indian Military Academy (IMA) in Dehradun, his platoon commander belonged to the very Para-SF unit he would one day join. The path was set.

In 2004, Mike Tango was commissioned into the Para-SF as a Lieutenant. The first six-month probation was the final boot camp before real operations. Over three months, he and other young officers faced tests of mental toughness, integrity, and honesty—filters that would decide who could wear the maroon beret and carry the weight of missions like the one he had just led.

The journey into Special Forces culture began with tests that were as psychological as they were physical. “In probation, everyone is assessing you. Are you a team leader? Are you a good support guy? Physically, everyone who joins the SF team is tough. They attempt to break you mentally,” Maj. Tango remembers. Those early weeks were designed to observe, to measure, and to understand who could shoulder responsibility under pressure and who would break when isolation, fatigue, and chaos pressed down together.

There was no illusion that mental tests would replace physical hardship. The physical regimen only grew harsher as the course deepened. “The attempt is to try and break you, to find your breaking point, to see where you give up. The point is of course not to. But everyone has a breaking point,” says Maj. Tango. The aim was never cruelty for its own sake; it was to simulate the sharp edges of combat, where endurance and clarity decide survival.

At times, he admits, the thought of quitting crossed his mind. Sleep deprivation, grinding stress drills, and harsh tasks blurred days into each other. Being tossed into a gutter, being told to dissect rotting animal carcasses—these were not random humiliations. They were frames in a larger lesson, a system of conditioning that would later make sense in the field. It would sink in that the rituals, however severe, were part of building the Special Forces mindset—calm decision-making while everything looks and smells wrong. “You can’t freak out in a bad situation. No matter what happens, you have to deal with what’s in front of you. That’s what probation teaches you.”

One memory stands out for its absurdity and purpose. Dragged from bed at 0200 hours, he was ordered to write a persuasive 1,000-word essay on how the menstrual cycle of a former Pakistani leader could affect the monsoon in West Bengal. The topic was ridiculous by design, a shock to the brain in the middle of the night. “The attempt is to throw anything at you and see how you deal with it. There are no options. You deal. Or you’re out.” In those hours, clarity, tone, and the ability to argue under pressure mattered more than the subject.

Formally, probation lasted six months, but Mike completed it in just under four months. He was moved quickly to the Kashmir Valley, where operations were constant and the environment unforgiving. By October 2004, only months into service, he had already shown that he would thrive as an SF warrior. Yet his seniors decided he needed one last dose of toughening—a carefully choreographed prank that began with a summons to Lolab Valley on Dussehra 2004. He was tasked on a mission engineered to fail. When he returned to headquarters, the verdict was unsparing. “I was shouted at very harshly and told I wasn’t fit for the SF,” Mike recalls. The next day, in Srinagar, the shelling intensified. “The next day in Srinagar, I got an even worse shelling by my Team Commander and CO. They said I lacked aptitude. I was shocked and angry. I had trained so hard for this.”

They did not stop at words. Paperwork appeared—an official movement order posting him out of SF to a regular infantry battalion. “I was given a movement order to 18 Mahar Regiment and ordered to proceed immediately to a transit camp. I packed my bags and was on the verge of tears. I had never been so low.” As he headed out, a waiter from the mess caught up with him: the CO wanted to see him one last time. Mike did not want to go—frustration and disbelief tugged at him—but he followed.

His CO stood waiting, silent and stern. Mike was told to drop and give 50 push-ups on the spot. Angry but obedient, he complied. When he stood up, he saw it: the maroon beret in his CO’s hand—the emblem of the Special Forces. The ordeal had been a final test of resilience, obedience, and grit. “I was beyond exhilarated. What followed was our traditional drink in the SF—every kind of alcohol mixed in a jug with our rank badges in there too. We drink it all in one go, and then the rank badges are pipped. I woke up two days later.”

Real operations followed fast. In June 2005, intelligence flagged suspicious movement in Bandipora. Mike, then a Lieutenant, moved with his squad. They spotted three suspects in burkas. A male voice on a mobile phone and a fleeting glimpse of an AK-47 exposed the disguise. The team set a cordon. “It was the first and the last time my hands shivered before action. It happens only that first time. Never again,” Mike recalls. Experience, once earned in that first contact, would never leave his fingers.

He went on to raise a covert/pseudo ops team within the Para-SF, a small unit dedicated to deep cover and human intelligence. The work revealed how thoroughly infiltration networks had spread, and how complicated Special Forces missions in the Valley could be. For seven years in covert operations, crossing the LoC was never imagined as an order he would one day receive. Yet that night in September 2016, it had happened.

The strikes caused an immediate stir around the world. Then a second milestone followed, sanctioned by the government: an official announcement. Hours after Maj. Tango and the other two teams came back across the LoC, the Army was ordered to hold a press conference—unusual for any operation involving Pakistan. The task fell to the Director General Military Operations, Lt. Gen. Ranbir Singh, who addressed the media alongside the spokesperson of the External Affairs Ministry, laying out the core of what had been done. His words were clear and measured:

Based on receiving specific and credible inputs that some terrorist teams had positioned themselves
Based on receiving specific and credible inputs that some terrorist teams had positioned themselves
at launch pads along Line of Control to carry out infiltration and conduct terrorist strikes inside
Jammu and Kashmir and in various metros in other states, the Indian Army conducted surgical
strikes at several of these launch pads to pre-empt infiltration by terrorists. The operations were
focused on ensuring that these terrorists do not succeed in their design to cause destruction and
endanger the lives of our citizens.

During these counter terrorist operations significant casualties were caused to terrorists and those
providing support to them. The operations aimed at neutralizing terrorists have since ceased. We do
not have any plans for further continuation. However, the Indian Armed Forces are fully prepared for
any contingency that may arise.

The announcement stung across the border. Four Pakistani terror launch pads had been destroyed. If the assault itself angered Pakistan, the public nature of India’s briefing left Islamabad struggling for a response. The Pakistan Army, led by Gen. Raheel Sharif, retreated into familiar denials. The Defence Minister, Khawaja Asif, called India’s claim a lie. The military said that only **two Pakistan Army soldiers—Lance Havildar Jumma Khan and Naik Imtiaz—**had died, and that too in a ceasefire violation.

Recognition at home came in time. On 20 March 2017, six months after the strike, Maj. Tango received the Kirti Chakra at Rashtrapati Bhawan. The Army kept the ceremony low-key, mindful of the operation’s sensitivity and the need to avoid direct public links. He understood the attention would linger. “By now they probably know who I am and where I am,” he said, and then added the line that defined his training and creed: “But in the Special Forces, we don’t really know fear.”

Sources

• Penguin Books India — Excerpt from India’s Most Fearless
• India Today — Uri Attack & Surgical Strikes Coverage (Sept 2016)
• India Today — Major Mike Tango Interview & Coverage (Sept 2017)
• The Hindu — Uri Attack & Surgical Strikes Chronology
• Hindustan Times — India Carries Out Surgical Strikes Across LoC
• Hindustan Times — Uri Terror Attack: India’s Response
• Business Standard — Major Tango’s Account of Surgical Strikes
• Wikipedia — 2016 Indian Line of Control Strike (Chronology & Background)
• Government of India, MEA — Transcript of Joint Briefing by MEA & MoD (29 Sept 2016)