NSG commandos, who executed the operations in the country's longest terrorist siege here in the recent past, are specially equipped with a set of "hooligan tools", a "smart dagger" and some are fluent in English to accomplish "Operation Black Tornado".
"Looking at the requirement of this particular operation, the boys were equipped with a brand new set of hooligan tools including special spanners, screw-drivers, nuts, bolts and some hardware jacks which are helpful making a surprise entry into a room," a senior security official said.
Few commandos, who are fluent in English, were also embedded in different teams that went inside Taj Hotel, Oberoi (Trident) and Nariman House.
All these places had foreigners and dignitaries for which English-speaking commandos were useful to establish contact with the hostages while evacuating them, the official said.
This was done on the ground, right when the offensive was being planned here, he said.
"The places where the NSG had operated were all large residential complexes which obviously would have many doors and entrances. In the worst cases, hostages will have to be evacuated forcibly and the hardware jacks would help the commandos break open and unlock the doors," he said.
The commandos are trained to "neutralise the enemy immediately", which means shooting right in between the eyes of the terrorists.
The NSG men also had smart daggers with for one-to-one combat.
"The daggers are of such high precision that it is said that it is a pleasure to die of its strike," a source said.
Not every time the technique of blasting a room door through "door frame charges" suffices where a door is blown using mild explosives.
The commandos, dressed in all black, wore NIJ-Level 3 (National Institute of Justice, US) bullet-proof jackets which have armour plates on the front and the back, groin pads fastened with straps, a senior army official who coordinated with the NSG said.
The jackets come in three volume variants, viz, small (5.8 kg), medium (six kg) and large (6.2 kg).
The usage of the different variants depends on the nature of operation -- swift or long drawn.
The commandos and the officials who carried out frontal offensives at all the three places did not had any communication with their formations right behind them as they had no walkie-talkie sets or cochlear microphones.
"It is only the sign language that they communicated with. Microphones or any other mode of communication disturb, ruling out the possibility of a silent and deadly execution."
While the commandos are not supposed to carry refreshments during such operations, they had MP-5 guns with a bore of around 4.7 mm, AK series assault rifles, Automatic Grenade Launchers (AGL's), Under Barrel Grenade Launcher (UBGL) magazines and handful of grenades.
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