India deploys special high-altitude forces along LAC to repel Chinese army
After the Galwan Valley face-off, India has now deployed its specialised high altitude warfare forces along the 3,488 km Line of Actual Control (LAC) to repel and check any transgression by the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) in the western, middle or the eastern sectors.
After the Galwan Valley face-off, India has now deployed its specialised high altitude warfare forces along the 3,488 km Line of Actual Control (LAC) to repel and check any transgression by the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) in the western, middle or the eastern sectors.
Government sources confirmed to Hindustan Times that the Indian Army has been asked to safeguard the LAC from further cross-border aggression by the PLA. The Chinese army is showing hostile intention by assembling troops in order to unnerve the government.
Specialised high altitude forces trained over the years for fighting across the northern frontlines, and have been pushed up to the frontier to impose military costs, in case the red flag goes up.
Unlike the Chinese army which moves in the infantry combat vehicles and paved metalled roads to move, the Indian mountain troops are trained in the guerrilla warfare and for fighting in high altitude, similar to Kargil War.
A former Indian Army Chief was quoted as saying that the art of mountain fighting is the toughest as the cost of human casualty is 10 to each troop of the adversary, sitting over a height. The troops from Ladakh, Uttarakhand, Gorkha, Sikkim, and Arunachal have adapted to the rarefied heights over centuries and so their capability of fighting in close quarter combats is unparalleled.
RELATED NEWS: Ladakh standoff: India, China hold second round of Lt Gen-level talks
A China expert with South Block explained that the other thing which works for the army is that the Tibetan plateau is flat on the Chinese region, while the Indian side starts from the K2 peak in Karakoram, to Kanchenjung in Sikkim, to Nanda Devi in Uttarakhand, and Namche Barwa across the Arunachal Pradesh border. In high altitude mountains, it is not just difficult to capture territory, but even more difficult to hold it.
PM Modi-led government is very unhappy that Chinese President Xi Jinping broke ‘peace and tranquility’ promises by not reining his PLA western theatre commander Gen Zhao Zongqi. The commander insists on imposing 1960 eastern Ladakh map based upon exaggerated territorial claims on India. The map where China claims territory upto Kongka La was unveiled by the then Chinese premier Chou En Lai.
