New Delhi: India will militarily have to be extremely alert on the ground if long-drawn de-escalation process with China kicks off in the coming months amid the ongoing Sino -Indian detente, against the backdrop of PLA having the requisite infrastructure in place to return swiftly to forward locations along the frontier.
"The way China has built roads, bridges, tunnels and habitats along the entire LAC, from eastern Ladakh to Arunachal, over the last five years, PLA troops can easily afford to pull back 100-150km and then come back again in 2-3 hours," a senior Army officer told TOI.
Many PLA arms brigades still remain forward deployed
Our forces cannot. This huge time differential in mobilisation between the rival forces will have to be factored in during any de-escalation talks,a senior Army officer said.
To be sure, India and China have as yet only decided to “discuss de-escalation, beginning with the principles and modalities thereof” during Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi’s visit this week. On the ground, the trust deficit between the rival armies, which have remained forward deployed with heavy weapons all along the 3,488-km LAC after multiple PLA incursions into eastern Ladakh in April-May 2020, remains “quite high”, though the situation is no longer on hair-trigger alert as before.
The situation has stabilised after troop disengagement at the two remaining face-off sites at Depsang and Demchok last Oct. “There is no disruption in the coordinated patrolling by the rival soldiers there. But we cannot let our guard down since there has been no let-up in the PLA’s military preparedness and infrastructure build-up,” another officer said.
While some of the PLA’s combined arms brigades have pulled back around 100 km from the LAC over the last few months, many still remain forward deployed along with its border defence regiments. Each CAB has around 4,500-5,000 soldiers with tanks, armoured vehicles, artillery and surface-to-air missile systems, among other weapon systems.
De-escalation and de-induction of troops along the LAC will entail the return of all additional troops to their permanent peacetime locations. The two countries, meanwhile, are using existing border management mechanisms at the diplomatic and military levels to maintain peace along the LAC, stretching from eastern Ladakh to Arunachal Pradesh. To this end, the two sides have now also decided to set up “general-level mechanisms” in the eastern (Sikkim, Arunachal) and middle (Uttarakhand, Himachal) sectors of the LAC, to add to the existing talks mechanism between the Indian 14 Corps commander and the South Xinjiang Military District chief in western (Ladakh) one.
From the Indian side, it is likely to be the Lt-General commanding the Uttar Bharat (UB) Area based in Bareilly, which has been “combatised”, in the middle sector. Similarly, in the eastern one, it could be the Lt-Generals commanding the Dimapur-based 3 Corps or the Tezpur-based 4 Corps.
In eastern Ladakh, the immediate priority would be the restoration of patrolling rights in areas where “no patrol buffer zones” were established to India’s disadvantage after previous rounds of disengagement till Sept 2022.
There was supposed to be only “a temporary moratorium” on patrolling in these buffer zones at Galwan, north bank of Pangong Tso, Kailash Range and larger Gogra-Hot Springs area, varying from 3 km to 10 km, which came up on what India considers to be its own territory. But there has been no movement on the issue since then.
"The way China has built roads, bridges, tunnels and habitats along the entire LAC, from eastern Ladakh to Arunachal, over the last five years, PLA troops can easily afford to pull back 100-150km and then come back again in 2-3 hours," a senior Army officer told TOI.
Many PLA arms brigades still remain forward deployed
Our forces cannot. This huge time differential in mobilisation between the rival forces will have to be factored in during any de-escalation talks,a senior Army officer said.
To be sure, India and China have as yet only decided to “discuss de-escalation, beginning with the principles and modalities thereof” during Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi’s visit this week. On the ground, the trust deficit between the rival armies, which have remained forward deployed with heavy weapons all along the 3,488-km LAC after multiple PLA incursions into eastern Ladakh in April-May 2020, remains “quite high”, though the situation is no longer on hair-trigger alert as before.
The situation has stabilised after troop disengagement at the two remaining face-off sites at Depsang and Demchok last Oct. “There is no disruption in the coordinated patrolling by the rival soldiers there. But we cannot let our guard down since there has been no let-up in the PLA’s military preparedness and infrastructure build-up,” another officer said.
While some of the PLA’s combined arms brigades have pulled back around 100 km from the LAC over the last few months, many still remain forward deployed along with its border defence regiments. Each CAB has around 4,500-5,000 soldiers with tanks, armoured vehicles, artillery and surface-to-air missile systems, among other weapon systems.
De-escalation and de-induction of troops along the LAC will entail the return of all additional troops to their permanent peacetime locations. The two countries, meanwhile, are using existing border management mechanisms at the diplomatic and military levels to maintain peace along the LAC, stretching from eastern Ladakh to Arunachal Pradesh. To this end, the two sides have now also decided to set up “general-level mechanisms” in the eastern (Sikkim, Arunachal) and middle (Uttarakhand, Himachal) sectors of the LAC, to add to the existing talks mechanism between the Indian 14 Corps commander and the South Xinjiang Military District chief in western (Ladakh) one.
From the Indian side, it is likely to be the Lt-General commanding the Uttar Bharat (UB) Area based in Bareilly, which has been “combatised”, in the middle sector. Similarly, in the eastern one, it could be the Lt-Generals commanding the Dimapur-based 3 Corps or the Tezpur-based 4 Corps.
In eastern Ladakh, the immediate priority would be the restoration of patrolling rights in areas where “no patrol buffer zones” were established to India’s disadvantage after previous rounds of disengagement till Sept 2022.
There was supposed to be only “a temporary moratorium” on patrolling in these buffer zones at Galwan, north bank of Pangong Tso, Kailash Range and larger Gogra-Hot Springs area, varying from 3 km to 10 km, which came up on what India considers to be its own territory. But there has been no movement on the issue since then.
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