India Moves Specialised Mountain Warfare Forces To Answer Any Aggression By Chinese PLA In Ladakh

In order to tackle any kind of aggression by the Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA), India has deployed its highly skilled and specialised mountain fighting forces along the Line of Actual Control (LAC), Hindustan Times reported.

These forces have been sent to all three sectors in Ladakh - western, middle and eastern sectors at the 3,488 km-long LAC.

The report attributing sources in the government suggested that given the hostile intentions of China, the Indian Army has been given a free hand to protect the borders from any cross-border provocation.

The specialised mountain warfare forces of the Indian Army have been trained over past few decades for combats in the hilly areas of the northern India, and now they have been posted in the border areas to deal with the Chinese.

The report also added that while the PLA has access to metalled roads to and can move infantry vehicles to the LAC quickly, these Indian troops are well-trained in guerrilla warfare and high-altitude combats like they did during the Kargil war.

“The art of mountain fighting is the toughest as the cost of human casualties is 10 to each troop of the adversary sitting on a height. The troops from Uttarakhand, Ladakh, Gorkha, Arunachal and Sikkim have adapted to the rarefied heights over centuries and hence their capability of fighting in close quarter combats is without match. The artillery and the missiles have to have pin-pointed accuracy or else they miss the mountain target by miles,” the report quoted a former Indian Army chief as saying.

Another thing that leans in India's favour is that the Tibetan plateau is mostly flat on the Chinese occupied territory from the LAC, while Indian controlled region has high mountainous area starting from K2 peak in Karakoram, to Nanda Devi in Uttarakhand, to Kanchenjunga in Sikkim and Namche Barwa across Arunachal Pradesh border.

According to an expert quoted in the report, it will not only be difficult for China to conquer any area but even more difficult to protect it.