A 35 SPC patrol ship built in the USA.
Away from the seas, a major, and overlooked, sea confrontation is underway on the roof of the world. As China and India clash across their mountainous Himalayan border, an arms race is taking place in Pangong Tso, a large alpine lake. The disputed China-India border divides Pangong Tso, with China controlling about two-thirds of the 83-mile brackish water.
Spanned by the contested control line, the waters of Pangong Tso are subject to patrol incursions and seasonal border clashes. After a slight hiatus in 2018, the open conflict resumed in 2019, with Indian and Chinese troops engaging in hand-to-hand combat at the end of the season in and around Pangong Tso. In May 2020, immediately after the winter thaw, fighting resumed, culminating last month with the worst outbreak of border violence in decades. While the open conflict in the area has stopped, for now, after a fatal confrontation in June in the nearby Galwan Valley, both sides are digging and bringing in reinforcements, including ships.
Conflict is likely to resume, and the prospect of a sea battle at 13,400 feet on this picturesque and strategically located alpine lake, part of a larger association of five lakes, deserves a closer look. As an easy, almost inconsequential place to fight, heroic maritime actions in isolated inland waters can be central to forging a maritime tradition and driving naval investment.
Pangong Lake is a strategic – and cultural – prize
A beautiful battlefield:
Pangong Tso, itself, is a desolate piece of water, a long, narrow salt lake that freezes every year, rounded up in winter by piles of blown ice 8 to 10 feet high. In 1905, geologist Ellsworth Huntington described the lake as “exquisitely beautiful, a brilliant layer of the lightest and deepest blue”, which “rivals, or even excels, with the most famous lakes in Italy or Switzerland.” Against the backdrop of “Three Idiots,” a 2009 Indian film hit, the area has captured the imagination of the Indian public, fueling tourism and development.
But the control line, the disputed border area, divides Pangong Tso. Indian and Chinese soldiers fight on the north shore of the lake, where the mountain ridges or disputed “fingers” battle the beautiful shore of the lake, and patrol the ships in the blue waters.
It is almost routine. For years, the lake’s surroundings have been subjected to aggressive soundings, border raids and violent clashes. On the lake itself, two small armies have fought for their position, with incursions into the water resulting in confrontations ranging from shouted epithets to high-speed chases and even the onslaught of opposing vessels (a good explanation of a routine confrontation). Telegraph of India online, here).
The situation has constantly declined. In 1999, when India was concerned about the border with Pakistan, China built a permanent runway along the lake, and at that time, twenty-two small armed patrol boats began operating on the lake. According to a September 8, 2009 Financial express According to the article, they were “smaller vessels with a capacity of between five and seven soldiers”, outnumbering and maneuvering the two largest and slowest patrol boats on the lake in India. Then, in 2000, the Chinese rammed Indian patrol boats, and in April 2013, “more than twenty Chinese ships made a 10km-deep raid on the Indian side of the lake.”
In response, India acquired seventeen QRT (Rapid Reaction Equipment) ships to replace older vessels and, in late 2012, began deploying ballistic capable and protected Tempest 35-SPC patrol boats (built in the United States by Tampa Yacht Manufacturing). According to an article from October 3, 2012 in The Economic times, the People’s Liberation Army’s lake boats “had been practically circling Indian troops disabled by slow and outdated vessels.” For 2014, these new QRT ships, called “Tampas,” helped reverse a coordinated foray into the Chinese border by land and lake units.
The maritime arms race continued as China apparently deployed heavier Type 928B patrol boats. In 2018, China announced the deployment of surveillance radars and a new non-metallic patrol boat, with “a top speed of 40 kilometers per hour and can withstand collisions with large chunks of ice.” Other recent reports suggest that more warlike 928D type patrol boats have reached the lake.
In late 2019, a fight in September spread to the lake, where three Indian and two Chinese ships were damaged.
In May this year, Indian sources began to complain that the Chinese were patrolling more aggressively and bringing more boats to the lake. In late June, reports indicated that the Chinese had built defensive features along the “Finger 4” ridge line, building bunkers and a “marine-like façade” near the lake. Thousands of troops have arrived in the area.
As talks continue to calm the confrontation and prevent ramming incidents, the arms race continues. India now plans to bring in a dozen high-speed interceptors that, according to July 2, 2020 Times of India“It may have to be dismantled and airlifted by a C-17 Globemaster III aircraft.” Upon arrival, these boats can be complemented by landing boats to facilitate the mobility of the Indians along the lake and around the control area.
This is how marinas are made:
Although it is easy to dismiss this secondary maritime spectacle in a brackish landlocked puddle, maritime traditions arise from such confrontations.
These small crucibles in the border area, easily overlooked, lend themselves to conflict.
The question for analysts is where these ongoing clashes on the lake could lead. The spirit of the US Navy “Don’t Give Up the Boat” grew out of the heroic position of young Oliver Hazard Perry in Lake Erie, one of America’s inland lakes. Russia’s largest maritime aspirations grew out of Peter the Great’s “fun flotilla” on Lake Pleshcheyevo and intensified after real skirmishes in Russian lakes. If maritime is to be a centerpiece of alignment with India, this ongoing maritime conflict on the roof of the world must be highlighted at every possible opportunity.
The conflict at the Pangong Tso may be inevitable: China obviously wants to avoid possible transit barriers to Pakistan and countries beyond. But with Pangong Tso firmly embedded in modern popular culture in India, the continuing maritime confrontation on this picturesque high-altitude lake will have far-reaching consequences that even China’s aggressive army of strategic risk-benefit assessors has overlooked.
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