Several senior retired military officers believe that Ladakh’s military stalemate, if not ended soon, could lead to escalation and possible limited conventional warfare that neither side wants. This assumption is as unfounded as the multiple attacks by the PLA in May as a result of India’s intelligence failure. This betrays a continuing misinterpretation of the 2017 Doklam crisis and consequently the war each side appears to be preparing for.
Following its 2015 military reforms, the PLA created the Western Theater Command (WTC), its geographically largest theater of war, with a defined enemy: the Indian Army. Their challenge then was how to get the WTC to allocate two group armies (76 and 77) and paraphernalia associated with nearly 200,000 soldiers in the Tibet Autonomous Region, without being seen as aggressors, as that would affect their pace of peaceful uprising essential to their Belt and Road Initiative and the ‘China Dream’.
An additional problem was the 1993 and 1996 bilateral agreements between India and China, which had committed both parties to maintaining a minimum of troops in the Royal Line of Control. Not only was the number of forces, equipment, and ammunition that each could carry out defined, but the level of military exercises that each could carry out without mutual consent was specified. China had made these commitments in 1993 when its military purpose was limited to good border management, and its ambitious geostrategic reach under Xi Jinping was decades away.
Once pressure mounted to inhabit the WTC with assigned troops and war materiel, China devised the brilliant Doklam plan. Why not start a military crisis in a place where the Indian army, in an enormously advantageous tactical position, would feel compelled to come to the defense of Bhutan with whom it had a special relationship? China unleashed its wolf warriors and its state-controlled media went unusually ballistic threatening India with war even as diplomats were busy negotiating peace. The then commander of the East Indian Army, Lieutenant General Praveen Bakshi, said in a post-retirement talk that there was increasing pressure on him to prepare for war, even as he was convinced that the EPL, given its tactical handicap, would not initiate one. Once there was an increase in forces on the Indian side, the PLA too, under the guise of self-defense, began to increase its number in TAR.
Once the crisis ended, the Indian army recovered the additional forces. But the PLA did not do so, arguing that its troops were in its own territory. Beginning in the winter of 2017-2018, the PLA at a stealthy pace and given its unrivaled infrastructure technology built good habitat for troops at an average of 15,000 feet; and created an ecosystem that includes shelters, airfields, underground munitions, missile depots, radar stations, fiber optic cables, etc. By mid-2018, the PLA, according to the 2020 Pentagon report to the US Congress, had begun realistic combat training in the WTC and other theaters of war.
When asked about the PLA’s intense combat-related activities in TAR, a high-ranking general from the eastern command repeated to me the official position from Army Headquarters in June 2019. Doklam said it was our victory as we had forced the PLA to live in inclement conditions like ours. soldiers in the LAC.
Fast forward to Ladakh. Given that the PLA is comfortably installed in TAR, where it can conduct combat training, where was the intelligence flaw? I have maintained from the beginning of the crisis that once the PLA’s intentions changed in May, it could easily divert troops from the combat exercise for multi-pronged intrusions in Ladakh. Interestingly, after being silent for months, anonymous sources have admitted (Economic times, September 25th):
“They (the PLA) always had the ability, but their intentions changed overnight … In that case, the first to move has the upper hand.”
Ladakh was the collective command failure of the Indian Army, where the blame should lie with the highest commander – the Chief of Defense Staff, who was the former Army Chief of Staff.
The army generals were once again wrong in the PLA’s intentions in Ladakh simply because they are unaware of the war it is preparing to wage in the WTC. Not only is there an insurmountable gap between the science of war (war materiel and technology) of the PLA and the Indian Army, there is a disgraceful deficit in the art of war (generality on how one must fight to win the war) between the two. sides. Indian generals believe that the war in Ladakh and the eastern sector would be an enhanced air-to-ground battle of the type of the 1980s that had four distinctive characteristics:
- One, the war would be fought only in two domains of land and air;
- Two, coordination in all aspects of the war, including planning and execution, between the ground and air commanders was adequate. The union involving joint planning, a single agreed war plan, and real-time communication called networking were not necessary;
- Three, since this war emphasized the characteristics of the domain (air power and ground forces have different core competencies and response in time) and the geography (terrain and climatic conditions) of the battlefield, it had both predictable operational patterns of enemy forces as well as your own; Y
- Four, since this war would be led by the army, the weight of victory will be on the indomitable soldier. The chain of death, a term coined by the United States Army in World War II, for the Indian Army would comprise the same four “F’s”: find the enemy (locate him); Fix the enemy (immobilize him with suppressive fire); Fight against the enemy (either face to face or avoid him); and kill the enemy (eliminate him). The generality would be limited to discovering how disruptive new technologies, such as India’s nascent cyber and space capabilities, could be used as force multipliers.
To be sure, the AirLand Battle doctrine predates the 1991 US-led Gulf War against Iraq, through which the PLA learned about chain-of-death networks in real time. And how to end the war asymmetrically in the easiest way by interrupting the chain of death instead of fighting the enemy. Unlike the ground-based murder chain, it was composed of all sensors on the ground, air and space networked with the command and control center, in turn, it was connected with shooters such as airborne fighter jets and weapons on the ground.
The Indian military, focused on the Pakistani military, did not understand the importance of the network death chain and, more importantly, the need to protect it from electronic warfare and cybercrime once information technology and the digitization of warfare eased the burden on the soldier.
With the advent of new disruptive technologies, new domains of warfare emerged and, to remain relevant to real-time warfare, the chain of death became complex and vulnerable. Complex because more war domains were added and vulnerable because there was more to protect. In the early 2000s, the PLA, obsessed with the US military, had identified six domains of warfare, namely land, air, sea, cyber, space, and electromagnetic spectrum management. The PLA’s “computerized” warfare was about building capabilities in these domains, especially new ones, which were neither controversial nor controversial. The lynchpin of this war was the cyber capabilities that he has been honing since the turn of the century.
Once disruptive technologies like artificial intelligence went to war in 2012, and given Xi’s ambitious role for the PLA, the 2015 military reforms in China were carried out. The singularly important theme that would transform the character of the war and that went unnoticed in the Indian army was this: the focus had shifted from domain and geography to time sensitive mission sets. Called the ‘smart’ war, this is what the PLA intends to fight in the WTC against the Indian Army. He would be ready for this new war in 2025. The United States Army, keeping pace with the PLA, calls it a fusion or mosaic war.
Coming to the present, retired senior commanders like Lt. Gen. DS Hooda write that “the Indian military forces are well prepared and prepared for escalation to conventional warfare.” This review is misleading and misleading. With large onboard troops still struggling to create habitat, with war materiel that is quickly traced to a respectable ecosystem, with weapon calibration yet to be done, and little training in the high-altitude theater of war, it is nothing but rhetoric that the Indian army is prepared to fight the PLA. Especially when the PLA is ready with computerized warfare.
Surely, if war occurs, the PLA will withdraw its border forces that are committed to the Indian army. It would unleash its cyberspace-based information warfare, and its missile-focused strategy based on long-range ballistic and cruise missiles. Since projectile-centric strategy relies on chains of death for command and control, the Indian Army, unlike the US Army, lacks the ability to disrupt or destroy them.
The good news is that the PLA will not go to war, but will prepare for war Intelligentsized. For that, you need information on enemy habitat, ecosystem, operational logistics, improved winter reserves, operational and tactical infrastructure vulnerabilities, deployment patterns, command and control, weapon recalibration, training. and all about how the enemy sets out to fight in the Air Land battle. doctrine. The PLA will be in no rush to withdraw and certainly will not slow down the escalation let alone withdraw forces, as it wants to observe the increasing readiness for war by the Indian army during the winter months. Make no mistake, the threat from PLA is permanent.
The PLA’s thinking about war is well known: it will not attack (shooting directly at enemy soldiers) but will fight back. Since the ball is in the Indian court, two issues must be clear: the generals are not aware of the manifestly incompatible doctrines of war fighting between the two sides.
And, with the PLA being the best prepared side, it would decide the scope of the war: limited or full scale.
Pravin sawhney is the editor of STRENGTH news magazine.
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