PLA deployment against India

so far, one of the weakest military district is in that part of the country. in tibet, we only have some armed police units, and border guards. china has no interest about india.
i think we have a mountain division somewhere there between tibet and xin jiang.
but anyway, indian army is too weak, in 1959, our border guards kicked their elite troop butt, and a brigader general was taken prisoner, what a shame...........

Originally Posted by Red Guard

so far, one of the weakest military district is in that part of
but anyway, indian army is too weak, in 1959, our border guards kicked their elite troop butt, and a brigader general was taken prisoner, what a shame...........

????????

They were not elite troops , they were just ordinary soldiers , unacclimatised , without adequeate arms, ration and clothing !!!

Originally Posted by ArjunMk1

????????

They were not elite troops , they were just ordinary soldiers , unacclimatised , without adequeate arms, ration and clothing !!!

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we didn't and still don't know about indian army very much. but in the war, they thought they were pretty tough, and i think the reason i called them as "elite troop" is because, i remember one of the unit we crashed was an unit that fought in WWII and korean war (i might be wrong about korean war). and it's like they are pretty tough, they are british equiped, with good weapons and stuff. and the indian PM (don't his name in english) was pretty proud of this army he raised. i remember seeing him parading the troop before the war, and they thought the poorly equiped PLA border guards were easy to crash............

India has the best high altitude infantry in the world, but her martial leadership is rather lacking, even today.

ja, heard of that. their mountain troop has way better equipments than us. but somehow.........somehow.............

That's unique, The Indian get training from British. And many of veteran involved in WW II. So if comparing with PLa during that time, PLA is nothing in experience. (PLA experince in Civil War and Korea War, The india is far experience than that, they involve in Asia, Western and North Africa Theatre during in WW II)

you're kidding me, right? PLA, at that time, is probably one of the most experienced armies in the world. 10 continous years of combat, then Korean. The PLA leadership at that time consists of battle hardened generals who fought through 3 wars, and won.

No I'm not kidding. I saw from different poin. Under the British Command The Indian officer fought in North Africa, Asia (burma n Malaya), and Europe. ts mean they officer who become the basic of India Armed Forces very rich in experience, bcoz they fight in 3 continent and they fought with Germany which have a brilliat General. I saw from point of this
Of Course PLA winning 3 war with Nasionalist, IJA and Allied in Korea. But the 2 of them is 50% (IJA and Nasionalist with bitterness in guerilla war)

I'm talking about command structure here. If you haven't noticed, there aren't many command-giving Indians in the British involvement during WWII.

Command structure , I agrre with u. If not the PVA will loss much in Korean War

I may daresay that the 1962 Sino-Indian war was probably the first war in modern times, in which the victors lost far more soldiers than the defeated side.

But China cannot repeat a 1962 today, because :

a] Indian armed forces have modernised significantly since then.

b] There cannot be forced mass-recruitment of young boys and men from rural areas and pushed into the war because China has also come a long way from Mao-style dictatorship.

what the hell are you talking about?

What do you call WWII? Semi modern? What about Korea?

There was never a forced recuitment in China and there probably never will be-with a standing force of 2 million if you count the PAP, you really think the PLA needs to conscript people?

If the Indians are still as inept at command as they were in 1962, even Pakistan can gain considerable foothold into the country.

Apparently not only are you totally devoid of any technical knowledge, it seems that you're not exactly a history/poli-sci major either.

Originally Posted by vincelee

India has the best high altitude infantry in the world, but her martial leadership is rather lacking, even today.

I think Pakistani troops in Siachen would dispute that....

which is why...

U.S. soldiers selected to attend the mountain-warfare school in Kakul, Pakistan, required additional climbing time to attain the desired level of physical fitness. The body must adjust to the thin mountain air, and climbing muscles must be developed.

http://www.findarticles.com/p/articl...84/ai_n6252063

Also during the British period the Industani army was a lot different from the BHARAT army...I know because my great-grandfather fought with distinction in Burma...most of the higher ranking officers who had fought with distinction in world war 2 were sikhs, muslims and ghurka hindu nepali's. after independence they had either left or in the case of the sikhs were passed over

anyway just to be fair to IndianFighter i'll quote from an INDIAN source...

All colonial armies are liable to suffer from the tugs of contradictory allegiance and, in the case of India's, that fissure was opened in the Second World War by Japan's recruitment from prisoners of war of the Indian National Army to fight against their former fellows. By the beginning of the 1950s, two factions were emerging in the officer corps, one patriotic but above all professional and apolitical, and orthodox in adherence to the regimental traditions established in the century of the Raj; the other nationalist, ready to respond unquestioningly to the political requirements of their civilian masters and scorning their rivals as fuddy-duddies still aping the departed rulers, and suspected as being of doubtful loyalty to the new ones. The latter faction soon took on an eponymous identification from its leader, B M Kaul.

At the time of Independence, Kaul appeared to be a failed officer, if not one disgraced. Although Sandhurst-trained for infantry service, he had eased through the war without serving on any frontline and ended it in a humble and obscure post in public relations. But his courtier wiles, irrelevant or damning until then, were to serve him brilliantly in the new order that Independence brought, after he came to the notice of Nehru, a fellow Kashmiri Brahmin and, indeed, distant kinsman.

Boosted by the prime minister's steady favouritism, Kaul rocketed through the Army structure to emerge in 1961 at the very summit of the Army HQ. Not only did he hold the key appointment of chief of general staff but the army commander, Thapar, was, in effect, his client. Kaul had, of course, by then acquired a significant following, disparaged by the other side as 'Kaul boys' ('call-girls' had just entered usage), and his appointment as CGS opened a putsch in HQ, an eviction of the old guard, with his rivals, until then his superiors, being not only pushed out but often hounded thereafter with charges of disloyalty.

The struggle between those factions both fed on and fed into the strains placed on the Army by the government's contradictory and hypocritical policies -- on the one hand, proclaiming China an eternal friend against whom it was unnecessary to arm; on the other, exerting armed force to seize territory it knew China regarded as its own.

Through the early 1950s, Nehru's covertly expansionist policy had been implemented by armed border police under the Intelligence Bureau, whose director, N B Mullik, was another favourite and confidant of the prime minister. The Army high command, knowing its forces to be too weak to risk conflict with China, would have nothing to do with it. Indeed when the potential for Sino-Indian conflict inherent in Mullik's aggressive forward patrolling was demonstrated in the serious clash at the Kongka Pass in October 1959, Army HQ and the ministry of external affairs united to denounce him as a provocateur and insisted that control over all activities on the border be assumed by the Army, which thus could insulate China from Mullik's jabs.

The takeover by Kaul and his 'boys' at Army HQ in 1961 reversed that. Now, regular infantry would take over from Mullik's border police in implementing what was formally designated a 'forward policy,' one conceived to extrude the Chinese presence from all territory claimed by India. Field commanders receiving orders to move troops forward into territory the Chinese both held and regarded as their own warned that they had no resources or reserves to meet the forceful reaction they knew must be the ultimate outcome: they were told to keep quiet and obey orders.

By the early 1950s, however, the Indian government, which is to say Nehru and his acolyte officials, had shaped and adopted a policy whose implementation would make armed conflict with China not only "thinkable" but inevitable.

From the first days of India's Independence, it was appreciated that the Sino-Indian borders had been left undefined by the departing British and that territorial disputes with China were part of India's inheritance. China's other neighbours faced similar problems and, over the succeeding decades of the century, almost all of those were to settle their borders satisfactorily through the normal process of diplomatic negotiation with Beijing.

The Nehru government decided upon the opposite approach. India would, through its own research, determine the appropriate alignments of the Sino-Indian borders, extend its administration to make those good on the ground and then refuse to negotiate the result. Barring the inconceivable -- that Beijing would allow India to impose China's borders unilaterally and annex territory at will -- Nehru's policy thus willed conflict without foreseeing it.

Through the 1950s, that policy generated friction along the borders and so bred and steadily increased distrust, growing into hostility, between the neighbours. By 1958, Beijing was urgently calling for a standstill agreement to prevent patrol clashes and negotiations to agree on boundary alignments. India refused any standstill agreement, since it would be an impediment to intended advances and insisted that there was nothing to negotiate, the Sino-Indian borders being already settled on the alignments claimed by India, through blind historical process. Then it began accusing China of committing 'aggression' by refusing to surrender to Indian claims.

From 1961, the Indian attempt to establish an armed presence in all the territory it claimed and then extrude the Chinese was being exerted by the Army and Beijing was warning that if India did not desist from its expansionist thrust, the Chinese forces would have to hit back. On October 12, 1962, Nehru proclaimed India's intention to drive the Chinese out of areas India claimed. That bravado had by then been forced upon him by public expectations which his charges of 'Chinese aggression' had aroused, but Beijing took it as in effect a declaration of war. The unfortunate Indian troops on the frontline, under orders to sweep superior Chinese forces out of their impregnable, dominating positions, instantly appreciated the implications: 'If Nehru had declared his intention to attack, then the Chinese were not going to wait to be attacked.'

On October 20, the Chinese launched a pre-emptive offensive all along the borders, overwhelming the feeble -- but, in this first instance, determined -- resistance of the Indian troops and advancing some distance in the eastern sector. On October 24, Beijing offered a ceasefire and Chinese withdrawal on the condition that India agree to open negotiations: Nehru refused the offer even before the text was officially received. Both sides built up over the next three weeks, and the Indians launched a local counterattack on November 15, arousing in India fresh expectations of total victory.

The Chinese then renewed their offensive. Now many units of the once crack Indian 4th Division dissolved into rout without giving battle and, by November 20, there was no organised Indian resistance anywhere in the disputed territories. On that day, Beijing announced a unilateral ceasefire and intention to withdraw its forces: Nehru, this time, tacitly accepted.

Naturally the Indian political public demanded to know what had brought about the shameful debacle suffered by their Army. On December 14, a new Army commander, Lieutenant General J N Chaudhuri, instituted an Operations Review for that purpose, assigning the task of enquiry to Lieutenant-General Henderson Brooks and Brigadier P S Bhagat.

http://www.rediff.com/news/2001/may/23spec.htm

US Navy SEAL was actually training with some Indian high altitude unit a year ago or so in desimilar combat. Mountain warfare is tough.

Edit: blame my laptop keyboard