Ladakh Flash Point

[plawolf]

The Indians are just a hopeless mess from top to bottom.

At the top, you have out-of-their-depths wannabe hard men who are caught between the cold reality of total PLA dominance, and the fiction they have spun to fool the masses into thinking India > China; and thus feel they have no choice but to keep escalating in ‘reply’ to Chinese push backs on their earlier escalations.

These Indian leaders make the ridiculous assumption that the Chinese will response the same way as they have done in the past, when tensions were mild, to new Indian provocation now, completely failing to take into account the escalated tensions and much harder line China is taking in response to all of Indians antics.

These Indian leaders also seem to not grasp the consequences of their actions in thinking that making changes to rules of engagement (effectively scrapping the decades long prohibition on use of firearms by giving local commanders basically a blank cheque to do what they want by asking them to use their own ‘initiative’) for domestic political point scoring would have no actual operational impact on the boarder itself.

Nor do they seem to take into account the ill discipline of Indian frontline troops as have been recently demonstrated by the actions of that dead colonel which is the spark that escalated this latest stand off to its current dangerous levels.

Then on the ground you have a bunch of jumped up wannabe action heroes for frontline troops and officers, who seem to think they are in a Bollywood BS war movie and are more interested in trying to grab trophies and start fights than doing their actual jobs.

The Indian military leadership seem to be little better. All of them seem to take foreign arms salesmen boasts at face value and have little to no time for logistics.

Its actually impressive that they do not seem to have competent people operating at any level no matter where you look.

 

[ougoah]

The Indians are just a hopeless mess from top to bottom.

At the top, you have out-of-their-depths wannabe hard men who are caught between the cold reality of total PLA dominance, and the fiction they have spun to fool the masses into thinking India > China; and thus feel they have no choice but to keep escalating in ‘reply’ to Chinese push backs on their earlier escalations.

These Indian leaders make the ridiculous assumption that the Chinese will response the same way as they have done in the past, when tensions were mild, to new Indian provocation now, completely failing to take into account the escalated tensions and much harder line China is taking in response to all of Indians antics.

These Indian leaders also seem to not grasp the consequences of their actions in thinking that making changes to rules of engagement (effectively scrapping the decades long prohibition on use of firearms by giving local commanders basically a blank cheque to do what they want by asking them to use their own ‘initiative’) for domestic political point scoring would have no actual operational impact on the boarder itself.

Nor do they seem to take into account the ill discipline of Indian frontline troops as have been recently demonstrated by the actions of that dead colonel which is the spark that escalated this latest stand off to its current dangerous levels.

Then on the ground you have a bunch of jumped up wannabe action heroes for frontline troops and officers, who seem to think they are in a Bollywood BS war movie and are more interested in trying to grab trophies and start fights than doing their actual jobs.

The Indian military leadership seem to be little better. All of them seem to take foreign arms salesmen boasts at face value and have little to no time for logistics.

Its actually impressive that they do not seem to have competent people operating at any level no matter where you look.

Pre April 2020 India and China had fluid patrols up to their respective claim lines. For India, they had total access to finger 8. After May 2020, India has been totally cut off from accessing up to finger 8 and can go no further than finger 4. The same applies to the northern sections previously disputed.

Chinese action was a singular move, capture everything from finger 8 to finger 4. Galwan valley is less well publicised and observed because there are fewer geographic monuments to use as reference but it is clear from India's own public information that PLA's occupied stretch expands with a corresponding depth in the north. India has done nothing in response for nearly 5 months now. It is clear their military understands they are in an egg vs stone situation or they would have started shooting months ago after just a few days/weeks of planning.

India's military tactics remain a pathetic kind of tit for tat confrontation similar to how they deal with Pakistan. The question is whether the CCP is going to accept the fact that Indians are just going to occasionally send IA divisions in for a short intrusion. If they allow it, the Indians will stay and unless the CCP is going to welcome a shooting war and start the first shot, they can't exactly deal with intruding Indians with military superiority. The Indians are actually sort of forcing China to fire the first shot as well since they clearly won't even when China's taken literally about half their claimed territory.

If China continues evicting intrusions using more men to push out the Indians, this is going to be a boring, annoying, and frequent thing with potentially many violent outbreaks. It's really not worth it. So the CCP should consider opening the war but China is also hesitating.

It is quite clear now that India 100% does not want war and knows it will lose one. It's also clear that China has zero real appetite for an actual war or they would not accept Indian intrusions. Sure there's no way to know exactly how harshly they dealt with this recent intrusion (and thus how much deterrence they set as precedent). We will see I suppose. If there are more intrusions then it goes to show the CCP didn't deal with this one harsh enough or the Indian leaders tolerate unnecessary losses of life. If war starts, it'll be impossible to truly say who started it for us and it'll be effectively impossible to say whether it was engineered/intended for or not.

 

[Temstar]

Pre April 2020 India and China had fluid patrols up to their respective claim lines. For India, they had total access to finger 8. After May 2020, India has been totally cut off from accessing up to finger 8 and can go no further than finger 4. The same applies to the northern sections previously disputed.

Chinese action was a singular move, capture everything from finger 8 to finger 4. Galwan valley is less well publicised and observed because there are fewer geographic monuments to use as reference but it is clear from India's own public information that PLA's occupied stretch expands with a corresponding depth in the north. India has done nothing in response for nearly 5 months now. It is clear their military understands they are in an egg vs stone situation or they would have started shooting months ago after just a few days/weeks of planning.

India's military tactics remain a pathetic kind of tit for tat confrontation similar to how they deal with Pakistan. The question is whether the CCP is going to accept the fact that Indians are just going to occasionally send IA divisions in for a short intrusion. If they allow it, the Indians will stay and unless the CCP is going to welcome a shooting war and start the first shot, they can't exactly deal with intruding Indians with military superiority. The Indians are actually sort of forcing China to fire the first shot as well since they clearly won't even when China's taken literally about half their claimed territory.

If China continues evicting intrusions using more men to push out the Indians, this is going to be a boring, annoying, and frequent thing with potentially many violent outbreaks. It's really not worth it. So the CCP should consider opening the war but China is also hesitating.

It is quite clear now that India 100% does not want war and knows it will lose one. It's also clear that China has zero real appetite for an actual war or they would not accept Indian intrusions. Sure there's no way to know exactly how harshly they dealt with this recent intrusion (and thus how much deterrence they set as precedent). We will see I suppose. If there are more intrusions then it goes to show the CCP didn't deal with this one harsh enough or the Indian leaders tolerate unnecessary losses of life. If war starts, it'll be impossible to truly say who started it for us and it'll be effectively impossible to say whether it was engineered/intended for or not.

China's current strategy is working though. Keep India's troops fixed on the front line and wait for General Winter to kick in and do his thing. Either India continue to hemorrhage resources, manpower and ground in attempting to hold, or they draw back and lose all of their forward position in one stroke.

 

[ougoah]

The onus was on the Indians to respond to China's unilateral move to settle the western border dispute. Modi lied. It's now public knowledge Modi lied about "no PLA intrusions". The Indians will cover up anything that doesn't make them look good unless it's just too hard to cover up like the 20+ IA soldiers killed and dozens who were captured by PLA. Smaller matters they've already sweeped under the rug and explained using really pathetic excuses like BMP fell over on a commander and landmine blew another one up. FYI an Indian landmine, ones they are laying in anticipation of mass PLA ingress.

Now it's clear they recognise they can't fight and can't win a war. Abundantly clear. However the onus also has shifted as India's tactics have shifted. They are practicing annoying intrusions and will sit on Chinese land for as long as they can/allowed. So the onus is now really on China to avoid this "win but win with annoying non stop intrusions" situation. China won't use military power to remove them, they won't be able to capture them since in a group vs group fist fight defeat, the Indians will more likely just retreat away. If they win, that's even more problematic for PLA as they need to send more reinforcements and escalate until the Indians leave. So you can't kill them without starting a war you don't want to fight (assumed but only the natural conclusion) and you can't capture them. So every time they intrude, you need to send PLA over to evict with force like the one shown in the recently shared video by the riverbank.

This to me is quite an unsatisfactory non solution. Indian man hours are quantifiably less productive and less valuable. The exchange is economically unfavourable to China and increases nominally with time. I'm just imagining this stupidity goes on like the LOC for perpetuity. CCP grow some fing balls and put your weapons to use! Take a Fing hit once in a while. It'll toughen up the PLA and give it much needed experience.

 

[ougoah]

China's current strategy is working though. Keep India's troops fixed on the front line and wait for General Winter to kick in and do his thing. Either India continue to hemorrhage resources, manpower and ground in attempting to hold, or they draw back and lose all of their forward position in one stroke.

And then the cycle repeats once everything thaws. That's a shitty solution.

India is not using much resource. Their supply lines are closer, they are using locals from the nearby Indian towns to deliver supplies, food, and water. They can actually afford to keep this up for as long as China wants to allow this cycle to perpetuate.

What you're suggesting really involves eventual war. This is just the flirting. We haven't even reached foreplay where next year in the spring+summer+autumn, the intruding and clashing continues and either one side goes in in one swoop like you suggest and that gets rebuffed, then repeat. China won't be swooping in since it's already finished and achieved objective - settle border according to China's definition of borderlines. China has no reason to go further but India is using the "capture Chinese land to negotiate" tactic. This is will continue until either China slips several times and India successfully latches on to some Chinese land at which point China either relents and trades or it applies lethal force to evict. This is actually a binary outcome.

 

[Temstar]

The onus was on the Indians to respond to China's unilateral move to settle the western border dispute. Modi lied. It's now public knowledge Modi lied about "no PLA intrusions". The Indians will cover up anything that doesn't make them look good unless it's just too hard to cover up like the 20+ IA soldiers killed and dozens who were captured by PLA. Smaller matters they've already sweeped under the rug and explained using really pathetic excuses like BMP fell over on a commander and landmine blew another one up. FYI an Indian landmine, ones they are laying in anticipation of mass PLA ingress.

Now it's clear they recognise they can't fight and can't win a war. Abundantly clear. However the onus also has shifted as India's tactics have shifted. They are practicing annoying intrusions and will sit on Chinese land for as long as they can/allowed. So the onus is now really on China to avoid this "win but win with annoying non stop intrusions" situation. China won't use military power to remove them, they won't be able to capture them since in a group vs group fist fight defeat, the Indians will more likely just retreat away. If they win, that's even more problematic for PLA as they need to send more reinforcements and escalate until the Indians leave. So you can't kill them without starting a war you don't want to fight (assumed but only the natural conclusion) and you can't capture them. So every time they intrude, you need to send PLA over to evict with force like the one shown in the recently shared video by the riverbank.

This to me is quite an unsatisfactory non solution. Indian man hours are quantifiably less productive and less valuable. The exchange is economically unfavourable to China and increases nominally with time. I'm just imagining this stupidity goes on like the LOC for perpetuity. CCP grow some fing balls and put your weapons to use! Take a Fing hit once in a while. It'll toughen up the PLA and give it much needed experience.

I agree that when taken the western theatre in of itself this is the best approach.

However on a strategic level for all of China, the Central Military Commission might want to sustain the current level of aggression until winter, with the view that should US government become paralysed post November election due to disputes about election outcome China might want to take advantage of the situation and go ahead with Liberation of Taiwan. This could be an once a century opportunity that one might miss out if you escalate to a limited war now with India at this time.

On a lighter note, fresh new memes from China:


PLAAF: Check out my new J-20
PLAN: Check out my new Type 055
PLAGF: Check out my new guandao

 

[ougoah]

On the one hand India's current economic and social woes add to its ineffectiveness at war. China's relatively favourable position gives it further advantages. However it's much more likely for India to be politically motivated into acting as a distraction from political failures and unwanted attention from its own citizens.

CCP may be thinking that India will avoid war when its situation progresses and improves. This would be a further step towards completely settling western dispute especially if Indians somehow relent but chances are they will gather their strength for future dispute. If India degrades even further, then the relative advantages continue building for China. So no matter how you plot this out, the Chinese side is collecting advantage with time, giving more reason to play it super slow. Unless new factors get introduced, there is no strong incentive to get pushed into war or initiate even accounting for Indian intrusions. It remains to be seen how Indians continue this tactic of their's. Perhaps there was just enough application of lethal force in the recent clash to get Indian planners back to formulating a new approach.

 

[plawolf]

Pre April 2020 India and China had fluid patrols up to their respective claim lines. For India, they had total access to finger 8. After May 2020, India has been totally cut off from accessing up to finger 8 and can go no further than finger 4. The same applies to the northern sections previously disputed.

Chinese action was a singular move, capture everything from finger 8 to finger 4. Galwan valley is less well publicised and observed because there are fewer geographic monuments to use as reference but it is clear from India's own public information that PLA's occupied stretch expands with a corresponding depth in the north. India has done nothing in response for nearly 5 months now. It is clear their military understands they are in an egg vs stone situation or they would have started shooting months ago after just a few days/weeks of planning.

India's military tactics remain a pathetic kind of tit for tat confrontation similar to how they deal with Pakistan. The question is whether the CCP is going to accept the fact that Indians are just going to occasionally send IA divisions in for a short intrusion. If they allow it, the Indians will stay and unless the CCP is going to welcome a shooting war and start the first shot, they can't exactly deal with intruding Indians with military superiority. The Indians are actually sort of forcing China to fire the first shot as well since they clearly won't even when China's taken literally about half their claimed territory.

If China continues evicting intrusions using more men to push out the Indians, this is going to be a boring, annoying, and frequent thing with potentially many violent outbreaks. It's really not worth it. So the CCP should consider opening the war but China is also hesitating.

It is quite clear now that India 100% does not want war and knows it will lose one. It's also clear that China has zero real appetite for an actual war or they would not accept Indian intrusions. Sure there's no way to know exactly how harshly they dealt with this recent intrusion (and thus how much deterrence they set as precedent). We will see I suppose. If there are more intrusions then it goes to show the CCP didn't deal with this one harsh enough or the Indian leaders tolerate unnecessary losses of life. If war starts, it'll be impossible to truly say who started it for us and it'll be effectively impossible to say whether it was engineered/intended for or not.

You are looking at this too much like the Indians. There is no simple military solution to this boarder dispute. It is too long and porous to effectively garrison, so brute force occupation doesn’t work. Just look at how badly Trump’s wall project is going. China cannot keep the entire Indian boarder manned all the time, and it does not want to maintain a huge standing military force in the region to keep direct military options permanently available.

That means as soon as China drawsdown its troops in the boarder region, India can probe again in relative safety. PLA troops cannot simply shoot on sight because without the backing of a larger PLA force, that would be inviting a minor military defeated. The PLA is only taking the aggressive posture it is now because it has all that raw military force in position ready to go should the Indians give them an excuse. That is what the Indians don’t seem understand, as they seem to think this is a game of poker and that they can somehow bluff the PLA, even though the PLA can clearly see how weak the Indian military position is.

As 62 showed, even a major operation will only buy temporary respite. As soon as new leadership takes over in India, they will promptly forget all the lessons they should have learnt from their latest military defeat and blame it all on Modi saying India would have won if only they were in charge. And the whole cycle will start again.

Chinese military objectives on the ground are primarily to maintain Chinese claims and prevent India from changing facts on the ground to their favour, which will disadvantage China in any future peaceful resolution. A secondary objective is to deny India the ability to patrol up to their claim line as punishment for Indian provocations.

The only viable long term military solution is to not stop at the boarder and either totally colonise India as the British did, or shatter it into a dozen pieces and let them fight amongst themselves for the next hundred years while China formally settle the boarder with vassal states it creates in India that will now share the boarder with China.

As such, unless and until China is willing and able to devote the time and resources needed to shatter India as a state, there is no viable long term military option to settle the boarder dispute, which is why the Chinese never even tried to settle it militarily.

 

[ougoah]

You are looking at this too much like the Indians. There is no simple military solution to this boarder dispute. It is too long and porous to effectively garrison, so brute force occupation doesn’t work. Just look at how badly Trump’s wall project is going. China cannot keep the entire Indian boarder manned all the time, and it does not want to maintain a huge standing military force in the region to keep direct military options permanently available.

That means as soon as China drawsdown its troops in the boarder region, India can probe again in relative safety. PLA troops cannot simply shoot on sight because without the backing of a larger PLA force, that would be inviting a minor military defeated. The PLA is only taking the aggressive posture it is now because it has all that raw military force in position ready to go should the Indians give them an excuse. That is what the Indians don’t seem understand, as they seem to think this is a game of poker and that they can somehow bluff the PLA, even though the PLA can clearly see how weak the Indian military position is.

As 62 showed, even a major operation will only buy temporary respite. As soon as new leadership takes over in India, they will promptly forget all the lessons they should have learnt from their latest military defeat and blame it all on Modi saying India would have won if only they were in charge. And the whole cycle will start again.

Chinese military objectives on the ground are primarily to maintain Chinese claims and prevent India from changing facts on the ground to their favour, which will disadvantage China in any future peaceful resolution. A secondary objective is to deny India the ability to patrol up to their claim line as punishment for Indian provocations.

The only viable long term military solution is to not stop at the boarder and either totally colonise India as the British did, or shatter it into a dozen pieces and let them fight amongst themselves for the next hundred years while China formally settle the boarder with vassal states it creates in India that will now share the boarder with China.

As such, unless and until China is willing and able to devote the time and resources needed to shatter India as a state, there is no viable long term military option to settle the boarder dispute, which is why the Chinese never even tried to settle it militarily.

Exactly! Read what you said here and it becomes obvious that the CCP may have blundered by making a move which it can't or won't finish. CCP doesn't seem like it should continue to reinforce this region with heavier than ideal military presence. It shouldn't be bogging itself down like this either for many considerations. But moving away only invites further intrusion and confidence from India. The CCP won't start the war either and so will not invade India to do what you mentioned and that's assuming it would be tolerated by the rest of the world. It won't. It'll certainly invite nuclear exchange which China may come out on top of with minimal damage given the tiny yields of Indian fission weapons and lack of long range delivery systems at the moment. Still definitely not the ideal outcome... in fact bottom of the pile.

It just seems to me that this unilateral move to capture India's claims and settle the border according to China's own understanding on it is just getting it into a geopolitical stalemate unless it's happy to continue putting new military presence in Tibet. Perhaps this is the actual goal along with further safeguarding BRI and CPEC. I can't think of any other realistic non-conspiratorial theories. Maybe war is the goal and this is the flirting/foreplay stage. Time will tell. Playing tit for tat fisticuffs with occasional outbreaks of shooting, like the LOC has suffered from for decades, is certainly not the desired outcome of this move.

 

[Sardaukar20]

This to me is quite an unsatisfactory non solution. Indian man hours are quantifiably less productive and less valuable. The exchange is economically unfavourable to China and increases nominally with time. I'm just imagining this stupidity goes on like the LOC for perpetuity. CCP grow some fing balls and put your weapons to use! Take a Fing hit once in a while. It'll toughen up the PLA and give it much needed experience.

Yes. The Indian troops have already started using their firearms. That is more than enough justification for PLA troops to go "weapons free". I was hoping that that 'head-shot' or 'drone strike' is indeed real. If its not, then its yet more pussyfooting around by China. India would certainly take this as a sign of weakness, and be emboldened to mess around further with the PLA. US and Russian troops threatened by hostile gunfire do not show such restraints. They would rain hell on their enemies for doing that. When Indian troops showed the PLA no respect by using their firearms to "chase them away", they must be given a fitting reply. This BS have to stop now. But if India is stupid enough to go to war after that, then good luck.