THIS COULD BE THE LARGEST HIGH-ALTITUDE TROOPS MASSING IN THE HISTORY OF MILITARY STANDOFFS

The answer to fighting the cold lies in a military catch-all, FOL or Fuel, Oil and Lubricants. FOL, by some estimates, accounts for over 60 per cent of the logistical requirements of troops in the theatre. Oil-fired bukharis heat Arctic tents. Food is cooked on oil stoves and used to melt snow for drinking water. Petrol and diesel runs vehicles and jet fuel powers the IAF helicopters and aircraft which fly in the supplies.

In a picturesque valley overlooking Leh, a signboard welcomes you to ‘The Scattered Tanks’—the world’s highest FOL depot. The air is thick with the smell of fuel. There are thousands of green drums and jerrycans for as far as the eye can see. An army officer stands on a giant concrete tank with metal hatches that holds 400,000 litres of diesel, enough to fill half an Olympic-sized swimming pool, and explains how the lifeblood travels around the sector. A row of civilian tankers empty their tanks into this underground reservoir. From here it is decanted into barrels and fuel tankers, a process known as ‘bulk breaking’, and trucked to the posts along the LAC. Giant convoys of military trucks, each carrying 12,000 litres of fuel, radiate out of Leh.

“We’ve learned a lot over the past three decades...the glacier (Siachen) taught us so much,” says Lt Gen. Rakesh Sharma, former GoC of the 14 Corps. The key to ensuring that troops can sustain themselves through the winter is logistics. “Amateurs talk about tactics, but professionals study logistics,” as US Marine Corp’s Gen. Robert H. Barrow noted four decades ago. These could well be the motto of the professionals in the army’s Directorate General of Opera

tional Logistics and Strategic Movement (DGOL&SM) in South Block which is coordinating this massive movement of men and materiel. The army has had three decades of experience in setting up the infrastructure to battle the cold in Siachen, where conditions are far more demanding that the frontier with China. It will need time and resources to create the same all along the LAC.

It costs the Indian Army Rs 5 crore a day to maintain a brigade of troops— over 3,000 soldiers—on the Siachen glacier. There are no estimates as to what the new LAC deployments will cost, but it will be substantial. This does not count the significant cost of the air bridge—the transport aircraft and helicopters that ferry supplies to its far-flung winter posts and the wear and tear on equipment and machinery. The Border Roads Organisation, the MoD’s military infrastructure-building agency, has been tasked with ensuring the Srinagar-Leh route stays open for as long as possible this year. This involves widening the existing road and procuring additional snow clearing equipment to clear the Zojila Pass leading into Leh.

T he 14 Corps will no doubt be studying the logistical war games and its contingency plans for both the China and Pakistan front to deal with the surge in troops. Not only does it have to sustain an additional army corps that was rapidly inducted in June but also has to provision troops that are part of a dramatic forward move. On August 29, over a brigade of Indian special forces climbed up and occupied a 40-kmlong series of hills south of the Pangong lake overlooking Chinese positions. The Indian Army calls it an ‘area denial operation’ and says it pre-empted the Chinese move to occupy them. These heights, on the Indian side of the LAC, were last occupied during the 1962 war with China.

“I talked to officers, JCOs (Junior Commissioned Officers) and took stock of preparedness. I took a first-hand look of the situation on the ground. The morale of the jawans is high and they are ready to deal with all challenges,” army chief Gen. M.M. Naravane told news agency ANI after touring units across Ladakh on September 4, just days after the Indian special forces were ensconced on the hill features. The move forward has brought troops on both sides within hundreds of metres of each other and, potentially, closer to confrontation than ever before. The army’s amended rules of engagement (RoE) after the June 15 clash in which 20 Indian soldiers and an unnamed number of Chinese soldiers died, now, reportedly, authorises troops to open fire in case of any provocation.

The task will be to ensure these soldiers sitting on exposed hilltops are protected from the elements at all times. A military surgeon points to three challenges in ensuring medical care for frontline soldiers—the sheer number of troops brought in by the rapid deployment, the vagaries of the high altitudes and the absence of fixed infrastructure in the forward areas.