New Delhi: The Indian government is learnt to be carefully looking at 'tactical errors' that may been made by military officers in the very remote and difficult eastern Ladakh region that may have offered advantages to China to rapidly deploy soldiers and set up military infrastructure near the Line of Actual Control (LAC), the de facto border with China.
"While admitting that certain tactical mistakes may have been committed which permitted Chinese deployments towards our side, a stock-taking is on at higher levels and responsibilities will be fixed," a senior official with knowledge of the development told ETV Bharat on condition of not being identified.
Another source told ETV Bharat that the matter would have been certainly discussed threadbare at the first leg of the three-day Army Commanders Conference that ended last Friday.
Tactical level is the one at which war fighting takes place in order to achieve operational objectives. Tactics is the art of deploying land, air, maritime, Special Forces, and logistic elements to achieve success in war.
The Indian Army Doctrine document brought out in 2017 talks of four levels of warfare — political or grand strategic, military strategic, operational and tactical.
The Chinese military deployments, ‘mirror-matched’ by the Indian Army in proportionate measure, have resulted in eye-ball to eye-ball confrontation in at least four points in eastern Ladakh. The deployment has snowballed into building up reserves including moving artillery guns and heavy vehicles by both sides in the rear positions of the frontline.
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The rear deployment has been made in a manner that both sides can rush in men and material fast enough in case of an escalation.
There have been at least two violent brawls—one on May 9 and another on or around May 22—between PLA soldiers and mixed teams of Indian Army and ITBP troopers near the Pangong lake region in eastern Ladakh. At least 100 soldiers from both sides have suffered injuries, some serious, in the ensuing fracas. On May 5-6, another fistfight had broken out between the two sides in north Sikkim.
One particular concern for India is the Chinese buildup on the Galwan Valley near the confluence point of the Galwan and the Shyok rivers because the newly set up Chinese position is less than 2 km away from the 255-km long road that connects Shyok village to Daulat Beg Oldi (DBO), a major Indian military base located near the Karakoram pass, making the vital road very vulnerable to Chinese fire.
India had stepped up its road construction activity on its own side near the LAC with the onset of summer as such work can take place in these areas only from May to September-October.
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