The United States | August 10, 2022
Less than 100 kilometers (62 miles) from India’s contentious border with China, the United States will participate in a joint military drill with India.
A senior Indian Army officer with knowledge of the situation said that the high-altitude warfare training will be the main emphasis of the military exercises, which will take place in mid-October at a height of 10,000 feet in Auli in the Indian state of Uttarakhand.
The Line of Actual Control (LAC), a desolate area of territory where the disputed border between India and China is substantially delineated, is located around 95 kilometers from Auli.
The exercises are a part of Yudh Abhyas, an annual joint drill also known as “War Practice,” which is in its 18th year.
Since a brutal encounter between their soldiers in the Himalayas in June 2020 that resulted in at least 20 Indian troops and four Chinese soldiers dying, relations between India and China have been tense.
China’s recent construction of a bridge over the bordering Pangong Tso lake, which the Indian government has denounced as a “illegal occupation,” has exacerbated tensions.
China’s military build-up along the contentious border has been dubbed “alarming” by US Army Pacific Commanding General Charles Flynn, who visited India this year.
A US Department of Defense official told CNN when questioned about the joint drills that the alliance with India was “one of the most essential parts of our common vision for a free and open Indo-Pacific region.”
Yudh Abhyas is one such yearly bilateral exercise meant to increase interoperability and improve our respective capacity to manage a range of regional security problems, the spokesperson added. Exercises and training events are a key component of this larger endeavor.
Line of Actual Control
The 1962 Sino-Indian border war, which was itself brought on by long-standing territorial disputes, gave rise to the Line of Actual Control, the ill-defined de facto frontier between China and India.
Its exact location might be hazy, and China and India continue to disagree over where one nation stops and the other begins.
Any military escalation between China and India could have serious repercussions. Both of them are nuclear-armed.
After a brutal brawl in June 2020 in the Galwan Valley, close to Aksai Chin, an area held by China but claimed by both countries, that resulted in at least 20 Indian soldiers being slain, border tensions between the two countries increased.
Even though hostilities have subsided, both sides still retain a sizable army presence in the border area, increasing the possibility of strategic error in the case of unforeseen and unplanned conflicts.