Geared up for full-fledged war along LAC: Army

New Delhi: Asserting that it is fully prepared to fight a full-fledged war even in winters in eastern Ladakh, the Indian Army on Wednesday said if China created conditions for war, they will face a better trained, better prepared, fully rested and psychologically hardened Indian troops.

The Indian Army is keeping its formidable Bofors howitzers ready for operations. In a visit to the maintenance facilities for the Bofors guns in Ladakh, ANI could see the effort with which the engineers of the force are servicing and maintaining the 155mm Bofors gun in Ladakh.

In a statement, it said compared to physically and psychologically battle-hardened Indian troops, Chinese troops mostly are from urban areas and not used to hardships or prolonged deployment under field conditions.

The Army' Northern Command headquarters made these assertions reacting to China's official media Global Times reports that India's operational logistics is not geared up adequately and it will not be able to fight through winters effectively.

"This can best be attributed to ignorance. Indian Army is fully prepared and more than capable of fighting a full-fledged war even in winters in eastern Ladakh," a Northern Command spokesperson said.

He said altitudes in Ladakh range from high to super-high altitude and there is a lot of snowfall up to 40 feet after November. Coupled with this, the temperature dipping down to minus 30 to 40 degree Celsius is a usual phenomenon.

Wind chill factor makes matters even worse for the troops. The roads also get closed due to the snow. But despite all this, the most encouraging part for India is that the Indian soldiers have a huge experience of winter warfare and are psychologically tuned to operate at short notice, the spokesperson said.

While these facts are known to the world, he said, adding the operational logistics capabilities, however, are hardly known. Logistic capability relates to mobility, habitat and billeting, quality services for health, special rations, repair and recovery, heating systems, high-quality weapons, ammunition, quality clothing, and so on.

While much of these capabilities existed earlier and troops could simply plug and play, a lot has also been boosted since May this year when China showed first signs of aggression, he said.