As India-China stand-off continues, IAF deploys heavy lift aircraft to stock up winter essentials for soldiers along LAC

As the stand-off between the two neighbouring nations is likely to continue through another winter, India has deployed heavy lift military aircraft to stock up essentials for its soldiers deployed along its Line of Actual Control (LAC) with China in eastern Ladakh.

The aircraft of the Indian Air Force joined the Indian Army on Tuesday to carry out the “Operation Hercules” to deliver winter supplies, including essentials like food, clothes and fuel, for the soldiers deployed along the LAC between India and China in eastern Ladakh. The IAF deployed its C-17, IL-76 and An-32 aircraft for the joint heavy lift operation with the Indian Army “to strengthen the logistics supply in the northern sector and to augment winter stocking in the operational areas”, according to a press-release issued by the Ministry of Defence in New Delhi.

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The IAF aircraft took off from one of the forward bases of the Western Air Command and delivered supplies for the Indian Army soldiers engaged in an eyeball-to-eyeball stand-off with the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) personnel along the LAC.

A source in New Delhi said that the IAF and the Indian Army would continue to carry out similar joint heavy lift operations over the next couple of weeks to deliver not only weapons and ammunition, but also ration, medicine, clothes, kerosene, petrol, diesel and tents for the frontline soldiers deployed at several face-off points along the India-China disputed boundary in eastern Ladakh.

This is the second winter the soldiers of the Indian Army and the Indo-Tibetan Border Police will have to endure in the harsh weather along the LAC between India and China after the stand-off started in April-May 2020. The Indian Army deployed over 50,000 soldiers along the LAC over the past 19 months after the Chinese PLA amassed a large number of troops in eastern Ladakh.

The incursion attempts by the Chinese PLA soldiers in Uttarakhand and Arunachal Pradesh in the recent weeks fuelled speculation about the possibility of the stand-off along the LAC in the western sector of the disputed boundary between the two nations spreading to the middle and eastern sectors.

The Indian Army and the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) mutually withdrew frontline troops from the northern and southern banks of Pangong Tso (lake) in February and from the Gogra Post in August this year. The talks for disengagement from other remaining face-off points along the LAC hit an impasse and the soldiers of the two sides continued to remain engaged in stand-offs at several points along the LAC in eastern Ladakh.

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