How ‘Mirror Deployment’ Takes Place When There is a Standoff Situation Between India and China?
This is an excerpt from the recent article published on The India Express portal to make us understand the recent developments on the India-China border dispute where it quotes some forward line military men, names not disclosed.
Mirror deployment means India is matching any move of the Chinese with their own. But how does it happens?
… At Despang, “for movement there, you don’t require paved roads, you can move on gravel tracks. There, the reaction capability is faster,” the source said, adding that “they are much inside the Indian side”.
Every year, the source said, the Chinese go to the Tibetan plateau for summer military training, and “these training areas are all along the Western Highway” which is around 150-200 km from the LAC at its closest.
From the Western Highway, there are axial roads to the LAC. “We had picked up movement right up to the Western Highway,” the source said, and “blobs” of Chinese positions were visible — other countries, including the US, had also shared images.
For the Chinese troops “to move up to the LAC or the launchpads is a matter of less than 24 hours in some cases, or 36 hours” and “that is precisely what happened at that point in time,” the source said.
“We were monitoring… where their formations are sitting… After that, they came forward. Now that is at the strategic level, their intent, that they wanted to do this, that was a gap.” Had India known “that they are going to do this, then obviously we would have also mobilised earlier,” the source said.
“If somebody is coming across and you see a build-up,” the source said, “the reserve formations should have moved”. The gap in being prepared for such action, the source said, was at the lower level.
Source: The Indian Express, edited
