tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4374735833855861894.post1950549342502414796..comments2022-10-17T07:21:14.421-07:00Comments on Discussion Board: Aksai Chin-2 - Road Link to DBOVRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15325973498628657512noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4374735833855861894.post-36557764867021250722013-05-18T09:13:44.262-07:002013-05-18T09:13:44.262-07:00Contd from above.
By keeping the infrastructure d...Contd from above.<br /><br />By keeping the infrastructure development close to the LAC poor, one creates a situation where neither India not the Chinese can effectively engage in military operations and is solely reliant on air mobility to achieve critical motion.<br /><br />Until recently where China lagged behind India in air-mobility - this worked to India's benefit. As time goes on, China will likely exceed India's air mobility - so this will not work to India's benefit. <br /><br />I think this is the simple answer to the question raised on BRF about "what stops India from building roads near the LAC?".<br /><br />I am of the opinion that air mobility and its suppression is critical to ensuring the viability of a conventional deterrence strategy in the LAC region. <br />maverickhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11716063979952282764noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4374735833855861894.post-72074300813481353112013-05-18T09:07:43.594-07:002013-05-18T09:07:43.594-07:00Hello Rohit,
I feel the "road" means ma...Hello Rohit,<br /><br />I feel the "road" means many different things in those parts. <br /><br />A reliable road is one which is "all weather". This is a very tricky claim to make.<br /><br />For example, if I have a road that is surfaced with tar or concrete (like most roads at lower altitudes) then the covering material has to withstand very large temperature swings and not degrade complete. This becomes difficult at high altitude and very cold temperatures. In certain parts of the world where temperature swings by 50-60 C during the year, the road is resurfaced each year during the summer months. So at the very least the "all weather" road in these parts has to have annual resurfacing. This is why the PLA has not bothered to surface the Xinjiang-Tibet link that runs through Aksai Chin. One can do things like that but - as seen in that youtube clip one can't really drive at high speed on an unsurfaced road and the dust clouds created by a vehicle in front lead to zero visibility and unsafe driving conditions. <br /><br />Then there is the issue of snow clearance. Snow clearance is possible if the snow plough knows where the road is. If the plough driver does not know where the road is, then he can get lost in the drift and accumulation and the dozer will simply fall off the side of the road. This is a major problem in the clearance of deep snow everywhere in the world. Most countries with high snowfall (or very high sand accumulation) tend to have dozers deployed at regular intervals along a road. These dozers have all weather communication links and there is a good predictive model for weather conditions that allows the rapid deployment of the dozer before too much snow falls on the ground. This infrastructure is costly to develop and we have yet to see that idea really take off in India. <br /><br />Next there is the issue of avalanches/landslide. This is very common in the mountains, everywhere in the world. Again the only antidote to this is keeping dozers at regular intervals along the road. There are some avalanche limitation technologies that are available off the shelf. Lately there is a good amount of LIDAR tech that is being applied to avalanche prediction but this is in its infancy and maybe in ten years time we will off-the-shelf solutions that BRO can use. Until then, this is going to be difficult.<br /><br />Now one can put some brute force and get things done, but then there is a paradox that kicks in - road infrasture that India builds proximate to the mountainous border can easily become a route which China uses o invade Indian territory. If you look the road infrastructure in Ar. Pr. for example, the road conditions a few kilometers from the border are much better than road conditions close the order. In fact most of the bridges really close to the border are rope bridges - there are no pucca structures there. <br /><br />When George H W Bush first visited India in the 60s, the late Sri. Rameshwar Nath Kao personally accompanied him on a trip to the India-China border. Kaoji, the exceptional person that he was, knew all the load bearing weights of each bridge by heart and as the car that he and George HW was in, drove over the bridge, Sri. Kao would call out whether or not the bridge could support the weight of a Chinese tank. <br />maverickhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11716063979952282764noreply@blogger.com