U.S., India prepare for mountaintop drills near China border
As Beijing ups pressure on Taiwan, Washington sends signal on potential 2nd front
NEW DELHI/TOKYO -- In a move that is sure to attract the attention of war planners in Beijing, the U.S. and India have decided to conduct high-altitude combat training in a region of India bordering China this October.
The annual joint exercise Yudh Abhyas, which translates to "War Practice," will be held in the South Asian nation's Uttarakhand state from Oct. 18 to 31, the U.S. Army Pacific confirmed to Nikkei Asia.
While the joint exercises are not new, the location, nature and timing all have geopolitical significance, especially coming after China's unprecedented drills surrounding Taiwan over the past week.
U.S. Army Pacific's Maj. Jonathan Lewis, who handles public affairs, told Nikkei Asia that the plan for this year's exercise focuses on cold-weather operations, and at high altitude, an environment that poses distinct challenges.
Local Indian media reports say the drills would take place at an altitude of over 3,000 meters in Uttarakhand's Auli region, less than 100 kilometers from the Line of Actual Control -- a de facto border between India and China in the absence of a mutually accepted boundary.
Jeff Smith, a research fellow for South Asia at the Heritage Foundation's Asian Studies Center, said that while India has hosted the Yudh Abhyas exercise in Uttarakhand before, including in 2014, 2016 and 2018, those exercises were all held in the foothills, over 300 km from the boundary.
"This is a new development," Smith said.
Last year's exercise also focused on high-altitude, cold-climate training, but was in Alaska. The combination of high elevation and the proximity to the border area shows that Washington and New Delhi are pushing the envelope.
Pankaj Jha, a professor of defense and strategic studies at O.P. Jindal Global University, said China would likely be somewhat concerned because, through these drills, the U.S. could try to showcase that "they may be looking at another front for [tackling] China" if it increases pressure on Taiwan.
More than the exercise itself, "it is the U.S. involvement [in the drill] that should be a matter of concern for China," he said.
Then there is the timing. October would likely be just before Chinese President Xi Jinping enters the quinquennial Chinese Communist Party National Congress, where he is widely expected to seek a third term as the party's general secretary.
Similar to the visit to Taiwan by U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the drills come in a politically sensitive season for the Chinese leader.
Yet, both Smith and Jha noted that India has shown at least some restraint in the choice of location. Had the exercise been planned in Ladakh or India's northeastern Arunachal Pradesh state, then it could have drawn even greater attention from Beijing.
In Ladakh's Galwan Valley in June 2020, a bloody clash left 20 Indian and four Chinese soldiers dead, escalating the border tensions. Beijing claims Arunachal Pradesh as part of South Tibet, opposing New Delhi's firm stance that the state is an integral part of India.
Tanvi Madan, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, said the drills seem to be a signal from Delhi that it is not setting aside concerns about China or shying away from cooperating with the U.S. as a concession to Beijing.
"This is a sign that India's not giving China a veto on its partnerships," she said. "The exercise and its location are a reflection of the progress and growing comfort level in U.S.-India relations over the last few years," Madan said, noting that the drills come on the 60th anniversary of the 1962 Sino-Indian war, one in which the U.S. aided India.
U.S. Army Pacific's Lewis said, "The exercise will consist of a command post exercise and a field training exercise which will involve training on critical skills and combat tasks, leading up to a validation exercise."
When asked how these drills further strengthen India-U.S. defense ties amid China's aggressiveness in the region, Maj. Lewis said in an email response to Nikkei Asia that the upcoming exercise is about partners working together on areas of mutual interest and "not related to a specific country."
"The location chosen for the training offers the right combination of altitude and climate for the objectives of the exercise," he said, adding the exercise will bring together "the tough, realistic training needed to ensure readiness, the partnership and shared experience necessary for interoperability that enhances relations between nations."
N. C. Bipindra, a defense and strategic affairs expert who is editor of news portal Defence.Capital, said the Indian army has a global reputation for being skilled in counter-insurgency operations and high-altitude warfare. "Other friendly foreign forces seek joint training with India to learn the best practices," he told Nikkei Asia. "Even Russian troopers have previously trained with India in Uttarakhand in similar operations."
Ahead of the October drills, elite special forces from the U.S. and India commenced another joint exercise in the northern Indian hill state of Himachal Pradesh. The three-week exercise, whose 13th edition commenced on Monday, "aims to share best practices and experiences in areas such as joint mission planning and operational tactics as also to improve interoperability between the special forces of both the nations," the Indian Defense Ministry said in a statement.
Teams of both armies, it said, would jointly train, plan and execute a series of special operations, counter-terrorist operations, airborne operations in simulated conventional and unconventional scenarios in mountainous terrain.