Nobody knows exactly what is the strength of SFF "when fully manned". Another fact, it doesn't get reported & documented (at least in available public domain) either due to non-official nature of job.
Line of Actual Control (LAC) : India & Tibet Border Updates
- Thread starter Shashank
- Start date
SFF has best around 5000 troops. The total number of Tibetans in India is less than 100,000.
Nothing new in these tweets. Please read my earlier posts. I had clearly stated that Moldo/Spangur tso garrison has now only two options, surrender or die fighting till the last men. They have no escape. But very important point which has been lost on most of these tweeting Generals is the effect of Moldo on the overall battle picture in southeast Ladakh. The loss of Moldo garrison means that PLA has now lost all abilities of launching any attack in SE Ladakh as this garrison was supposed to cut thru Chusul from Spangur Gap to allow take over of Demchok and Chumer area cutting the road leading to these places and surround Indian forces in these areas.
Our forces by dominating the heights around Moldo garrison, have now given us the the tactical advantage to completely dominate SE Ladakh and G219 is closest from Demchok and this allows us to even cut off Rutog and dominate Indus valley further down towards HP sector.
Long back on this very thread I had written that any Indian offensive must learn from the route and tactics followed by Dogra General Zorawar Singh. IA has done just that. He too had moved along Indua valley into Tibet. The added benefit of this move is that PLA has now lost ability to even mount an attack in HP/UK sector called the central sector. They have no chance in Sikkim sector so the next area of interest will be AP. Below is the route taken by Gen Zorawer Singh in his conquest of Tibet.
True. This was out of a book I read. Not sure who the author was. I believe it was as Arjun Subramanyam.
SFF isn't made up of Tibetans exclusively. Whatever gave you that notion?
Another fun fact, it's not the only non-official group working with & for us.
Predominantly Tibetan. According to all interviews of ex military officers and SFF personals, SFF is 7 battalion. Where do you got this 15,000 number?
In Chushul’s forbidding heights, locals supply water, other essentials to Indian troops
Around 60 locals, including women from Chushul and Merak villages volunteered to deliver water and other essential commodities to the heights of Black Top.
Hahah.. Psy ops . Poking China in the eye over their loss of Blacktop.. Also, the release of the Ops room map yesterday in a TOI article depicting Blacktop to be on the chinese side of LAC (Indian perception) seems deliberate.. So, as to show that India has now shifted the LAC into chinese occupied territory.. and has officially entered the salami slicing game as a Salami Slicer
...
Border Road Organisation Working 24x7 To Facilitate Army Movement In Ladakh
To facilitate fast movement of security forces and easy deployment of heavy machinery and other weapons to locations along Ladakh's Line of Actual Control (LAC) - the de factor border between India and China - amid ongoing tension between the two countries, the Border Road Organisation (BRO) has...
www.ndtv.com
This is how I roughly see the situation.
- Send in the PLA in force into Ladakh and capture all the commanding points in Ladakh.
- Using India's defensive mindset to confuse IA and hold on to the territory throughout the winter while not giving in to any of the demands by India.
- Force India to stop all the road and Infrastructure work in Ladakh and the border areas.
- Chinese also possibly hoped the poor Infrastructure present on the Indian side would make it difficult for the IA to mobilize in large numbers.
- The COVID pandemic and its economic vows will make it expensive for India to maintain a large army there for a lengthy duration.
- This will force India to give in to a favourable agreement for the Chinese by next year giving a safe and stable border in the eastern front before the PLA can focus on SCS and Taiwan.
India's counter
- India massively expanded its Infrastructure in Ladakh hoping to finish all the due work in the fastest possible time.
- Massive economic attack on Chinese IT companies like Byte Dance and Tencent who had a massive hold in India.
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- India is hoping, the United States along with the QUAD and other countries will chip in and ban Chinese apps multiplying the problem for the Chinese.
- Change from a defensive mindset to an offensive mindset, confusing the PLA and forcing the PLA to focus its energies and ousting Indian troops from its fortified positions.
- Entire PLA camps other than the one in Shingzhang is in LOS of spotters and can come under direct artillery fire possibly cutting off the Chinese road in the bush area and S301 by IA troops in Rezang la and Reqin la
@vstol Jockey Updated Map, What do you guys think?
- Send in the PLA in force into Ladakh and capture all the commanding points in Ladakh.
- Using India's defensive mindset to confuse IA and hold on to the territory throughout the winter while not giving in to any of the demands by India.
- Force India to stop all the road and Infrastructure work in Ladakh and the border areas.
- Chinese also possibly hoped the poor Infrastructure present on the Indian side would make it difficult for the IA to mobilize in large numbers.
- The COVID pandemic and its economic vows will make it expensive for India to maintain a large army there for a lengthy duration.
- This will force India to give in to a favourable agreement for the Chinese by next year giving a safe and stable border in the eastern front before the PLA can focus on SCS and Taiwan.
India's counter
- India massively expanded its Infrastructure in Ladakh hoping to finish all the due work in the fastest possible time.
- Massive economic attack on Chinese IT companies like Byte Dance and Tencent who had a massive hold in India.
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- India is hoping, the United States along with the QUAD and other countries will chip in and ban Chinese apps multiplying the problem for the Chinese.
- Change from a defensive mindset to an offensive mindset, confusing the PLA and forcing the PLA to focus its energies and ousting Indian troops from its fortified positions.
- Entire PLA camps other than the one in Shingzhang is in LOS of spotters and can come under direct artillery fire possibly cutting off the Chinese road in the bush area and S301 by IA troops in Rezang la and Reqin la
@vstol Jockey Updated Map, What do you guys think?
Sirijap is wrongly marked. The balloon might go up just after FM talks. Chinese will suffer much larger casualties in winters even without fighting a war as such a large number of PLA troops will not be able to survive the winters in this area.
So will we be expecting a winter offensive, taking over the Pangang So lake? BTW, if things do get hot. Can we not start an offensive from Demchock to cut of G219?
sometimes it gets difficult to follow the discussion here. sometimes people say india has full planready for the 2.5 front and to liberate Lahsa. The same people at some other point will say we need time to modernise roads, buy more weapons improve economy and we need to wait and so on. The discussions simply seems to binary oscillate between these two point of views.
It's there in the very post you've quoted & the Tibetans don't make up for more than 50% of the cadre. The officers are all Indians. There's a reason behind this for somewhere in the late 60's or early 70's these Tibetans in the SFF went rogue & were launching unauthorized raids into Tibet & in one of these raids the PLA killed 4 of them.
Since then they were taken off the frontier & put under a tight leash.