In the deathly hour sometime between 1am and 2am on Friday night, five Indian Army soldiers fought a losing battle as they, along with the about 45-ton heavy T-72 tank, submerged under the raging waters of the Shyok River in Eastern Ladakh.
The accident spot is about 7km north of Kilometre148, near the Indian military base of Daulat Beg Oldie (DBO) located near the Karakoram Pass. “One junior commissioned officer and four other ranks got drowned in the flash flood as the water level suddenly rose in the Shyok River,” a source told THE WEEK.
“The tank and its crew were de-inducting from a military training activity. A boat sent for the rescue operation also capsized in the heavy current,” the source added. The T-72 tank was part of the deployment that had been airlifted over the years to be deployed in the oxygen-depleted and heavily mountainous Eastern Ladakh region.
While a very small tank presence has been there in Ladakh since 2014, the move to fly sizeable numbers of tanks to the Leh airport—at more than 11,000 feet—and from there to their place of deployment in east Ladakh started in earnest from the summer of 2015.
Since then for a year, these tanks were airlifted first in single numbers and then in twos in Globemaster C-17 military transport aircraft with the Indian Air Force undertaking even two sorties in a day. The tank presence in Eastern Ladakh now comprises T-90 tanks too.
While tanks in the high craggy mountains may sound like an anomaly, it has to be kept in mind that the terrain in eastern Ladakh also comprises expanses of totally barren rocky wasteland and plateau-plains like in Chushul, or in Demchok which offer ideal terrain for tank warfare.
India has a mix of T-72, T-90 and Arjun tanks. Relying for more than three decades on the Russian T-72 tanks, India’s mainstay is now the T-90 tank with the DRDO-made main battle tank (MBT) Arjun being the third foil in the country’s tank regiments.
Zorawar tanks
The latest option in the form of the light weight ‘Zorawar’ tank is undergoing trials. Weighing just about 25 tons, the ‘Zorawar’ is seen as an effective counter to the Chinese Type 15 light tanks that weigh around 33 tons.
Named after the legendary 19th century Dogra general Zorawar Singh who led blitzkrieg-type attacks in Ladakh and present day Gilgit-Baltistan, the ‘Zorawar’ is to be equipped with state-of-the-art niche technologies including artificial intelligence, drone integration, Active Protection System, surveillance and communication capabilities and a high degree of situational awareness.
