India Adds US Army Strykers to Rival China’s Western Military Build-up Along Border

By Kris Osborn, President Center for Military Modernization

The Indian and US Militaries are teaming up to build export variants of the US-made Stryker Infantry Carrier to advance the two countries growing defense cooperation and reinforce a mutual interest in deterring potential Chinese aggression along its Western border with India.

The arrival of Strykers introduces near and long-term implications, particularly with regard to the tense border region between Western China in the Tibetan region and India’s NorthEast. It’s called the Line of Actual Control, a disputed area between China and India, and it is a place where tensions have flared in recent years. There have been several border “clashes” between Indian and Chinese troops which have resulted in losses on both sides.

“The Line of Actual Control (LAC) is an informal cease-fire line along India and China’s contested Himalayan border that was drawn after the 1962 Sino-Indian War. In 2020, clashes broke out between Chinese and Indian soldiers stationed along the line, resulting in deaths on both sides for the first time in more than four decades,” a news essay from Asia Nikkei states.

It would make sense that India might seek to strengthen its land war posture along this border area, particularly because China has in recent years been further militarizing its mountainous and plateau areas in Tibet.

In what could be seen as a massive modernization push and military build-up, the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) continues to plus-up its Western high-altitude plateau regions with new weapons systems.

Following announcements about mobile artillery and new armored vehicles for the region, the PLA is now announcing the deployment of new self-propelled rapid-fire mortars to conduct “mobile, hit-and-run firing positions,” according to the Chinese Global Times. Due to the parabola-like trajectory of how they fire, mortar weapons can be particularly useful in mountainous regions as they can enable advancing forces to attack otherwise tough to reach enemy positions at higher or significantly lower altitudes. Precision, however, seems to be crucial here as the logistical burden would likely make it very difficult if not impossible to transport large amounts of mortar munitions up to higher altitudes, even if they were air-dropped by helicopters.The paper says the self-propelled mortar system is based upon a “four-wheeled off-road assault vehicle,” something which seems to indicate a possibility for mountain warfare in the plateau regions. A large-scale combat capability and warfare technology build-up in the plateau regions of Western China continue to receive accelerated attention from the PLA. The arrival of the self-propelled mortars are the fourth new type of weapons systems the PLA is bringing to the region, an effort including the addition of a new 122-millimeter caliber self-propelled howitzer, armored assault vehicles and long-range multiple rocket launcher systems.