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India was able to repel a Chinese military incursion in contested border territory in the high Himalayas late last year due to unprecedented intelligence-sharing with the U.S. military, U.S. News has learned, an act that caught China’s People’s Liberation Army forces off-guard, enraged Beijing and appears to have forced the Chinese Communist Party to reconsider its approach to land grabs along its borders.
The U.S. government for the first time provided real-time details to its Indian counterparts of the Chinese positions and force strength in advance of a PLA incursion, says a source familiar with a previously unreported U.S. intelligence review of the encounter into the Arunachal Pradesh region. The information included actionable satellite imagery and was more detailed and delivered more quickly than anything the U.S. had previously shared with the Indian military.
It made a difference.
The subsequent clash on Dec. 9 involving hundreds of troops wielding spiked clubs and Tasers did not result in any deaths as previous encounters have, rather it was limited to a dozen or so injuries and – most conspicuously – a Chinese retreat.
“They were waiting. And that’s because the U.S. had given India everything to be fully prepared for this,” the source says. “It demonstrates a test case of the success of how the two militaries are now cooperating and sharing intelligence.”
Several current and former analysts and officials, some speaking on the condition of anonymity, confirmed details of the encounter as well as the American role, to include unprecedented support the U.S. military provided to India on the ground – the fruits of a new era of cooperation between the two powers in recognition of their shared ambitions to push back on Chinese expansionism.
And while the new partnership yielded effective results in this relatively obscure and isolated corner of the world, it has vast implications for how the U.S. and its allies can effectively offset Beijing’s ambitions for land grabs there – and elsewhere.
“The PLA is generally in a probing-and-testing phase. They want to know how the Indians can and will respond and to see what the Indians can detect,” says Vikram Singh, a former top official for regional issues at the Pentagon, now with the United States Institute of Peace think tank. “It’s about China preparing for future conflict.”
The source familiar with the assessment of this intelligence – deemed to be highly reliable – says the U.S. government in the weeks before the encounter was fully cognizant that China was carrying out test exercises in the region to see if it could seize a new foothold in the remote mountain passes there or in other territory to which both China and India lay claim.
Several hundred PLA troops operating on the Chinese side planned to see if they could move forward and stay along the part of the border that is not officially demarcated as they have done in the past, most notably in 2020 in the Galwan Valley, several thousand miles to the west, the last time the two militaries clashed. That brawl caused a dozen or more deaths on both sides.
But unlike the previous encounters, the Indian forces identified the Chinese positions using the intelligence provided by the U.S. and maneuvered to intercept them.
The basis for the new intelligence-sharing arrangement stems from an agreement the Indian and U.S. governments signed in 2020 known as the Basic Exchange and Cooperation Agreement on Geospatial Cooperation, or BECA. It was the fourth agreement that secured new levels of integration between the two powers in military, logistics, compatibility and security information exchanges.
The U.S. government for the first time provided real-time details to its Indian counterparts of the Chinese positions and force strength in advance of a PLA incursion, says a source familiar with a previously unreported U.S. intelligence review of the encounter into the Arunachal Pradesh region. The information included actionable satellite imagery and was more detailed and delivered more quickly than anything the U.S. had previously shared with the Indian military.
It made a difference.
The subsequent clash on Dec. 9 involving hundreds of troops wielding spiked clubs and Tasers did not result in any deaths as previous encounters have, rather it was limited to a dozen or so injuries and – most conspicuously – a Chinese retreat.
“They were waiting. And that’s because the U.S. had given India everything to be fully prepared for this,” the source says. “It demonstrates a test case of the success of how the two militaries are now cooperating and sharing intelligence.”
Several current and former analysts and officials, some speaking on the condition of anonymity, confirmed details of the encounter as well as the American role, to include unprecedented support the U.S. military provided to India on the ground – the fruits of a new era of cooperation between the two powers in recognition of their shared ambitions to push back on Chinese expansionism.
And while the new partnership yielded effective results in this relatively obscure and isolated corner of the world, it has vast implications for how the U.S. and its allies can effectively offset Beijing’s ambitions for land grabs there – and elsewhere.
“The PLA is generally in a probing-and-testing phase. They want to know how the Indians can and will respond and to see what the Indians can detect,” says Vikram Singh, a former top official for regional issues at the Pentagon, now with the United States Institute of Peace think tank. “It’s about China preparing for future conflict.”
The source familiar with the assessment of this intelligence – deemed to be highly reliable – says the U.S. government in the weeks before the encounter was fully cognizant that China was carrying out test exercises in the region to see if it could seize a new foothold in the remote mountain passes there or in other territory to which both China and India lay claim.
Several hundred PLA troops operating on the Chinese side planned to see if they could move forward and stay along the part of the border that is not officially demarcated as they have done in the past, most notably in 2020 in the Galwan Valley, several thousand miles to the west, the last time the two militaries clashed. That brawl caused a dozen or more deaths on both sides.
But unlike the previous encounters, the Indian forces identified the Chinese positions using the intelligence provided by the U.S. and maneuvered to intercept them.
The basis for the new intelligence-sharing arrangement stems from an agreement the Indian and U.S. governments signed in 2020 known as the Basic Exchange and Cooperation Agreement on Geospatial Cooperation, or BECA. It was the fourth agreement that secured new levels of integration between the two powers in military, logistics, compatibility and security information exchanges.
