Secret weapons at the border: Did China use DEWs in 2022 Yangtse clash?

The brutal brawl between Indian and Chinese soldiers on December 9, 2022 was no ordinary one. For one thing, the clash—in Yangtse’s snowy ridgeline in Arunachal Pradesh’s Tawang sector—witnessed quite a rare incident: THE WEEK has learnt that Chinese soldiers fired at least 11 rounds of ammunition, which the Indians recorded on camera and later presented as evidence to Chinese representatives in Delhi.

It was understandable that the Indian government kept mum; a series of senior commander-level parleys were already on between the two sides to resolve the border issues in eastern Ladakh.

But what was more startling is the reported use of secret weapons by the Chinese. These belong to the family of directed energy weapons (DEWs), where devastating lethal force is generated by lasers, microwaves or particle beams and directed on to a target at great speed.

There are usually two types of DEWs—high-energy lasers (HEL) and high-power microwave (HPM) systems. Lasers hit at the speed of light and ‘kill’ by generating excess heat, with the beams usually burning down airframes, sensors or even igniting fuel. HPMs give out electromagnetic ‘flashes’ or ‘microwave bullets’ that melt electronic circuitry, destroy communication networks and stop vehicles in their tracks. Unlike conventional weapons, DEWs have unmatched accuracy, lightning speed, low cost per shot, logistical benefits and low detectability.

A lot of what happened during the Yangtse clash lies hidden in the ‘top secret’ files of India’s military establishment. “Hinting at the use of hitherto unknown microwave or electromagnetic weapons, the Indian Army wrote a report on this incident that remains classified,” a top source told THE WEEK on condition of anonymity. Interestingly, the Indian Army at the time had denied the use of DEWs and mainstream reports had only mentioned melee weapons like spiked clubs and tasers.

Known for its remoteness and difficult terrain, Yangtse lies some 25km northeast of Tawang. The spot is famous for the Chumi Gyatse Falls, also known as the ‘Holy Waterfalls’, which are associated with the eighth-century Buddhist preacher Guru Padmasambhava. The waterfalls have 108 cascading streams believed to have gurgled to life after the guru threw his 108-bead rosary at the rock face.

Before 2022, encounters at Yangtse were fairly common—every year, small teams of the People’s Liberation Army would try to occupy the dominating heights. The two Asian giants had been undertaking huge troop build-up on both sides of the Line of Actual Control (LAC), and the most infamous clash was in Galwan valley in June 2020, where at least 20 Indian soldiers died in hand-to-hand combat. The Chinese reportedly lost more.

“The strategic importance of Yangtse lies in the fact that its occupation by us reinforces our stated stance of recognition of the McMahon Line as the de facto border,” says Lieutenant General Rana Kalita (retd), who then led the Eastern Command. “China does not recognise the McMahon Line and their claims to Yangtse are based on traditional grazing areas of Tibetans, which is incorrect. Yangtse also assumes tactical importance, being located at dominating heights, and providing observation into the Tibetan plateau. Control over Yangtse is not only about territorial control but also about psychological and signalling value.... [In the Yangtse clash,] our soldiers held on resolutely and forced the PLA soldiers to return.”

While a few Indian soldiers were slightly injured, 45 PLA soldiers were wounded, with two deaths reported later. India had the positional advantage and also knew of the build-up at each step. Lieutenant General D.S. Rana, who then commanded the Tezpur-headquartered IV Corps and now heads the Strategic Forces Command, recently said at a seminar in Delhi: “We could predict the time when they were coming towards us. And the prediction helped us to place our resources at the right places, thus foiling the Chinese incursion attempt.”

The encounter fetched 19 gallantry medals for the troops. On the lessons learnt, another top source told THE WEEK: “An important learning stood out—that with proper information and preparedness, even the best laid plans of adversaries could be thwarted.”

Notably, since 2022, there has been no major transgression in the area.

“What was different in 2022 was the size of the PLA teams. About 700 [soldiers] had moved up from a newly constructed border village in two batches,” another top source familiar with the developments told THE WEEK. “One could easily spot their movements from the Yangtse top, and AI devices with facial recognition capabilities were employed. So each PLA soldier in the area was known. This kept on going for nearly two months, from October to December 2022.

“But what was interesting is that there would be sudden flashes of lightning or laser glares from the Chinese side. And after that, Indian troops on the frontline would feel giddy and nauseous. We had to call in helicopters to evacuate the boys while other troops were brought in to replace them. This went on for long.”

The source added that while the impact of the suspected DEWs was not much, the military implications are tremendous. The Indian soldiers were possibly used as test cases.

The PLA had apparently prepared in detail leading up to the clash. Brigadier Anshuman Narang (retd), an expert on the PLA and open-source intelligence (OSINT), told THE WEEK that Chinese civil commercial satellites had clicked images of the Yangtse 450 times in 30 days. “That was phenomenally high as compared to other times in that area,” he said.

The Chinese also reportedly used other means to get the Indians to abandon their advantageous posts. “In 2022, they played speeches and music on sound amplifiers that would target the Indian Army’s Sikh and Muslim soldiers,” said one of the top sources.

But these were petty tactics in front of suspected DEWs. And apparently, this was not a one-off incident—there were reports that these weapons were used in eastern Ladakh, too. On November 11, 2020, Prof Jin Canrong of Renmin University in Beijing, who has close ties to the government, claimed that PLA soldiers had used high-energy laser beams to force Indian soldiers to vacate two important peaks on the southern bank of the Pangong Tso lake in 2020. “The two hills were important but they were taken. Out of (PLA’s) carelessness, they were taken by the Indians,” he claimed on a television show. “There was an order that shots cannot be fired... but you had to take them (the peaks) back. It was tough. Later on, they came out with a wonderful idea. They emitted microwaves from the bottom of the mountain, turning the mountain top into a microwave oven. After 15 minutes, all the Indians started throwing up…. Thus, we took the hills back.”

Earlier this month, there was a paper in the Chinese journal High Power Laser and Particle Beams on a series of advanced pulsed-power devices built by China’s military in recent years. “Pulsed-power drivers for HPM generation have transitioned from laboratory prototypes to practical applications, evolving progressively from ‘functional’ to ‘high-performance’ and ‘durable’ systems,” wrote the researchers. This was a rare public disclosure by the Chinese military.

Apparently, the Chinese have used DEWs in Djibouti, too. The US lodged a formal complaint after two pilots flying a C-130 transport aircraft suffered ‘minor injuries’ in May 2018 because of what the US Department of Defense believes were high-energy beams from PLA-operated laser weapons.

Interestingly, it is believed that the US itself, as well as leading powers such as Russia, have also equipped their military with the weapons.

On August 13, 2024, India’s defence ministry issued a Request for Information (RFI) for 90 high-power microwave (Mark II) systems with at least 3km operational range. The RFI specified that the system “should have surveillance, detection and tracking capability, a microprocessor for computing a targeting solution and a high-power microwave weapon system for hard kill (destruction) or soft kill (denial)”. THE WEEK has learnt that work on this project is ongoing.