"Siachen, The Worlds Highest Battlefield" Topic

I thought this might make for a interesting new scenario for modern War-gamers.

Link to article with many photos.
link

In 1984, when the Pakistan army attempted to move into the region, India launched a successful military operation and has since maintained control over all of the Siachen Glacier and its tributaries. Between 1984 and 1999, frequent skirmishes took place between India and Pakistan. However, more soldiers have died in Siachen from harsh weather conditions than from enemy firing. Both India and Pakistan maintain permanent military presence in the region at a height of over 6,000 metres (20,000 ft), and continue to deploy thousands of troops in Siachen.

Although a cease-fire went into effect in 2003, by then the two sides had lost an estimated 2,000 personnel primarily due to frostbite, avalanches and other complications. Together, the nations have about 150 manned outposts along the glacier, with some 3,000 troops each. Official figures for maintaining these outposts are put at ~$300 and ~$200 million for India and Pakistan respectively.

Coabeous

It's the new Cold War.

WEll, gaming in that region sure would make for an interesting random events chart.

Wonder what the percentages should be for a yeti, or snow-tiger attack?

There was a Prctical Wargamer article on this many, many moons ago if memory serves me.

I couldnt open link but this is a conflict I would love to game if only minis for both sides were available!

From looking at Google maps of the are terrain would be very tricky to replicate.

link

I remember reading an article in Outside magazine a few years back about some mountain climbers who got stranded in the war zone and had to be rescued. Apparently, there is not really a lot of maneuver going on because of the conditions. The fighting mainly consists of artillery pounding the out of one of the opposing outposts, and then that side retaliating. Sounds utterly miserable.

So with altitude sickness, avalanches, frostbite and artillery strikes, you might loose the majority of your troops without even seeing the enemy.

This reminds me of a strange sci-fi story about a soldier in a war that consisted entirely of artillery duels. In this world, the rate at which you moved through time depended on your latitude. So 45 degrees was "normal" speed and time sped up the closer to the equator you got, and slower the closer to the poles you got. So people would head off to the war near the poles and spend a year or two there, then come home to find their civilian friends twenty years older.

Anyways, this fellow is stuck in this dreary war where they occasionally get shelled and then fire off a few shells in return. Eventually he figures out that the incoming fire is actually their own artillery rounds fired decades ago, and there's a strange inversion that occurs once you cross an event horizon near the pole.

It's a pretty trippy story, and I imagine trying to fight in the high Himalayas might bring on similar hallucinations.

I just serendipitously ran across a photo book at the library called "War Above the Clouds" by Martin Sugarman. It's very beautiful though definitely not a place you'd want to be stationed.