Operation Meghdoot
मेघदूतCloud messenger — after Kālidāsa's poem
The seizure of the Siachen Glacier, and the longest-running deployment on Earth.
- Dates
- 13 April 1984 — present
- Theatre
- Siachen Glacier, Ladakh
- Services
- IAF · Army
Summary
Operation Meghdoot was the codename for an Indian Armed Forces operation launched in 1984 to preempt Pakistan's competing Operation Ababeel to take full control of the Siachen Glacier in Ladakh on the tri-junction of the India–Pakistan-China border in the Himalayas.
Objective
Pre-empt Pakistani occupation of the Siachen Glacier by taking the Saltoro Ridge passes first.
Outcome
India holds the ridge and the glacier. The operation has never formally ended — it is the highest-altitude military deployment in the world, and has continued for over forty years.
A war decided by a map
The 1949 ceasefire line was drawn only as far as a point on the map called NJ9842, and then described as running 'thence north to the glaciers' — a phrase precise enough for 1949 and useless afterwards. Both states read the ambiguity their own way, and mountaineering permits issued by Pakistan in the early 1980s were what turned the reading into a race.
The cold does the killing
For most of the operation's history the weather has caused more casualties than the fighting: altitude sickness, frostbite, avalanche and crevasse. Everything a post consumes has to be flown or carried up, which is why the Cheetah — a helicopter designed in the 1960s — remains irreplaceable at altitudes where nothing else can hover with a load.
Losses — contested
Well over a thousand Indian soldiers have died on the glacier since 1984, the majority from the conditions rather than from combat.
Equipment
What it was conducted with
7 catalogued platforms recorded as taking part. Not exhaustive — it lists what this catalogue holds, not everything that was fielded.
Indian Air Force
SA 315B Lama
French single-engined helicopter.
- Role
- Utility helicopter
- In service
- 1970 — present
Indian Air Force
SA 316/SA 319 Alouette III
Single-engine, light utility helicopter developed by French aircraft company Sud Aviation.
- Role
- Light utility helicopter
- In service
- 1962 — present
Indian Air Force
Antonov An-32
Sutlej
Turboprop twin-engined military transport aircraft.
- Role
- Military transport aircraft
- In service
- 1984 — present
Indian Air Force
Ilyushin Il-76
Gajraj
Multi-purpose, fixed-wing, four-engine turbofan strategic airlifter designed by the Soviet Union's.
- Role
- Strategic and tactical airlifter
- In service
- 1985 — present
Indian Army
Bofors FH-77B
Bofors
Swedish 155 mm howitzer, developed and manufactured by Bofors.
- Role
- Howitzer
- In service
- 1987 — present
Indian Army
INSAS rifle
Family of infantry arms consisting of an assault rifle and a light machine gun (LMG).
- Role
- —
- In service
- 1998 — phasing out
Indian Air Force
HAL Dhruv
ALH Dhruv
The indigenous workhorse flown by every Indian service.
- Role
- Utility helicopter
- In service
- 2002 — present