Videos have emerged lately showing humanoids being tested in active combat roles leading to speculation of their deployment along the line of actual control
At the second World Humanoid Robot Games in Beijing this August, Tiangong, a humanoid ran the 100 metres in 9.39 seconds, faster than the 9.58-second mark Usain Bolt set in 2009. On the final day, another humanoid robot ran the 100 metres in just 8.64 seconds. That kind of movement comes from joints that bend and twist in 43 different ways, muscles strong enough to lift a small car, and onboard computers powerful enough to see in three dimensions and react on their own without any instruction from a control station.
China has explicitly framed humanoid robotics as a national strategy. Peoples Liberation Army (PLA) has been investing into exoskeletons, load-bearing quadrupeds, swarming loitering munitions, and autonomous logistics platforms for years. Videos have emerged lately showing humanoids being tested in active combat roles leading to speculation of their deployment along the line of actual control (LAC).
The high-altitude sectors along the LAC are among the least forgiving battlefields on Earth: thin air that saps endurance and cognition, cold that disables batteries and flesh alike, and terrain where a soldier’s biggest enemy is the environment rather than the adversary. Machines do not suffer hypoxia, frostbite, or the cumulative fatigue that erodes a unit after weeks at such altitudes.
A robotic vanguard converts the mountains from a handicap into a definitive tactical advantage for China. The sequence would begin quietly. Miniature drones and crawling ground robots will carry out reconnaissance of our forward posts, bunkers, gun positions, defensive layout which will be fed to the main robotic force in waiting for total situational awareness. This would be followed out by an attack in force with each position being engaged by multiple waves of robotic platforms and weapon systems. Quadrupedal mules and drones would supply ammunition and stores up while humanoid platoons advance in successive waves across several approaches at once overwhelming the defensive positions. All that PLA ground troops have to do is sanitise and occupy the ridgeline and consolidate defences.
Casualties in this model of combat fall overwhelmingly on hardware for the attacker and on flesh for the defender, which changes the political arithmetic of a border crisis. The PLA can probe, breach, and occupy sensitive and disputed positions along the LAC with machines absorbing losses that would be domestically unsurvivable if the body bags were human. India would face human casualties with loss of ground, with the adversary claiming nothing serious has occurred. That asymmetry in escalation cost, is the core of the threat.
The realistic response is not to match Beijing robot-for-robot but to deny a robotic vanguard the specific advantages it would be built to exploit. This requires development and deployment of counter systems against unmanned weapon systems and platforms, counter-swarm technology, directed-energy weapons, and layered kinetic air defence paired with electronic-warfare capability that can jam, spoof, or hijack unmanned platforms before they reach forward positions. It means tactical innovations must be applied on ground using terrain as an advantage by canalising approaches, hardening observation posts against drone reconnaissance, and mining likely robotic-vehicle corridors. It means accelerating DRDO and private-sector work on loitering munitions, high-altitude UGVs, and robotic mules to deny China’s platforms an uncontested testing ground. And it means reviewing our tactics and operation art to address the initial waves of attack that may not be human at all.
None of this is quite as alarming. At the Robot Games, the braking systems failed causing several robots to slam directly into padded walls crossing the finish line. There were instances of mechanical failures and in one a robot catching fire. The technology is in development stage with several exploitable weaknesses. Also, the terrain works in our favour. Balance on loose rock, deep snow and gradients is an unsolved problem. Lithium cells lose capacity in extreme cold and demand thermal management that adds weight; actuators, joints, and sensors fail faster in extremely cold climate requiring additional logistics burden of upkeep and maintenance.
A machine force is hostage to the command link, which can be jammed, spoofed or hijacked. If fully autonomous systems are committed, they cannot be recalled, which is itself a risk to escalation control. It must also be borne in mind that sustaining machines at 15,000-plus feet is a supply chain problem. A machine force needs forward depots, spare-parts pipelines, mobile charging, and technician cadres close to the front, and each of those is a fixed, targetable node.
None of this counsels complacency. China is fielding humanoid and unmanned systems as instruments of national power. Having spent decades laying roads, tunnels and garrisons across the Tibetan plateau it will not pass up a technology that allows it to prosecute operations without using own troops. The first wave of machines that lets Beijing probe, breach and occupy disputed ground along the LAC with only hardware costs and without using human troops changes the entire paradigm along the LAC.
It is time we reviewed our tactics and operations to address this clear and present danger.
(Brigadier (Retd) Anil John Alfred Pereira is a veteran from Goa, who served the nation with distinction for 32 years)
