For the first time, China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) has completed 3D mapping of its western border including the disputed part with India to pin-point accuracy, according to state media reports.
The PLA’s western theatre command (WAC) has begun to deploy the newly built precision “spatial datum” system covering China’s western borders, which will help in building both combat capability and infrastructure.
“The PLA recently started deploying China’s first panoramic, high-precision spatial datum that covers the uncharted western border region of the country,” a state media report said.
The completion of the two-year PLA project and the deployment comes amid the ongoing months-long Sino-India border friction along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in eastern Ladakh.
It wasn’t immediately clear how much the new map system could impact the protracted border negotiations between India and China by bolstering Beijing’s disputed claims – dismissed by New Delhi – on the 3,488 km-long LAC.
However, it is clear that the new system is expected to give the PLA personnel deployed along the LAC precise information about vertical elevation and/or depth and horizontal distance in terms of latitude and longitude of the mountainous and treacherous terrain that divides India and China.
It will help the PLA to better navigate both its troops and military equipment.
“The panoramic spatial datum is like a multifunctional, highly accurate ruler that can indicate the coordinates of remote sensing images and other geographic data. We can evaluate the data that can reach centimetre-level accuracy,” Wang Yanbin, deputy leader of PLA’s navigation and mapping unit, which was in charge of the project, said in a report by national broadcaster, China Central Television (CCTV).
China borders 11 countries to its west including India and Bhutan; Like with India, Beijing has a land border dispute with Thimphu.
The new system will enable the Chinese military to monitor the entire western border region at all times through remote sensing satellites.
Besides providing support for disaster relief, infrastructure construction, spatial planning and economic development, the system has military significance.
The new 3D mapping system can avoid the lack of navigational data and provide support to the deployment and maneuvering of troops. It can also offer data to high-precision guided weapons in attack missions, Song Zhongping, a Chinese military expert said.