US Senator Bill Hagerty made waves on Thursday after claiming that China had used electromagnetic weapons to “literally melt” Indian soldiers. The Republican senator added that the attack came during the Galwan Valley clash in 2020 — which also left ties between New Delhi and Beijing severely frayed. The bizarre claim comes mere weeks after Prime Minister Narendra Modi met with his Chinese counterpart in Tianjin for the SCO Summit.
“China and India have a long history of grievances and distrust. Barely five years ago, China and India were fighting over a disputed border, and China used an electromagnetic weapon to literally melt Indian soldiers,” he said.
Soldiers had fought hand-to-hand and used improvised weapons during the violent clash along the Line of Actual Control in Galwan Valley — adhering to a 1996 agreement prohibiting the use of firearms and explosives in such border areas. India had confirmed the death of 20 armymen, including Colonel B. Santosh Babu, the commanding officer of 16th Bihar Regiment. Heavily censored accounts by China had put the list of casualties at four people — though multiple reports indicate up to 38 of its soldiers died during the battle.
Do such weapons even exist?
The bizarre claims made by Hagerty had also surfaced in the months following the Galwan battle. Multiple reports had erroneously claimed in November 2020 that the Chinese military used “microwave weapons” to force Indian soldiers to retreat. It had also prompted the Indian government and Army to issue fact-checks — with officials insisting that this was “pure and poor psyops from China”.
“Media articles on employment of microwave weapons in Eastern Ladakh are baseless. The news is fake. No such incident has taken place in Ladakh,” the Indian Army had written on X .
The assertion was first made by a Beijing-based professor who insisted that Chinese forces had used ‘microwave weapons’ to induce vomiting and incapacitation — thereby forcing Indian soldiers to retreat. But this has been deemed technically infeasible by experts as well as the Indian Army.
It is also not believed possible for electromagnetic weapons to “melt” people using radio waves or microwaves. While it can technically cause burns and intense pain, these cannot penetrate deep into the body and “melt” internal human tissues. The energy (and heat) levels required to hypothetically dissolve an entire person exceed the capabilities of all currently known electromagnetic weapon systems.
India-China thaw
Ties between India and China have gradually moved towards normalcy in recent months — buoyed by the recent SCO Summit. The camaraderie between Modi, Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin had made global headlines earlier this month. It also presented a start contrast amidst a sharp deterioration in the India-US relationship. Modi and Xi had agreed to work towards a “fair, reasonable and mutually-acceptable” solution to the India-China border issue and pledged to expand trade and investment ties during their SCO meeting — recognising the role of the two economies to stabilise global trade.