Six years after the Kargil Review Committee recommended a comprehensive review of the special clothing provided to Army troops deployed in Siachen and other hostile high altitude battlefields, it is now official that the troops are still not completely comfortable in their gear. Enter, the National Institute of Design (NID), Ahmedabad.

NID’s John Bissell Research Chair, funded by the Ford Foundation, is now developing technology for the manufacture of new special clothing for high altitude Army troops using materials that will be lighter, warmer, more flexible, durable and cheaper than the default merino wool.

Simply put, by this time next year, NID hopes to provide the Army with a more satisfied soldier at 16,000 feet.

All of this, with the help of NID’s advanced plasma technology, applied to angora fibre harvested from Angora rabbits being bred at farms in Pithoragarh by DRDO’s Defence Agriculture Research Laboratory (DARL).

Four NID research students visited the glacier at the invitation of the Army six months ago to gather first-hand feedback about troop discomfort at high altitudes and how operations could be made more efficient by improving their special clothing.

While NID has already demonstrated the success of the technology in the laboratory, by the end of this year, DARL, NID and the Institute of Plasma Research (IPR), with support from the Department of Science & Technology, will set up a full-fledged production plant in Kulu. After that, sample special clothing sets, including down jackets, thermal insoles, socks, combat trousers and multi-tiered gloves, will be sent up to Siachen for trials by the Army.

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