July 21, 2025: Countering China’s rapid infrastructure growth, India is upgrading a strategically vital 255-km road in Eastern Ladakh to enable the movement of very heavy vehicles, including tanks and specialised trucks capable of carrying long-range missiles.

According to sources, there will be an upgrade to the Darbuk-Shyok-Daulat Beg Oldie (DS-DBO) road that connects DBO and Leh on a plateau that is 16,600 feet high. The entire route, which passes through a barren, treeless section of the Karakoram mountain range, will be strengthened to "class 70" specifications. This means that the road and each of the 37 bridges that run along it will be able to support vehicles weighing up to 70 tons.

This includes missile-transporting trucks and Army tank carriers. The DS-DBO road is the only land access to the Galwan Valley, the site of the bloody India-China clash in June 2020. North of DBO lies the Karakoram Pass, which separates Ladakh from China’s Xinjiang region, while the strategically important Depsang Plains — where India and China were locked in a military standoff from May 2020 to October 2024 — lie to the east of DBO.

The Army refers to the region to the north of Shyok as the "sub sector north" (SSN). The Indian military has taken into account the possibility that China's People's Liberation Army might move west into the 16,000-foot-high Depsang Plains and put a section of the DS-DBO road in danger. This could prevent people from getting to DBO and, by extension, the Karakoram Pass. Indian defensive positions in the SSN are designed to hold back any such thrust by the PLA. The Line of Actual Control (LAC) has been guarded by tens of thousands of troops from both sides since May 2020. Holding onto the SSN is considered vital, making the DS-DBO road a crucial logistical link.

An alternative Leh-Saser La-Murgo-DBO axis is being developed, and it is anticipated to be ready by the following year in order to lessen the amount of dependence on a single route. Ground patrols of the Chinese Army near the LAC cannot see this alignment. Near Saser La, a Karakoram pass with a height of 17,800 feet, the Border Roads Organization is building a 4-kilometer concrete section. This portion will be a part of a 56-kilometer military-grade road that will connect Sasoma, Saser La, and Murgo. At that point, it will join the current DS-DBO route. During the height of the military standoff between India and China in August 2020, a dirt track on the Sasoma-Murgo route was activated. Since then, the BRO has been working to widen it. The passage of this road through 55 hectares of the Karakoram Wildlife Sanctuary was cleared by the National Board for Wildlife in 2022.