Green solution to ease army's harsh winters and combat pollution

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For soldiers deployed in high altitude and freezing weather, the first enemy may seem like the environment. As a result, armies around the world have been battling for a solution to create a warmer habitat within harsh terrains for centuries.

Sonam Wangchuk, an award-winning Indian architect and innovator, believes he has found the answer. His low-cost green housing project for Indian soldiers deployed in snow-capped and high altitude regions has the double benefit of possibly being able to curb the pollution from the massive crop stubble burning in Punjab.

Indian troops can face temperatures as low as minus five degrees Celsius during winter nights in high altitude battlegrounds. With no electricity, soldiers keep themselves warm through special clothing or unreliable fuel-based heating. Worse still, solar power is available for only a few hours per day.

Indian defense minister Nirmala Sitharaman recently revealed that the Indian Army has lost 163 officers in the past 10 years in one of the world’s toughest and coldest battlefields – the Siachen Glacier-Saltoro Ridge region. Many of these deaths were blamed on the extreme weather.

Wangchuk’s prototype green housing for soldiers deployed in Ladakh, another mountainous area, employs passive solar heating and pre-fabricated sheets made from local resources to keep military buildings warm at dizzying heights. Constructing a building in the sub-zero region is a slow and tedious task.

“The frozen water, low workers’ efficiency and a short day are just some of the significant challenges,” Sonam Wangchuk told CGTN.

“We have to utilize the available resources efficiently to trap the heat. Since the army requires thousands of warm habitats, a large-scale production is another challenge."

He said a prototype utilizing passive solar heating had been built recently at Manla Complex in Skanzangling, near the high-desert city of Leh.

Passive solar heating is based on the absorption of sunlight heat by the walls and patio of a building. “Walls are insulated to trap the solar heat throughout the night,” he explained.

The building for Wangchuk’s Students’ Educational and Cultural Movement of Ladakh (SECMOL) has been running on a similar concept for many years.

And as a by-product, the architect intends to use the insulation material from Punjab’s crop stubble to combat the annual pollution menace.

Wangchuk intends to manufacture insulated walls by using crop stubbles that are usually burnt in large scale by farmers in Punjab.

Every year, they incinerate more than 17 million tons of rice straw to clear their fields, causing severe pollution in the state with the smoke traveling 300 km all the way up to Delhi.

“These rice straws are good insulating material," Wangchuk said. "We can purchase these straws and incentivize farmers not to burn them. Such a step will drastically reduce the pollution level.”

The straw, a by-product produced when paddy is harvested, can be compressed and transported to Ladakh, where it can be mixed with locally available soil to manufacture prefabricated bricks.

The issue of casualties in high altitude warfare started gaining focus after the United Nations designated 2002 the “International Year of the Mountains.” In that year, 23 of the world’s 27 armed conflicts were fought at high altitude.

Among the disputes was Operation Enduring Freedom against the Taliban regime and the al Qaeda terrorist network in Afghanistan, the first US experience with high-altitude combat.

“Throughout spring 2002, US troops prosecuted Operations Anaconda, Snipe, and Torii, culminating in a 2,000-foot vertical assault to 11,800 feet at Takur Gur, the highest battlefield in US history,” Alex Truesdell and Ramey Wilson said in a journal article.

German soldiers battled through four feet of snow and freezing temperatures while fighting in Russia during the Second World War. According to a study, the German Army suffered 100,000 frostbite cases with over 14,000 requiring amputation; the 6th Panzer Division lost 800 men a day to frostbite in one month alone.

Wangchuk believes he is on to something good. “Our warm habitat built from local resources and tapping sunlight not only saves the lives of troops but also generates employment in tough hilly terrain,” he said.