LADAKH: The Indian Air Force has landed an IL-76MD heavy-lift transport at the Mudh-Nyoma airbase in eastern Ladakh, a touchdown the service described as the highest-altitude landing ever achieved by the aircraft anywhere in the world.
"An Indian Air Force IL-76MD has scripted history with a successful landing at Nyoma, marking the highest-altitude landing ever achieved by the aircraft anywhere in the world," the IAF said in a post on social media. It called the flight "a remarkable demonstration of the aircraft's enduring capability, backed by the exceptional skill, precision, and professionalism of its crew," and a "milestone that reinforces India's strategic airlift capability."
Nyoma sits at about 13,700 feet above mean sea level and roughly 25 km from the Line of Actual Control with China, close to the Demchok sector and the south bank of Pangong Tso. Its 3-km runway can take fighters and heavy transports, making it one of the highest fighter-capable airfields in the world.
The value of the base is distance. Leh and Thoise, from where the IL-76 has operated for years, are much farther from the frontier, which stretches deployment and reaction times. A forward airfield shortens both, speeds the movement of troops and supplies, supports surveillance and helps with evacuation in an emergency.
The IAF's airlift during the Galwan crisis, when it moved more than 68,000 troops, 90 tanks and 330 infantry combat vehicles, underlined how much depends on shifting men and materiel quickly. In the 1962 war the air force flew men and equipment, including AMX-13 tanks of 20 Lancers, directly to Chushul, which lies closer to the LAC.
Nyoma was built as an advanced landing ground during that war and lay unused for decades before an An-32 landed there on September 18, 2009. In December 2022 the Border Roads Organisation invited bids to turn it into a full air base at an estimated cost of Rs 214 crore, and work began in August 2023 after Defence Minister Rajnath Singh laid the foundation stone. On November 12, 2025, the then air chief, Air Chief Marshal AP Singh, formally inaugurated the base by landing a C-130J Super Hercules there, making it the IAF's fourth base in Ladakh after Leh, Kargil and Thoise.
The other high-altitude fields in the sector, Daulat Beg Oldie about 250 km north as the crow flies and Fukche some 50 km south-east in the Demchok sector, cannot in their present state take strategic airlifters such as the IL-76 or the C-17.
Across the LAC, the Chinese People's Liberation Army Air Force has built a network of plateau airfields, among them Qamdo Bamda at about 14,200 feet, Lhasa Gonggar and Ngari Gunsa above 14,000 feet and Shigatse at about 12,000 feet, plus forward facilities at Damxung, Tingri, Burang and Lhunze. Several have runways of 4,000 to 5,000 metres to offset the thin air, which cuts lift and engine performance.
Nyoma, then, is less about matching China base for base than about cutting reaction time and giving the air force more options on the world's highest battlefield.
(With inputs from media reports)