Always a celebratory issue, this year the shadow of China looms over the Indian Air Force special edition. Perhaps, this was to be expected. With the crisis in Ladakh remaining unresolved and the possibility of any kind of honourable resolution in the near future diminishing by the day, a sense of inevitability has gripped the armed forces. Not of war, but a near war-like situation, in which the troops deployed on the erstwhile Line of Actual Control—now called Border Areas—will have to remai