(ARC) at Balasore. On the night of 14 November 1971 in the forests of Chittagong Hill Tracts, Brigadier Dhondup Gyatotsang during Operation Mountain Eagle was killed in a firefight with Special Service Group of the Pakistan Army. With the fall of Dhaka and Lieutenant General A.A.K. Niazi surrendering on 16 December 1971, SFF had lost 49 men and nearly 190 were wounded. The SFF later joined with Seaborne Expedition Task Force consisting of 2nd Artillery Brigade, 1st Battalion 3rd Gorkha Rifles, 11 Battalion Bihar Regiment that was able to block potential escape route for East Pakistani forces into Burma. They also halted members of Pakistan's 97th Independent Brigade and 2nd Commando Battalion at the Chittagong Hill Tracts. For their bravery and courage, 580 SFF Task Force members were awarded cash prizes by the Union Government of India. Their swift covert capabilities won the force the nickname Phantoms of Chittagong. Kargil War SFF participated in Kargil War for which the unit had received letter of commendation from Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee. China Cold War In 1964, intelligence reports kept indicating that China was preparing to test a nuclear weapon at its Lop Nor nuclear installation in Xinjiang. On 16 October 1964 China did indeed test a nuclear weapon in Xinjiang. It was expected, but not enough details were known. Later in November 1964, the CIA launched a U2 flight out of Aviation Research Centre (ARC)'s Charbatia Air Base in Orissa, but its return turned out to be something of a mishap. The Lockheed U-2 overshot the runway and got stuck in slushy ground caused by heavy rain in the monsoon. Getting it unstuck and out of India without being noticed by the Indian press, then even more subject to leftist influences and hence antagonistic to the US, was another clandestine operation. This gave all concerned quite a scare and it was decided to rely on other technical means. The CIA therefore decided to launch an electronic intelligence (ELINT) operation along with R&AW and to track China's nuclear tests and monitor its missile launches. The operation, in the garb of a mountaineering expedition to Nanda Devi, involved celebrated Indian climber M S Kohli who, along with operatives of SFF and CIA (most notably Jim Rhyne, a veteran STOL pilot), was to emplace a permanent ELINT device, a transceiver powered by a plutonium battery, that could detect and report data on future