The Indian Army has launched a major exercise comprising more than 40,000 troops, besides several tanks, artillery guns and attack helicopters, on India’s western front with Pakistan from Wednesday, November 13.

Indian army in action (Picture source: Indian MoD)

The exercise called ‘Sindu Sudarshan-VII’ aims at testing the ‘battle readiness’ of the 21st Corps, a ‘strike formation’ (meant for attacking in enemy territory), in an integrated air-land battle scenario. This is the second phase of the ‘corps level’ exercise taking part fom 13 to 18 November between Barmer and Jaisalmer.

For the first time in an exercise, the K-9 Vajra self-propelled artillery gun, which was inducted into the army last November, is being used. The Air Force’s assets, including close air support and combat air patrol, is also used during the exercise.

The drill coincides with the maiden Indo-US tri-services humanitarian assistance and disaster relief (HADR) exercise called ‘Tiger Triumph’ on India’s eastern seaboard, which also started this 13 November and will end on November 21. Tiger Triumph highlights the growing synergy between the militaries of the two countries to counter China in the region. The exercise is aimed at developing interoperability for conducting HADR operations. It will simulate conducting such operations in a third country while keeping in mind low-intensity threats.

During the exercise, Indian Naval ships Jalashwa, Airavat and Sandhayak, army troops from two infantry units and Indian Air Force Mi-17 helicopters and Rapid Action Medical Team (RAMT) would be participating. INS Jalashwa is a landing platform dock, which is a ship that can perform beaching operations and also carry helicopters and small landing crafts for faster transport of troops and supplies from the sea to shore and back.

The US would be represented by US Navy Ship Germantown with troops from US 3rf Marine Division.