The Indian Army and the Indian Air Force conducted a joint exercise in the first week of April in the Eastern Theatre that comprises Sikkim, Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland, Manipur, Mizoram, Tripura, Meghalaya, Assam and Bengal.
It is pertinent to mention that the Indian Armed Forces have been handling multiple stress points across the Eastern border for the last three years as the Chinese forces are looking to change the status quo on the ground in order to occupy Indian territories.
The exercise was done, among other things, to validate the multi-mode insertion of strategic forces in the Eastern theatre.
Source said that in the first week of April 2023, strategic forces of the Indian Army and the Indian Air Force jointly conducted this multi domain exercise to validate joint plans for strategic airlift of Specialised Forces employing IAF fixed and rotary wing platforms by landing and dropping in designated areas for undertaking kinetic actions to provide boost to ongoing operations by regular land forces.
According to official sources, these special operations exercises are a mix of conventional and unconventional military actions that are undertaken by specially designated, selected, trained and equipped units.
“The exercise carried out in designated areas of Eastern theatre as per a tactical setting, showcased the operational preparedness and synergy of strategic forces and troops of Eastern Command to undertake integrated multi-domain operations in High Altitude and Mountainous Terrain,” an official source told the Daily Guardian.
Vital assets like C17 Globemasters, Chinooks and Mi 17s took part in the multi-mode insertion into designated greenfield landing zones with surgical precision.
Sources said that paratroopers from the Shatrujeet Brigade conducted Special Heliborne Operations with the aim of validating their ability to rapidly deploy into hostile environments using Chinooks and Mi17 helicopters to augment the capability of the regular ground forces.