World | India
Indian military stages major war games
Tanks rumbled across the desert sands, artillery guns rent the air and combat jets dropped precision-guided munitions as the military staged a war game in Rajasthan watched by over 100 foreign observers.
- IANS
- Published: 23:54 March 20, 2008
- Image Credit: AP
- A multi-barrel rocket launcher fires at "enemy positions" during an army exercise codenamed Brazen Chariots at the Pokhran firing range on Wednesday.
Pokhran, Rajasthan: Tanks rumbled across the desert sands, artillery guns rent the air and combat jets dropped precision-guided munitions as the military staged a war game in Rajasthan watched by over 100 foreign observers.
Brazen Chariots, as the exercise was named, saw the army and the air force (IAF) coming together on Wednesday as the Blue force to "invade" neighbouring Red land to forestall its threatened aggression.
"No, this exercise was not aimed at anyone, nor are we trying to send out a message. We are only demonstrating the synergy that exists between us and the air force," Army chief, General Deepak Kapoor, said of the day-long drill that was jointly staged by the army's Pune-based Southern Command and the IAF's Gandhinagar-based South West Air Command.
The foreign military observers, representing 59 countries, termed the effort "excellent" and "admirable".
Pakistan was not invited to the event, but China was.
The exercise was conducted in two parts. In the first, the foreign observers were taken on a 20-km ride through a simulated desert battlefield that had been overrun by the Blue forces.
Along the way, there was live firing as Bofors 155mm field howitzers displayed their ability to deploy quickly and the Smersh multi-barrelled rocket launcher sent salvo after salvo into the air.
The second part of the exercise saw frontline IAF SU-30MKI and MiG-27 combat jets pulverise an enemy position before a combination of armour and mechanised infantry went in for the kill.
"This is in keeping with our doctrine of moving away from attrition to manoeuvre warfare. The power of manoeuvre warfare (which essentially involves outflanking the enemy), coupled with network-centric operations enables us achieve shock and awe and degradation of a scale that there is nothing left to target," Major General G.P. Kamath, General Officer Commanding of the army's 12 Division, told observers before the exercise started.
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