Army exercise Vijay Prahar in final stage

The ‘Vijay Prahar’ exercise in which more than 20,000 troops of strike formations of the Army’s South Western Command (SWC) are engaged to finetune their jointmanship with the Indian Air Force has reached its final stage.

“Strike formations of the command are going through the exercise in Mahajan area close to Suratgarh in Rajasthan in which over 20,000 troops are participating with fighting equipment for a couple of weeks,” Brigadier Anil Gautam, Brigadier General Staff (Information Warfare), SWC said. “The exercise has been set on situation based on a swift offensive action. The aim of the exercise is to fine-tune jointmanship with the Indian Air Force,” he said.

The IAF carried out exercise Gagan Shakti and demonstrated their capabilities and strength to handle adversaries, the brigadier said. In the immediate wake of Gagan Shakti, this exercise was being held for testing, refining, and maximising the impact of the joint operations, he said.

The emphasis in the coming days will be on the joint capability of the army with the air force and the combined ability to fight an air-land battle, the brigadier said.

“We’ll work on operating the ground forces in coordination with the air force, The brigadier noted that some of the areas being emphasised were realtime information, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities, deployment and using satellite-based surveillance capabilities, drones, electronic warfare capabilities, radars with an aim to have a transparent battlefield, increasing our effectiveness, and defining the drills and procedures,” he said.

The other aspects which, he said, were being focused on were fighting capabilities through armed helicopters and fighting and operate in nuclear environment. He said the exercise would culminate on May 9 and it would be witnessed by senior Army officials.

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