By Nallan Chakravarthy Bipindra
New Delhi: After its successful summer war games in Rajasthan and Punjab, the Indian Army is to hold another such massive exercise in winter featuring one of its three potent strike corps in the desert along the western border with Pakistan.
This time, the Bhopal-based 21 Corps will be the formation that will be exercising in the Rajasthan desert sometime in October-December, top sources at Army Headquarters told IANS.
The month-long exercise is aimed at building the capacities of the strike formation in delivering deadly blows to the enemy forces in a short offensive by breaching the hostile army’s defenses and capturing important strategic assets deep inside enemy territory.
The war game will enable the 21 Sudarshan Chakra Corps to showcase its firepower through battle tanks and artillery guns, supported by Indian Air Force (IAF) fighter jets, attack helicopters and transport aircraft, with nearly 20,000 troops involved in the exercise.
[PTI] The Army will hold a month-long war game in the Rajasthan along the border with Pakistan to validate its battle concepts including to plug gaps in the night vision capability of its mechanised forces. Codenamed ‘Yodha Shakti,’ the annual exercise will also validate its post-Op Parakram ‘Cold Start’ war doctrine that envisages swiftness in inflicting maximum damage to enemy forces. “Yodha Shakti will be held for a month from mid-April to mid-May in the Pokhran ranges and it will validate battle concepts of a Strike Corps with use of its mechanised troops and close air support from Indian Air Force’s fighter aircraft and attack helicopters,” Army officers said in New Delhi on Monday.
