By IANS
New Delhi : Elite soldiers of the Indian and British armed forces will get a unique opportunity to share best practices during the month-long Himalayan Warrior joint training drill that kicks off in the Ladakh region of Jammu and Kashmir Monday.
The exercise, which will conclude Oct 11, includes a period of acclimatisation.
“This specialist environmental training is the culmination of three years interaction between the Royal Marines mountain leaders and the Indian Army High Altitude Warfare School,” a defence ministry release said Sunday.
Emphasis will be given to survival and basic infantry skills in order to improve the ability of soldiers to operate at heights above 15,000 feet.
In this, the Indian Army is uniquely placed as majority of its battalions have, at one time or another, served on the Siachen Glacier, considered the world’s highest battlefield where the heights rise to 22,000 feet and the temperature plummets to minus 50 degrees Celsius in winter.
Till a truce was declared in 2003, Indian and Pakistani troops were engaged in a bitter two-decade standoff along the 76-km-long glacier that saw some 600 Indian soldiers losing their lives – most of them to the harsh climatic conditions.
Such is the expertise in glacial warfare that the Indian Army has gained that soldiers who have never climbed a mountain before are put through a three-month crash course at the Siachen Battle School at the snout of the glacier before being inducted.
“The Royal Marines welcome the opportunity to train alongside the Indian Army in one of the most challenging environments in the world that will test their specialist high altitude and mountain leadership skills,” the defence ministry release said.
The Royal Marines are Britain’s amphibious infantry and, along with the Royal Navy and the Royal Fleet Auxiliary, form the Naval Service. They are also specialists in mountain and Arctic warfare.
A core component of Britain’s Rapid Deployment Force, the Royal Marines are able to operate independently in all types of terrain.
The Indian airborne forces that are taking part in the exercise are especially trained high altitude warfare troops capable of operating independently in varied snow-bound mountainous regions.
Himalayan Warrior is the latest in a series of engagements between the Indian armed forces and “friendly foreign” counterparts.
Earlier this month, the Indian Navy joined those from the US, Japan, Australia and Singapore in Malabar-2007, the biggest war games conducted in the Bay of Bengal.
In March-April, five Indian Navy vessels participated in joint drills with the navies of Singapore, Vietnam, Japan, China and Russia during an extended deployment to east and southeast Asia.
Some 400 crack paratroopers from the Indian and Russian armies are participating in a joint airborne drill that began in the chillingly cold riverine plains of Pskov in Russia Sep 11. Codenamed Indra-2007, this is the second in a series of joint drills that began in the deserts of Rajasthan in October 2005.
With counter-terrorism as the theme of the 10-day drill, the special airborne forces of the two countries would simulate “joint planning and conducting air and ground manoeuvres to neutralize, under a UN mandate, a concentration of international terrorists in a third country”, a defence ministry release said.
The Indian and Chinese armies are also conducting their first joint drill in November.