Agra: With vast experience in operating
behind enemy lines in Afghanistan and Iraq, the US air force
has brought its commando expertise to this year`s joint
exercise with India, training the special forces of the two
nations in counter-terrorism and anti-piracy operations.
Cope India-2009, the sixth in the series of Indo-US air
exercise that began here today, will focus not only on
transport operations, but also insertion and extraction of its
special forces in hostile zones, as also searching for pilots,
who may have crashed in enemy territory, and rescuing them.
"One of the focus of this exercise is joint operations by
special forces of both IAF and USAF behind enemy lines, such
as sending a team into hostile territory or to extricate a
pilot, whose aircraft had crashed there," USAF`s Cope India
Director Colonel Raymond Lamarche said here.
Reminding of the popular Gene Hackman and Owen
Wilson-starrer Hollywood movie `Behind Enemy Lines`, a group
of IAF`s Garud special forces and USAF special forces troops
boarded a C-130J Super Hercules aircraft to carry out a
para-jump over the sky in a real-time operations simulation.
To a question on the future possibility of a similar
joint operation by the two air forces in counter-terrorism and
anti-piracy roles, Col Lamarche replied in the affirmative and
said that was why they were exercising the complex manoeuvres
here.
Bureau Report
