India and US to conduct joint military exercise 'Yudh Abhyas 2017' next week

New Delhi: India and the United States of America will conduct ''Yudh Abhyas'' joint exercise between their armies in September.

The exercise Yudh Abhyas – 2017, will be held from September 14-27 at Joint Base Lewis-McChord in the US.

Exercise Yudh Abhyas is one of the largest joint running military training and defence corporation endeavors between India and USA. This will be the 13th edition of the joint exercise hosted alternately between the two countries.

Over 200 Indian soldiers from the Gorkha Rifles will take part in the military exercise.

The exercise started in the year 2004 under US Army Pacific partnership programme.

Exercise Yudh Abhyas will provide an opportunity to the armed forces of both countries to train in an integrated manner at Battalion level with joint planning at Brigade level. Multiple scenarios will be rehearsed during the joint exercise with a view to understand each-other’s organisational structure and battle procedures which would result in a higher degree of jointmanship that would further facilitate interoperability between the armed forces of both countries to meet any unforeseen contingency across the globe. The exercise is also an ideal platform to learn from each-other’s experiences of planning and execution of operations.

Both armies will jointly train, plan and execute a series of well-developed operations for neutralisation of threats of varied nature. In the end a joint exercise will be undertaken by both countries in an operational setting under a UN mandate. Experts from both sides will also hold expert academic and military discussions to share each other’s experiences on varied topics for mutual benefit.

The exercise could irk China as India, Japan and the US held the Malabar Naval Exercise-2017 in the Bay of Bengal in July in a bid to achieve deeper military ties among the three nations.