Indian and Russian armies will hold their biennial joint counter-terrorism and counter-insurgency exercise at the Buryatia military training base in southeast Russia close to the Mongolian border in August this year.
The fourth in the Indra series of exercise, the 2012 edition will witness participation from 250 troops each from India and Russia.
The two sides will match their combat skills and try and understanding the operating procedures of each other, according to officers in the army headquarters.
Buryatia falls under the Russian Army's Eastern Command.
The Indra-2010 exercise, the last in the series, was held in Chaubatia, a garrison town close to the Ranikhet hill resort in India's Uttarakhand state, when about the same number of troops from either side conducted counter-terrorism manoeuvres.
The Indian troopers will get acquainted with Russian military equipment during exercise in the first stage, after which they will get to participate in joint tasks to get trained in standard operating procedures. Later, the two sides will carry out synchronised counter-terrorism operations to polish the skills acquired during the two-week training.
The first and the third rounds of the Indra series army exercises were held in India, while the second round was held in Russia. The Indra exercises are formulated in such a way that it is held alternately in India and Russia.
The first Indra exercise was held in Rajasthan and the third at Chaubatia in India, the second edition was held at Prshkov in Russia.
Though India has been buying and using Russian military equipment for several decades now, the two sides did not see it prudent to hold joint army training exercises till 2005.
The joint exercises started trending only after the Americans began showing interest in holding joint exercises with India to achieve interoperability, considering that the India-US military relations was growing rapidly. |