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| Indian military officers lead U.S. soldiers arriving aboard an Indian Air Force helicopter to attend the Indian Army’s Counter Insurgency and Jungle Warfare School (CIJWS). |
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| Indian and U.S. soldiers aim their weapons at a mock target during jungle warfare training. |
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| Indian Army Brig. B.K. Ponwar, CIJWS Commandant, fires the M240B machine gun assisted by U.S Army 1st Sgt. Samuel Murphy. |
Deep in the jungles, Indian Army soldiers and U.S. Army and National Guard soldiers trained together in Operation YUDH ABYAS 04-1 at the Counter Insurgency and Jungle Warfare School (CIJWS) in the northeast state of Mizoram, India, in early 2004. The two forces shared experiences on tactics, techniques, and procedures at the small unit level.
YUDH ABYAS strengthens and broadens interoperability and cooperation between the Indian and U.S. armies. YUDH ABYAS is the second India-U.S. Army exercise at the CIJWS and complements a number of other exchanges and exercises between the two countries’ forces.
Until now, however, only U.S Army Special Forces have trained at the CIJWS. Moreover, combined exercises with the Indian military in the past have been mostly with the U.S. Air Force and Navy. YUDH ABYAS 04-1 was the first conventional Army-to-Army training in India since 1962.
During YUDH ABYAS 04-1, the two forces focused on basic infantry skills, including individual marksmanship, reflexive firing, battle drills, ambush, patrolling, a fast roping technique called “slithering,” and land navigation and survival in the jungle. They also focused on dealing with terrorists and insurgents, including interrogation techniques and identifying improvised explosive devices. The Indian-U.S. troops learned the tactics of the counterinsurgents as well as terrorists. “We looked at what the terrorist does to camouflage himself within a civilian community, how to pick out the key signs of the differences between a civilian and an insurgent, what a terrorist looks like, and how to employ tactics to stop them,” said U.S. Army SSgt. Roger Willenborg. “The training reinforced the identification of insurgents and how to build rapport with the community and possibly turn some of the soft militants over to the friendly side,” he said.
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| Indian Army Lt. Gen. Madan Gopal inspects a U.S. Army squad leader’s weapon. |
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| Indian and U.S. soldiers patrol as two-man teams. |
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SSgt. Robyn Baer, USA, is assigned to the U.S. Army 20th Public Affairs Detachment, Fort Wainwright, Alaska. Sgt. Ken Denny, assigned to the 117th Mobile Public Affairs Detachment, Alaska Army National Guard, contributed significantly to this article.
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