Itanagar, March 24: The Army and IAF recently conducted an exercise in Arunachal Pradesh to swiftly mobilize troops. The exercise aimed to enhance battle preparedness and practice synergized contingency operations in the eastern theater amidst ongoing tensions along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) with China.

The Army-IAF exercise is for the intra-theatre air mobility operations to validate joint plans to execute synergised operations, with the aim to orchestrate military activities across all domains to deliver converging effects.

Despite the lack of signs on any de-escalation in the three-year-old military confrontation with China in eastern Ladakh, wherein both sides continue to deploy over 50,000 troops with heavy weaponry, tensions have also spiked along the LAC stretch in Sikkim-Arunachal Pradesh since the rival troops clashed at Yangtse in the crucial Tawang sector on December 9.

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“The 96-hour exercise enabled coordination and rehearsal amongst various agencies for quick mobilisation, transportation and deployment of forces within a theatre,” an official said.

The exercise called “Vayu Prahar” revolves around the mobilisation of a “rapid reaction force”, which includes special forces from the hinterland to undertake air-land operations at an advance landing ground (ALG) in high-altitude terrain conditions along the LAC in Arunachal Pradesh.