US Army and Indian Special Forces Joint Training

Where all the repairs of the weapons, in case they're required, will be carried out. Behind you is the MCT, the control tower, which will be controlling the fire. And communicate it along with the control tower. We had two days of practice. On our third day of small arms ranges, it was a competition. Every squad was composed of three Americans and three Indians. A lot of these soldiers have never done a range where running was involved, you know, a stress fire type course. Cherasa Small Arms Range, India. U.S. soldiers are competing with Indian soldiers during a live fire exercise. We're learning a lot from the U.S. Army. We're transiting, changing and firing. We're learning their activities that we don't have. You train really hard and come together to compete with another group of soldiers. You start realizing what each other's strengths and weaknesses are. So you learn how to pick up each other's slack and help push each other forward. During war, we practice running to fire at the enemy. Or if we see the enemy for a few seconds, we practice firing at them. Keeps you very motivated. They always talk about the U.S. being one of the best militaries. You come out here and you have other soldiers competing with you and actually keeping up with you, you know. Makes you want to start to work harder, keep pushing forward, train harder. The guy that's right next to me, he's about a year older than me, so he has the same motivation I do. We like to compete with each other. So we try to beat each other down range, see who can get the better shots. We were moving in full kit, so trying to maneuver through the trenches which had barbed wire strung across the top. Making sure that you kept a low enough profile to where you can move and not get hung up on the barbed wire. Position yourself so that you can move swiftly through. And by this time, your heart rate has increased because of the running and you're moving through some thick sand. So that also created a little more resistance to help increase your heart rate. The day we came to find out that our squad, Detail No. 6, had took first place in the squad competition. Yesterday we received our awards and myself and my soldier got called up. We got coined from 180th Squadron of the IA. It was kind of nice to be recognized. I mean, I'm not Cav, but I can shoot. U.S. and Indian forces receive intelligence that a terrorist leader is taking refuge in an insurgent camp in the Rajasthan desert. The mission calls for conventional forces to surround the camp and then calls special forces to extract the insurgent leader for questioning. The exercise was basically an ordnance search operation being carried out with the MEK component of the U.S. and the Indian Armed Forces. And then there was a heavy volume of fire from one of the houses for which the SF intervention was asked for. U.S. and Indian conventional forces cordoned off and searched the town, house to house, receiving some heavy fire and casualties. And after the search, they came to a place where the bomb makers were, and they reached heavy fire. So they called special forces in. We were on standby. They came down, slithered down. Myself, I rolled in the ATV, pulled the intercord on. The U.S. soldiers and the Indian special forces maneuvered their way through the town. Once they identified the house where the insurgent was, they moved in. No more transmission. Approaching target house. The exercises and the training with the U.S. forces are very nice experience for everybody. This type of high-intensity and realistic training helps build a long-lasting relationship between the soldiers from the two nations. Absolutely terrific training. Indian soldier and U.S. soldier in buddy teams, working side-by-side. Great partnership, great engagement, and I thought, superior training.