Vajra Prahar

In line with the increasing military cooperation between India and the US, yet another edition of the joint military exercise ‘Vajra Prahar’ was held at Joint Base Lewis-McChord (JBLM) in Seattle, in which a 45-member Special Forces team from Indian Army’s Southern Command will train alongside US soldiers.

Vajra Prahar’ is a Indo-US Special Forces joint training exercise conducted alternately in India and the US. Though the exercise began in 2010, there was a gap of three years between 2012 and 2015. The last edition was held in Jodhpur in March 2017. This edition’s Indian Army team is from the Pune-headquartered Southern Command.

The aim of the exercise is to promote military relations between the two countries by enhancing interoperability and mutual exchange of tactics between Special Forces. The objectives of the joint training is to share the best practices between the two armies and to develop joint strategies by sharing expertise of conducting operations in a counter-insurgency and counter-terrorism environment, while capitalising on the rich repository of experiences of each other armies.