NEW DELHI: With Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Turkey moving to operationalise their "attack on one is an attack on all" defence pact, India and the UAE on Monday kicked off Exercise Mountain Guardian in the Uttarakhand hills. The Army has fielded one of its new Bhairav light commando battalions for the drill.
The mountain warfare exercise at Chaubatia brings together 46 Bhairav commandos and an equal number of soldiers from a UAE mountain infantry battalion, the Army said.
The exercise marks a key outing for the Bhairav battalions which were raised after Operation Sindoor. Lean, agile and built for speed, the light commandos plug the gap between the infantry's Ghatak platoons and the elite Para Special Forces. Each such battalion draws personnel from the infantry, artillery, air defence and Signals. The Army has already raised 21 of the 25 Bhairav battalions it plans to field.
The troops will train in drone operations, surveillance-grid management, firing drills and integrated field manoeuvres, the Army added, with the exercise aimed at sharpening interoperability in mountainous terrain.
The exercise also takes India-UAE military cooperation from the desert to the mountains. The two armies' earlier Desert Cyclone exercises focused on urban combat and counter-terrorism operations in desert terrain.
It comes nearly two months after Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Pakistan inked the Makkah Joint Defence Agreement. Under it, an armed attack on any one of them will be treated as an attack on all three. The trio has since moved to put implementation mechanisms in place, including plans for a permanent secretariat in Riyadh and meetings of their military chiefs.
This lends a sharper strategic edge to India's expanding defence engagement with the UAE. The two countries signed a strategic defence partnership framework in May, covering military training and exercises, maritime security and cyber defence. The framework stops short of a mutual-defence commitment.
Abu Dhabi, meanwhile, has been recalibrating parts of its relationship with Islamabad. Pakistan repaid around $3.5 billion in UAE deposits earlier this year, and needed Saudi financial support to do so.
India-UAE ties also have a growing defence-industrial edge. Abu Dhabi has shown interest in the BrahMos supersonic cruise missile and the Akashteer air defence control and battlefield management system.