In the 10 years since Yudh Abhyas began, the exercise has grown from platoon-level operations to brigade-and battalion-level operations.
Meanwhile, Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh said the state governments have been asked to identify Rohingya refugees in their regions and collect their biometric details.
He said the new approach developed by his administration, empowered US commanders in the field, enabled partners on the ground, and directly confronted ISIS's "wicked" ideology.
By jettisoning the seniority principle, the government has sent a strong signal that only merit and suitability will count in occupying posts in the higher echelons of the military, writes national security expert Nitin Gokhale.
In an unusual case of 'mass bunking' being confronted by the Central Reserve Police Force, 59 trainee commandos of its elite jungle warfare and counter-Naxal squad Commando Battalion for Resolute Action have gone missing from a train just before they were to report for duty in the Left Wing Extremism-hit theatre of Bihar as part of their first deployment.
'The loose use of words like foreigner or Bangladeshis obscures the fact that the post-Partition migration to Assam has been of both Hindus and Muslims.'
The Assam-Mizoram violence is an outcome of BJP trying too hard to 'integrate' distinct northeastern states, explains Shekhar Gupta.
The foundations of the army's own peculiar secularism are potentially being destabilised
Reaffirming his commitment to destroy the Islamic State, United States President Barack Obama said America will destroy any militant organisation that tried to harm its people but ruled out sending large scale troops on the ground as done in the case of Afghanistan and Iraq.
Internal simmering in the army has come to a boil after the government tries to retain a discriminatory promotions policy.
Hard men with guns cannot manage the state forever.
Brigadier M P Bajwa (retd), commander of the troops that captured Tiger Hill, tells Rediff.com's Archana Masih how a band of young soldiers won the Kargil War's most famous battle with their blood and grit.
Manipur needs an integrated politico, military, socio-economic approach, says Sanjeev Nayyar.
'The use of nuclear/biological/chemical weapons by Islamic terrorists is just a matter of time.' 'It must be clearly understood what the world faces is a global level insurgency against the world order.' 'Terrorism is merely a tactic and Islamic State its most brutal face, says Colonel Anil A Athale (retd).
Pakistan would want to take full advantage of the situation to direct Taliban trained terrorists into the Kashmir Valley, alert Lieutenant General Ashok Joshi (retd) and Colonel Anil A Athale (retd).
'Jaish e Mohammed has been allowed to resurge through supported terror actions in J&K in a deliberate tactic by Pakistan, if only to reduce the international pressure on the Lashkar e Taiba leadership after 26/11,' points out Rana Banerji, who headed the Pakistan desk at the Research and Analysis Wing, India's external intelligence agency.
'The summer of 1857 saw violence, perpetrated by the Indians and the Britons, on an unprecedented scale.' 'Never before and never after in the history of British rule in India was there violence at the level that 1857 witnessed.'
United States President Barack Obama on Friday ruled out sending US ground troops "back into combat" in Iraq, but said that he is reviewing a range of other options to help the war-torn country counter the violent Islamic insurgency.
Until last month more than two-thirds of the Indian Army was deployed against Pakistan. Of 14 army corps, just four-and-a-half faced China, while more than twice that number was ranged against Pakistan.
'Why can't a person who has supervised military intelligence head RA&W?' 'Why can't one who has overseen national security planning become our NSA or chair the National Security Advisory Board?' asks Vice Admiral Premvir Das (retd).
The suspension of US aid to Pakistan, which was announced by President Donald Trump in January 2018, remained in effect throughout 2019, the State Department said.
The US military efforts in Afghanistan were akin to filling a bucket that had gaping holes, asserts Colonel Anil A Athale (retd).
A CoBRA company has about 100 personnel each.
The Naxals used over 50 kilogram of explosives in Chhattisgarh's Sukma, about a year after a dozen jawans were killed in a similar ambush in the district.
Shehla doesn't and has never shied away from talking the tough talk and walking the tough walk, says Gurmehar Kaur.
The Pampore attack 'has the stamp of LeT written all over it.'
'They are exactly like the so-called fidayeen of the 1999-2003 phase, when J&K witnessed a surge in suicide attacks on various important garrisons,' says Lieutenant General Syed Ata Hasnain (retd), who served as the General Officer Commanding 15 Corps in Kashmir.
India hit out at China for its remarks that there was no consensus over the United States' proposal to ban Pathankot attack mastermind and Jaish-e-Mohammed is chief Masood Azhar at the United Nations
A policeman and a hardcore United Liberation Front of Asom - Independent militant were killed on Tuesday in an encounter in Assam's Goalpara district
He said in most of the Naxal attacks, it has been noticed that villagers were used as human shields by the insurgents during the gun battle.
Afghanistan will remain a frontline state for Washington for a foreseeable future in terms of the potential threats to US national security from terrorist groups, asserts Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar, who played a stellar role in beginning India's dealings in Afghanistan in 1994.
'The majority community needs to accept that the Indian Muslim is peace loving, not communal and treat them accordingly.'
The US and its allies must evolve a more comprehensive long-term plan to defeat the new danger that the caliphate poses to the world order. And India too must do its bit for course correction, says strategic expert Gurmeet Kanwal.
From walking up to 10 kms to crossing rivers and spending nights in Naxal-hit areas, the poll officers will have to go past numerous hurdles and face life-threatening challenges to do their duty, but none of them is complaining.
The defence minister said that if AFSPA was not imposed in a state, then the army couldn't operate there.
Support for the dreaded Haqqani network across the militant group's historical stronghold in eastern Afghanistan is gradually turning into "resentment" as local leaders say the Haqqani supremo's war is for "Pakistani rupees and power" and they cannot follow him "blindly".
'Islamist terror groups have never been challenged ideologically. As long as their ideology survives, like cancer, these groups will sprout somewhere else, says Colonel Anil A Athale (retd).
The Indian Army rejected DRDO's INSAS assault rifle in 2010 due to its all-round inefficiency. Now the army is being forced to accept DRDO's Excalibur rifle, which is basically an ungraded variant of the INSAS, to make up for a severe shortage of small arms.
Rediff.com reproduces the translation of the remarks made by President Ashraf Ghani at a press conference.
'Aggravated fears about the fate of Article 370 and Article 35A of the Constitution have reopened old wounds and laid bare the widening emotional distance between Srinagar and New Delhi,' says Mohammad Sayeed Malik, the distinguished commentator on Kashmir affairs.
'So a number of people are drawn in along with members of their friends' circle or their relatives.' 'A number of individuals find that they have more in common with the 'imagined community' that they discover online as opposed to their own physical community and indeed, even the majority Muslim community elsewhere.'
