Exercise 'FORCE 18' concludes

The field training phase of Exercise 'FORCE 18', the largest ever foreign military exercise hosted by India, ended today.
Over 80 observers, including 28 Foreign Services Attaches of participating and non-participating countries, were shown and briefed on the exercise and they witnessed the validation phase today in Pune.
The dignitaries included, Senior Lieutenant General Vo Van Tuan from Vietnam (equivalent to Indian Army Chief), Lieutenant General W Wacharikul from Thailand and Director General Yoon Soon Gu from South Korea.
The observers were taken to College of Military Engineering for witnessing the Humanitarian Mine Action Exercise in the initial part of the day.

They were briefed by the FTX Planners about the background of exercise and the activities undertaken till date.
The observers later visited the Mine Action Centre where they witnessed the mine action teams being effectively controlled from a single command post.

The observers were also taken to Aundh for witnessing the Peacekeeping Operations Exercise which include military drills such as patrolling, convoy protection and deployment of Standard Combat Deployment, a statement by the Army said.
This was followed by debriefing, wherein contingent heads of all ASEAN Plus countries brought out the lessons learnt, experiences shared, expertise gained and the way ahead.

Lt Col Sophia Qureshi, a young woman officer of the Indian Army, is leading the country's contingent at Force 18.
Ten members of the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN,) plus eight observer states - India, Japan, South Korea, China, Russia, United States, Australia and New Zealand - had participated.