Saudi Press Agency officially announced the launch of military drill dubbed as “Thunder of the North” also known as “North Thunder” or “Ra’ad Al-Shamal” in northern region, Hafr-el-Batin on February 27.
It is said to be the largest military drill in the world in terms of number of participating forces so as the breadth of the maneuver area. A total number of 21 countries including Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Turkey, Egypt, Qatar, United Arab Emirates, Malaysia and others are participating in the military drill to send a message of unity, power to combat terrorism.
North Thunder drill is being held in chary of growing terrorist threats as well as the political and security instability in the region. It also intensifies the desire of the participating countries to secure geographical territories and to fight against terrorism covering four major aspects that is intellectual, media, financial and military.
The unofficial sources describe that there would be nearly 150,000 soldiers, 2,540 warplanes, 20,000 tanks and 460 helicopters from different Arab and Muslim countries and the GCC-formed Peninsula Shield taking part in this gigantic military exercise.
Advisor to the ministry of Saudi defense Brigadier General Ahmad Assiri said “the sent massage is that the Islamic countries are working together, and today we have twenty Islamic countries carrying out this exercise. There are determination and desire to have peace and security prevailing in the region through all means, including the military means”.
"The drill includes helicopters and fighter jets targeting areas where ground forces engage with terrorist elements, in addition to saving members of the joint forces trapped in hostile areas, and clearing all enemy areas," Al-Asiri added.
Military forces from various countries reached the area of operations using Dammam, Dubai and Jeddah Ports, King Khalid Military City, King Saud Airbase, Riyadh Airport and road networks to experiment “sophisticated and unprecedented methods of war tactics using state of the art land, sea and air weapons and equipment”.
A number of heads of states and military officials including Pakistan have arrived in Saudi Arabia to partake in the closing ceremony of North Thunder today. Pakistan is also playing an active role to normalize the Saudi-Iran relations in the past few weeks.
This is yet another effort by Saudi Arabia to form a coalition of Arab and Islamic countries to fight threats jointly after last year in December, it announced to marshal 34-Muslims countries military alliance to fight ISIS.