NEW DELHI: The Quad navies have kicked off the annual Malabar exercise off Japan with a sharp focus on hunting submarines, less than a fortnight before the grouping's leaders are slated to hold their first summit in over two years.
The exercise between India, the US, Japan and Australia began at Yokosuka on Thursday and will continue till November 12 in the waters south of Tokyo.
The four navies are conducting advanced multi-domain training "in support of a Free and Open Indo-Pacific", the US embassy in India said on Friday.
India has deployed its indigenous Shivalik- class stealth frigate INS Sahyadri, while Japan has fielded the helicopter destroyer JS Ise, the frigate JS Mogami and a submarine. The US, in turn, has sent an amphibious transport dock and Australia the frigate HMAS Stuart, with Japanese P-1 and American and Australian P-8A maritime patrol aircraft joining the hunt from the air.
The focus on underwater combat is significant, with China now fielding the world's largest navy of over 370 ships and subs. The PLAN also operates six to eight warships in the Indian Ocean Region (IOR) at any given time.
Beijing has long portrayed the Quad as a US-led "Asian NATO" aimed at containing China. Soon after the Quad foreign ministers met in New Delhi in May and launched the maritime surveillance initiative, the Chinese foreign ministry said it did not support "exclusive cliques or bloc confrontation".
The Quad leaders' summit is now expected on the sidelines of the ASEAN meet in Manila on November 16-18, the first since the one at Wilmington in September 2024.
India was to host the summit last year but it fell through after Trump called off his visit amid tariff disputes. The four foreign ministers met in Atlanta last week to firm up the Manila meeting.
Tokyo, on its part, has been pushing for a stronger defence pillar for the grouping, with defence minister Shinjiro Koizumi pitching an India-hosted Quad defence ministers' meeting at the Shangri-La Dialogue in May.
Koizumi, who has described the Quad as "here to stay", met Rajnath Singh on the sidelines of the ADMM-Plus in Cebu last month, where Singh also held talks with US war secretary Pete Hegseth and Australian defence minister Richard Marles.
Malabar, incidentally, began as a bilateral India-US exercise in 1992, with Japan becoming a permanent participant in 2015 and Australia joining in 2020.