NEW DELHI: The ten-day Malabar series of naval exercises – featuring navies of the United States, India, Japan and Australia (Quad group) – will get underway off the eastern coast of Australia this week.
Interoperability will be the focus of the manoeuvres planned this year – with air defence, sea operations and under-sea threats to be under stress.
The Royal Australian Navy is hosting the event for the first time from August 11 to 21. Divided into two phases, the programmes will include a harbour phase at Sydney followed by sea exercises.
The Australian forces will field two warships – HMAS Choules and HMAS Brisbane. The Indian Navy will send destroyer INS Kolkata and multi-role stealth frigate INS Sahyadri.
Besides, the US and Japan will send in one warship each. Additionally, the maritime forces of the US, India and Australia shall be fielding Boeing P8I maritime surveillance aircraft. The number of warships is going to be less as unlike in the past, there will be no submarines or aircraft carriers of any country at the exercise, sources said. But, the maritime exercise will involve ‘very high-end complexity’, sources added, which will focus towards “interoperability”.
Focus on connecting forces
Interoperability will be the focus of manoeuvres planned this year – with air defence, sea operations and under-sea threats to be in stress