File photo of Malabar 2022 naval exercises off the coast of Japan
The powerful navies of the US, India, Australia, and Japan will participate in advanced Malabar 2023 exercises off the east coast of the down under nation from 11 to 22 August this year to practise interoperability, sea deterrence, and sea denial in order to ensure freedom of navigation in the Indo-Pacific. The Quad Summit in Sydney has been postponed.
The commanders of the Quad navies will discuss the Indo-Pacific during the intricate drills, which will include both sea and harbour phases.
The Indian Navy will participate in Malabar 2023, which began as an Indo-US bilateral exercise in 1992, with its top-of-the-line destroyers, P 8 I anti-submarine warfare planes, and a submarine. India and the other three QUAD partners have a logistical agreement. In order to complete the Quad, Australia joined in 2020 after Japan was appointed a permanent partner in 2015.
Officials claim that anti-submarine warfare operations will be the primary focus of the naval exercise, with the PLA Navy becoming aggressive in the Indo-Pacific after asserting claims to the entirety of South China, much to the dismay of ASEAN nations like the Philippines and Indonesia in particular.
Beijing’s strategic goal is to dominate the far Pacific with its warships and submarines traversing the first and second chain of islands off its eastern shore. Beijing is doing this by quickly growing the number of nuclear-powered conventionally armed submarines in the PLA Navy.
In order to discourage the formidable US Navy from conducting operations in the South China Sea, the PLA has also constructed conventional DF-21 missile parks on its eastern coast and has threatened to use DF-26 missiles to attack American naval and military sites in Guam.
At the 17th meeting of the bilateral defence policy group on Wednesday, the schedule of military exercises between India and the US was also reviewed. Both sides reaffirmed their commitment to enhancing cooperation and interoperability between the two forces to work together in all domains and across all services.
Giridhar Aramane, the Indian defence minister, and Dr. Colin Kahl, the US under secretary for policy at the Pentagon, jointly chaired the DPG. It is believed that the officials discussed how to align their bilateral partnership with other like-minded partnerships in order to maintain a free and open Indo-Pacific and discuss common priorities in the Indian Ocean region.
The DPG advanced an ambitious agenda that reflected the strong and extensive relations between the two natural allies and included economic cooperation, marine security, and technical cooperation.
While India, Australia, and the US are clear about their Indo-Pacific Quad goal, Tokyo is in the spotlight because it has yet to overcome its pacifist attitude and decide how it feels about Beijing given the size of the investments made by Japanese businesses in China.
Tokyo will be the first to experience a military emergency if President Xi Jinping orders the PLA to take Taiwan, despite the fact that both China and Japan are protected by American nuclear weapons. While the PLA still needs to de-escalate and disengage from the western and eastern sector with additional combined military brigades posted in these two sensitive sectors, India is still responsible for resolving the sites of contention on the East Ladakh LAC.
The grouping is anticipated to grow and further consolidate in the anti-war city in south Japan, despite the fact that the Quad meeting is now slated to take place in Hiroshima, the first city to be attacked by a nuclear bomb.
With Input Feed
