All You Need To Know About The Malabar Exercise

Exercise Malabar is a trilateral naval exercise involving the United States, Japan and India as permanent partners. This is a very important military exercise between the three military superpowers for defence cooperation, learning the latest techniques and technology and strategically also. It includes diverse activities, ranging from fighter combat operations from aircraft carriers to Maritime Interdiction Operations Exercises.

Malabar Exercise

• The exercise originally began in 1992 as a bilateral exercise between India and the United States. Later, Japan also became a permanent partner in 2015.
• The last edition of the exercise was held in waters off the coast of Guam(a major US naval base) on 16 June 2018. This was its 22nd rendition that included aircraft and ships from the Indian Navy, the U.S. Navy, and the Japan Maritime Self Defense Force.
• The Indian Navy participated with the INS Kamorta, an anti-submarine Kamorta-class stealth corvette; the INS Sahyadri, a Shivalik-class stealth multi-role frigate. And the Deepak-class fleet tanker INS Shakti also.
• The Malabar exercise is usually conducted in two phases. It includes the harbour phase and the sea phase featuring both ashore and at-sea training.
• Live aircraft carrier operations, air defence, anti-submarine warfare, surface warfare, visit, board, search and seizure (VBSS), joint manoeuvres and tactical procedures are all covered in the sea phase.
• As you know that the US imposed economic sanctions on India after we conducted nuclear tests at Pokhran. It was due to these sanctions that it also had a suspension from 1998 to 2001.
• The primary aim of this multilateral exercise is to increase interoperability amongst navies of three countries. It also includes developing a common understanding of procedures for Maritime Security Operations and deepening defence relations.

In the conclusion, we can say that with China’s increased activities of building artificial lands in the South China Sea and deploying submarines into the Indian Ocean, this is a very crucial exercise for the three democracies.