Posted on 09/24/2005 12:19:30 PM PDT by Gengis Khan
NEW DELHI: India might still be shy of openly jumping onto the controversial US-led Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI) bandwagon but it's certainly steaming ahead to practice mammoth operations with American forces on the high seas.
India's largest-ever naval exercise with any country will kick off on Sunday when Indian and American aircraft carriers, destroyers, guided-missile frigates, fighter and surveillance aircraft undertake combat manoeuvres in the north-west Arabian Sea.
The sheer scale of this 10-day Indo-US exercise, "Malabar-05", can be gauged from the fact that it will involve almost 10,000 officers and sailors from the two nations.
"This will be the first time that aircraft carriers and fighters from the two navies will exercise together. It will be our largest exercise with a foreign Navy to build interoperability," said assistant chief of naval staff (information warfare and operations) Rear Admiral D K Joshi.
Apart from air operations, sea-control missions and advanced anti-submarine warfare, Malabar-05 will significantly also include "maritime interdiction and VBSS (visit, board, search and seizure) operations towards anti-piracy and counter-terrorism actions at sea".
This perfectly ties in with what PSI is all about. Core members of PSI like US, UK, Japan, Australia, France, Germany and Russia have pledged to pool capabilities to aggressively "interdict" ships carrying weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) or related material to terrorist groups or "countries of proliferation concern".
The expansive 10-year Indo-US defence framework, signed between defence minister Pranab Mukherjee and his American counterpart Donald Rumsfeld on June 28, incidentally, also talks about collaboration in "multinational operations" and enhancing "capabilities to combat WMD proliferation".
US, of course, wants Indian Navy, which provided escort to 22 "high-value" American ships through the Malacca Straits in 2002, to play a role in waylaying dubious shipments.
Malabar-05 will witness the gigantic nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS Nimitz, which can carry 110 aircraft with a 4.5 acre flight deck, fast-attack nuclear submarine Santa Fe, two Aegis-class destroyers, F\A-18 "Super Hornet" fighters, E2C Hawkeye early warning aircraft and P3C Orion reconnaissance planes.
India, in turn, will participate with its solitary aircraft carrier INS Viraat, armed with Sea Harrier jets and Sea King helicopters, guided-missile destroyer INS Mysore, a Godavariclass guided-missile frigate, a Shishumar-class submarine and TU-142M longrange maritime patrol and anti-submarine aircraft.
"The constructive engagement between the two navies on issues such as counter-terrorism, anti-piracy, maritime interdiction, search and rescue would be mutually beneficial and operationally relevant for both," said an officer.
This is good. The more of this the better.
Is this maneuver in response to last month's coordinated Chinese-Russian military exercises? Or was theirs in
anticipation of this one between the US and India?
Muscle flexing?
I view these joint American/Indian military exercises as a counter weight to the recent Chinese-Russian war games and the future potential showdown with 'nuclear Iran' and having India in our camp, since who knows in which direction Pakistan will travel.
The Great Game continues.
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