In signal to China, US & India conduct joint naval exercise

NEW DELHI: In a strong strategic signal to China amidst the military confrontation in eastern Ladakh, a US carrier strike group led by aircraft carrier USS Nimitz conducted a "cooperative" exercise with Indian warships in the Indian Ocean on Monday.
The message was further amplified by a hard-nosed display of military intent by India, which has now deployed Jaguar maritime strike fighters in the Andaman and Nicobar archipelago that dominates China’s critical sea trade routes passing through the Malacca Strait.
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Sources said IAF has stationed around 10 Jaguars, armed with deadly anti-ship Harpoon missiles, at its Car Nicobar airbase in the A&N archipelago, which is over 1,200-km from India’s eastern coast but overlooks the maritime boundaries of Southeast Asia.
The import of Monday’s exercise between the Indian and US navies, which have steadily built “interoperability” through the annual top-notch Malabar war games and other exchanges over the years, will also not be lost on China and will be a card that India will seek to leverage.

Though it was largely a PASSEX (passing exercise), the mammoth nuclear-powered USS Nimitz and her accompanying three warships were significantly transiting through the Indian Ocean Region (IOR) after completing “a freedom of navigation” operation in the South China Sea, where an expansionist and aggressive China is strong-arming its neighbours like Philippines, Malaysia, Vietnam, Brunei and Taiwan.
USS Nimitz, along with guided-missile cruiser USS Princeton, missile destroyers USS Sterett and USS Ralph Johnson, participated in what the US described as a “cooperative exercise” with Indian destroyer INS Rana, stealth frigates INS Sahyadri and INS Shivalik and missile corvette INS Kamorta.

"The opportunity to have the USS Nimitz carrier strike group (CSG) join with the Indian Eastern Fleet, led by Rear Admiral S Vatsayan, for a series of exercises improved our interoperability and is a testimony to the flexibility of both our navies,” said US commander Rear Admiral Jim Kirk.
The operations of the USS Nimitz CSG, currently deployed to the Indian Ocean “in support of a free and open Indo-Pacific”, are designed to provide security throughout the region while building partnerships with friends and allies, he added.
Just last week, the USS Nimitz and USS Ronald Reagan CSGs were together deployed in the South China Sea in a show of strength against China. USS Nimitz, one of the 10 such 100,000-tonne American “super-carriers”, each capable of carrying 80-90 fighters, incidentally, had also taken part in the Malabar exercise in the Bay of Bengal when India and China were locked in the 73-day military face-off at Doklam in 2017.
The stationing of Jaguars in the A&N archipelago, in turn, further strengthens India’s military posture against China’s vulnerability in the IOR. Though India does intermittently operate Sukhoi-30MKIs and other fighters as well as long-range P-8I maritime patrol aircraft from the A&N Islands, they are not permanently based there.
“The deployment of Jaguars there underlines the IAF capability to support the Indian Navy in dominating the IOR, and swing into action if required,” said a source.
The IAF has already forward deployed Sukhoi-30MKIs, Mirage-2000s and MiG-29s as well as Apache attack and Chinook heavy-lift helicopters along the land border with China, especially in eastern Ladakh. India’s eastern naval fleet had also conducted a major exercise off the A&N archipelago last week, as was first reported by TOI.
The strategically-located Andaman and Nicobar Command (ANC), the country’s only theatre command with all assets and manpower of Army, Navy, IAF and Coast Guard placed under one operational commander, can be used as an effective pivot to counter China’s expanding footprint in the Indian Ocean Region.
Indiais now also finally looking to fast-track plans for basing additional military forces, along with developing the requisite infrastructure, in the ANC, as was reported by TOI earlier this month.
Indian and Japanese warships, incidentally, had also carried out a small exercise near the Malacca Strait late last month. While Japan has become a regular participant in the high-voltage “Malabar” naval combat exercise between India and the US since 2015, India is yet to take the final decision to include Australia in the 24thedition of the wargames this year.
If the move translates into reality, a military construct will firmly be added to the so-called “Quad” countries that have a shared interest in building a free, open and stable Indo-Pacific region to deter an expansionist China.