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home, the Bay of Bengal- along the eastern seaboard- is important to India in
the light of its Look East Policy, which has been tweaked by PM Modi as the Act
East Policy. In 2007, China protested against the Japanese participation in
Malabar 2007. This was followed by the then UPA government limiting the
exercise to just a bilateral one between India and US. The JMSDF participation
in the exercise in Bay of Bengal is thus a significant diplomatic decision for
India for two reasons. On one hand, it underlines the importance Delhi imparts
to ASEAN. On the other, it sends out a strong signal to China that India will
independently pursue its foreign policy not withstanding interference from any
other power.
The
six-day Malabar 2015 exercise that concluded in the Bay of Bengal on Monday
needs to be viewed in the light of these stated positions, which have been
articulated by each of the participating nations for long now. Malabar, initially an India-US bilateral naval
exercise, began in 1992, and Japan became a permanent participant only in the
current — 19th — edition in 2015. Japan’s participation as a non-permanent
participant in 2007 had drawn a strong protest from China; Japan, nonetheless,
participated in the 2009, 2011 and 2014 editions of the exercise, which were
held off the Japanese coast. The participation of Japan, which deployed missile
destroyer J S Fuyuzuki and SH 60K helicopters on India’s invitation, is the
first time since 2007 that the Japanese Navy has participated in the exercise
being held off the coast of India. It also signals the importance that the
government and Prime Minister Narendra Modi personally have attached to
strategic ties with Japan.
In
the Malabar 2015, the Indian Navy has been represented by INS Shivalik -an
indigenous frigate, INS Ranvijay – a guided missile destroyer, INS Betwa- an
indigenous frigate and INS Shakti- a Fleet Support Ship. In addition, one
Sindhugosh class submarine, INS Sindhudhvaj, Long Range Maritime Patrol
Aircraft P8I and integral rotary wing helicopters also participated in the
trilateral exercise. The US Navy was represented by the ships from Carrier Task
Force (CTF) 70 of the US Navy’s 7th Fleet, which is based at Yokosuka, Japan.
The CTF included the Nimitz class aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt,
Ticonderoga class Cruiser USS Normandy and Freedom Class Littoral Combat ship
USS Forth Worth. In addition, one Los Angeles class nuclear powered submarine USS
City of Corpus Christi, F18 Aircraft from US Carrier Air Wing and P8A Long
Range Maritime Patrol Aircraft have been a part of the exercise.The JMSDF was
represented by JS Fuyuzuki, a missile destroyer with SH 60K integral
helicopter.
~ and
besides the participation of Japan, there is more to cheer about
as reported in Daily Mail. If the
hostile entry of the U.S. Navy’s 7th fleet in the crucial stage of the 1971 war
for the liberation of Bangladesh sent a shiver down the spine of Indian
military commanders, events at the Malabar 2015 in October gave the latter some
relief.
An operation under
the high-profile naval exercise Malabar, between the navies of India, the U.S.
and Japan, featured a simulated battle to hunt and destroy each other’s
submarines. Locked in this battle were two prowlers, the INS Sindhudhvaj (S56),
a Soviet-designed EKM class of conventional submarine, and the USS City of
Corpus Christi (SSN705), a nuclear-powered attack submarine that functions like
a fighter plane — scrambles and destroys enemy submarines and ships.
Crew of both the
vessels was asked to hunt the other down in a general area of the Bay of
Bengal, based on the ‘available Intel’. Hours later, as they still searched, the Americans were
informed that the game was over already. Unknown, they had been marked, tailed and
suitably ‘annihilated’ by the 533mm torpedoes ‘fired’ by their Indian
counterpart from on board the INS Sindhudhvaj. What came as a
clincher to the Indian side was the tool which detected the USS Corpus Christi
— the ‘Made in India’ Ushus SONAR (Sound Navigation and Ranging) which was
recently installed. “The way it
happened is that the Sindhudhvaj recorded the Hydrophonic Effect (HE) — simply
put, underwater noise — of the N-powered submarine and managed to positively
identify it before locking on to it.
"Being an
exercise what did not happen was the firing,” explained a naval officer. The
HE, thus captured, can easily slide into the elaborate database that any Navy
maintains for classifying and identifying foreign submarines. A U.S. embassy
spokesperson said, “We have no information on the results to share.”
India has nine such
submarines besides four German-designed Shishumar class ones.
With regards – S.
Sampathkumar
29th
Nov. 2015.
News source : The Indian Express & Daily Mail.
