The guided-missile destroyer USS Dewey, left, the Japanese destroyer JS Ariake, right, and the Australian frigate HMAS Stuart, top, sit pier-side at Indian Navy Submarine Base Virbahu, Oct. 8, 2024. (Greg Johnson/U.S. Navy)
The U.S. Navy and its counterparts from India, Japan and Australia have kicked off an annual maritime exercise involving eight warships in the Bay of Bengal.
Malabar 2024 also features a dozen aircraft, according to a release Wednesday from the U.S. Navy’s Task Force 71 and Destroyer Squadron 15.
The four nations, who have combined at Malabar each year since 2020, are members of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, or Quad, an informal group formed as a strategic hedge against Beijing’s rising military power.
Last month in Delaware, the Quad leaders announced plans for a coast guard exercise in 2025. Their statement expressed “serious concern over recent dangerous and aggressive actions in the maritime domain.”
China’s coast guard has clashed with its neighbors the Philippines and Vietnam recently in the South China Sea. The Philippine navy, for example, reported 203 Chinese ships in disputed waters between Aug. 27 and Sept. 2.
The guided-missile destroyer USS Dewey, homeported at Yokosuka Naval Base, Japan, and a P-8 Poseidon aircraft assigned to Task Force 72, the surveillance arm of 7th Fleet, are participating in Malabar, according to the Navy release.
“I’m fired up to be here today with my counterparts as our navies train together in the Indian Ocean to strengthen our combat readiness, maritime integration, and interoperability,” U.S. Pacific Fleet commander Adm. Steve Koehler told sailors in India on Wednesday, according to the release.
The U.S. military uses the term interoperability to describe the ability of one country’s armed forces to use another’s training methods, strategies and equipment.
Japan’s destroyer JS Ariake, Australia’s frigate HMAS Stuart and India’s guided-missile destroyer INS Delhi also joined the exercise, according to the release.
Last year’s Malabar took place off Australia’s east coast and involved vessels from the same four nations, including the guided-missile destroyer USS Rafael Peralta.
The guided-missile destroyer USS Dewey arrives in Visakhapatnam, India, Oct. 8, 2024, for the annual Malabar exercise. (Greg Johnson/U.S. Navy)
The Quad, while not an alliance, is developing into a significant venture, which China will remain convinced is aimed at Beijing, said Ralph Cossa, a retired Air Force officer and former president of the Pacific Forum think tank in Hawaii.
“I see little need to disabuse Beijing of that notion,” he told Stars and Stripes by email Friday.
Malabar doesn’t send a message that India would be involved in any conflict over Taiwan or the South China Sea, Cossa wrote.
“The Chinese also need to wonder if India would take advantage of Chinese preoccupation in either/both areas to settle some scores along the Sino-Indian border,” he said.
China and India have a long-standing territorial dispute over their mountainous border region.
Adding Australia and Japan into Malabar, which started out in 1992 with just the U.S. and India, gives the Quad “teeth” since Malabar is a combat drill, Paul Buchanan, an American security expert based in New Zealand, said by email Friday.
India has operated under a “Looking East” geopolitical policy for a few years now, including its maritime strategy, and it seems reasonable to think that India could join the other Quad members if there was a major conflict in Taiwan or the South China Sea, he wrote.
