Indian and American maritime surveillance aircraft along with their frontline warships will take part in the week-long Malabar series war games starting tomorrow in the Bay of Bengal where they will practice anti-submarine warfare.
India and the US have been holding the Malabar-series exercises for the last several years to strengthen inter- operability between their maritime forces.
"Malabar 2013 will commence tomorrow and the exercise is scheduled to take place from November 5 to 11. It is a regularly scheduled bilateral naval field training exercise matured over the years, the exercise has witnessed a variety a scope and complexity," a Navy release said.
"The exercise will feature both ashore and at-sea training. While ashore training will include subject matter expert and professional exchanges," it said.
The at-sea portions will be conducted in the Bay of Bengal and they are designed to advance participating nations military-to-military coordination and capacity to plan and execute tactical operations in a multinational environment, it said.
The navies will practice professional exchanges and embarkations, communications exercises, surface action operations, leapfrogs, helicopter cross-deck evolutions, gunnery exercises, visit board and search and seizure and anti-submarine warfare.
Assets of the US Navy taking part in the exercise include the Arleigh Burke class guided-missile destroyer USS McCampbell and P3C Orion whereas India is fielding indigenously built frigate Shivalik, Guided Missile Destroyer Ranvijay and TU-142M maritime reconnaissance aircraft.
