Malabar
The Malabar series was suspended in the wake of the 1998 Pokhran nuclear tests. US-India military cooperation had all but stopped after India’s 1998 nuclear tests, which prompted US sanctions and an arms race with neighboring Pakistan, which also tested nuclear weapons that year.
India and US defence ties have been on the upswing since December 2001, after the joint Defense Policy Group, a secretarial-level committee of the two defence establishments, was revived. In May 2002, the then defence secretary, Yogendra Narain, visited Washington even as tension on the border with Pakistan was mounting and opened negotiations on an Agreement on Acquisition and Cross-Servicing.
The Indian and US navies revived the Malabar series of exercises n the Arabian Sea from the last week of September 2002. In an increasingly common pairing of U.S. and Indian military forces, the USS Chancellorsville and USS Paul F. Foster completed four days of joint military exercises with their Indian navy counterparts. The two navies participated in the Malabar Exercise for the first time since 1996 — further evidence of the nations’ thawing military relationship. The USS Chancellorsville, a 7th Fleet ship from Yokosuka, and the USS Paul F. Foster paired with two Indian ships in a series of missile exercises, crew exchanges and helicopter training operations off India’s southwest coast. Indian navy ships involved were the INS Delhi and INS Gomati, two relatively new ships that operated much the same as the Chancellorsville.
Malabar 2003
Malabar 2004
About 2,000 U.S. and Indian navy personnel took part in Malabar 04, a training exercise off the southwest coast of India Oct. 1-9, 2004. Malabar was designed to increase interoperability between the two navies, while enhancing the cooperative security relationship between India and the United States. The Ticonderoga-class guided-missile cruiser USS Cowpens (CG 63), the Oliver Hazard Perry-class frigate USS Gary (FFG 51), the Los Angeles-class attack submarine USS Alexandria (SSN 757), and P-3C maritime patrol and reconnaissance aircraft participated from the U.S. side in Malabar. The Indian vessels included the destroyer INS Mysore, frigate INS Brahmaputra, the tanker INS Aditya and the submarine INS Shankul.
The bilateral exercise involved a number of events designed to test the abilities of Sailors on both sides. Some of these included small boat transfers, maneuvering as a group, nighttime underway replenishments, visit, board, search and seizure (VBSS) drills, and the central event, a “war at sea.”
Malabar 2004 marked the sixth time the Malabar exercises have been conducted. They have been increased in complexity and scope. The Malabar exercises between the Indian and U.S. navies started off at elementary levels of communication checks and basic maneuvers. For Malabar 2004, however, a stage had been reached where the two navies were in a position to exercise in a multi-dimensional and multi-threat scenario with the presence of major combatants, which included destroyers and frigates with integral helicopters, both nuclear and diesel submarines, carrier-borne fighter aircraft and, lastly, maritime patrol aircraft.
