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Communications Key to Exercise Malabar 2005

Navy NewsStand

Story Number: NNS051004-01
Release Date: 10/4/2005 9:56:00 AM

By Photographer's Mate 1st Class (AW) Shane T. McCoy, Navy News Service

ABOARD USS HIGGINS, At Sea (NNS) -- The U.S. and Indian navies are using the CENTRIX systems to bridge the gap of communications during Malabar '05, the annual, bilateral exercise currently being held in the Indian Ocean off the coast of Goa, India.

CENTRIX is a standardized system used for secure communication between ships of coalition countries.

“CENTRIX is a secure network environment for coalition ships to share information,” said Joseph Spencer, a fleet systems engineer who was sent along with Navy operations specialists and information systems technicians from U.S. 7th fleet. “The Indian ships primarily communicated using voice and teletype, [which is] not as secure or as fast.”

Each of the Indian ships have had two U.S. Sailors aboard for the duration of the exercise to run the system, and most have additional U.S. Sailors riding for familiarization.

Most of the Sailors' time aboard the Indian ships has been spent in the radio room, called the Main Communication Office (MCO), where the CENTRIX system is installed into the ship's existing MARSAT satellite communication system.

The goal is to have their Indian counterparts operate the system and only use U.S. Sailors to operate the encryption components needed to establish a secure connection.

“When the CENTRIX system is up and working, the ships can real-time chat, email and locate each other, and these Sailors have been working hard to get it set up and keep it running on the Indian ships,” said Spencer.

Although the system is new to the Indian sailors, Spencer praised their work ethic. “Indian sailors are very eager to learn and have picked up the use of the new system very quickly,” said Spencer.

“The system was fast and simple to use,” said Lt. Cmdr. Ashwin Abraham, signals communitcations officer for INS Gomati (F 21). “We are going to evaluate its performance at the end of the exercise to see if it is feasible to install it on our Indian ships.”

This year’s Malabar exercise is the largest to date. It includes two U.S. destroyers, USS Higgins (DDG 76) and USS Chaffee (DDG 90), the U.S. aircraft carrier USS Nimitz (CVN 68) and the U.S. submarine USS Santa Fe (SSN 763). The Indian Navy has contributed their aircraft carrier INS Viraad, a frigate, a submarine and the new Delhi-class destroyer INS Mysore.

Malabar is an annual exercise designed to increase interoperability between the U.S. and Indian navies and enhance the cooperative security relationship between India and the United States.

Malabar ’05 is scheduled to conclude Oct. 5.