The Indian Navy will be participating in a joint exercise with the Royal Navy of Britain in the Bay of Bengal next month as part of the annual Konkan war games. In addition to that, the HMS Queen Elizabeth Warship, on its way back to the UK via Suez Canal, will also carry out a tri-service exercise with the Indian armed forces in October off the coast of Goa in the Arabian Sea.
United Kingdom’s Queen Elizabeth carrier strike group will participate in full-spectrum exercises which will send out an emphatic message of alliance between Indo-Pacific. Currently, HMS Queen Elizabeth is headed for its maiden deployment in the South China Sea, Hindustan Times reported.
The Carrier Group will exercise with the Indian destroyers, submarines, P8I anti-submarine warfare planes and MiG-29 K fighters around the Andaman and Nicobar islands. However, the Indian aircraft carrier INS Vikramaditya is undergoing maintenance and will be out for deployment only at the end of 2021.
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Exercise Konkan is a long-running annual treaty in which both the commonwealth countries carry out certain armed-forces actions in order to test the ability to work together when needed.
The exact dates of the exercise have not been finalised as yet by the Indian Navy.
Currently, the English warship along with the UK and US F-35B stealth fighters has been deployed near the Iraq-Syria border in its anti-ISIS operation.
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The HMS Queen Elizabeth had taken his maiden sail from Portsmouth in May. It was an operational deployment at the heart of the UK's Carrier Strike Group. It is a warship capable of carrying up to 40 aircraft and is the largest and most powerful vessel ever constructed for the Royal Navy.
Also, the warship will be involved in a tri-service exercise with the Indian armed forces which will be held off the coast of Goa in the Arabian Sea in October, while going back to the UK via the Suez Canal.
The matter of the South China Sea has gained prominence after the G7 and NATO summits. Countries from all around the world, especially powerful countries like the UK and the USA have sworn to protect their allies, denouncing a common foe, China.
As a collaborative action against China, India and the UK had also decided to deep military cooperation on Indo-Pacific with the objective of ensuring freedom of navigation in the South China Sea.
The Indian Navy on June 23-24 exercised with the USS Ronald Reagan Carrier Strike Group off the coast of Goa as the Nimitz class warship returned from operational deployment in the South China Sea.
