New Delhi: India and Australia plan to better understand their bilateral defense relationship with more combat exercises, strengthen cooperation on maritime security and share intelligence, even when they also work with the US and Japan in strategic grouping ‘quad’ on the face of aggressive behavior China at the Indo-Pacific.
Defense Minister Rajnath Singh will meet his partner Australia Peter Dutton on Friday in New Delhi to discuss specific steps to further expand bilateral defense cooperation.
This will be followed by the two defense ministers who joined the Foreign Minister Jaisankar and his partners Marise Payne for the first ‘two-plus-two’ minister dialogue between the two countries on Saturday.
“The defense bond with Australia has obtained a lot of momentum after the relationship was increased to the ‘comprehensive strategic partnership’ in June 2020.
A few steps and new exchanges were being discussed,” said an official on Monday.
With Australia now a permanent member of the quadrilateral ‘Malabar’ naval exercise, the 25th edition conducted from Gaum in West Pacific late last month, Dutton was very interested in India joined the biggest two-year wargames called ‘Talisman Saber’ in 2023, As previously reported by TOI.
Australia believes it will further consolidate Quad, which has stated that it means to prevent any “coercion” in Indo-Pacific, because the exercise has featured the US and Japan and other countries such as Britain, Canada, South Korea and New Zealand.
On Monday, India and Australia also started the 4th edition of their Naval Exercise ‘Ausindex’ from Darwin.
While India has deployed the missile fregat guided by Shivalik and the Corvette Ins Kadmatt anti-ship war for this exercise, Australia took part with Frigate Hmas Warramunga and Submarine Hmas Rankin and F-18A fighter jets and P-8A maritime patrol planes.
“Australia and India are comprehensive strategic partners.
We share commitments to improve the regularity and complexity of our military training so that we can be sure of our ability to work effectively to respond to maritime security needs in our region,” said the Australian Fleet Commander Mark Hammond.
“Every time our country gathered, we developed further maritime interoperability by exercising more serial wars involved showing our strong commitment to open and prosperous indo-Pacific regions,” he added.
The Commander of Eassia India’s fleet behind Admiral Tarun Sobti, in turn, said, “This exercise will further strengthen the partnership and interoperability with the Australian Navy in the Indo-Pacific.
We look forward to adopting the best practices and buildings in the standards of war training achieved in Malabar training.
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