In February 2010, the Indian Navy hosted Milan 2010, a biennial meeting of navies from the Indian Ocean and Asia-Pacific regions, at Port Blair in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. In addition to the Indian Navy, ships from 12 other navies (Australia, Bangladesh, Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, New Zealand, Philippines, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Vietnam) participated in this four-day event. The exercise was aimed at building “mutual confidence and interoperability between navies of the Asia-Pacific region and was intended to promote understanding and cooperation in areas of common interest.” It also sought to work together in future to safeguard the sea lanes of communication from poaching, piracy and terrorist activities, as well as engage in joint search and rescue and humanitarian operations. Two months later, in April 2010, the Indian and US navies participated in Malabar 2010, the 14th in this series of annual exercises that have helped to bring the two navies together in the domain of joint naval operations maritime cooperation.

Top