Fleet leaves for historic exercise

The initiative to improve and solidify the strategic relationship between the US and India is one of the most important and underreported issues in American foreign policy.

PORT BLAIR: A naval fleet, led by one of Indian Navy’s most potent destroyers, left the harbour here on Sunday on a long voyage that would not only set several new milestones for the Navy but also raise the discussion over China’s growing military might to new levels.

Over the next few months, the naval fleet of five ships would stage for the first time in 15 years an Indo-US naval exercise in the Pacific Ocean, an Indo-Russian naval exercise in Russian waters, and spend almost four months out in the sea. But most crucially, the fleet would carry out a historic trilateral exercise with US and Japan.