Tiger Triumph Vs Indra: India’s military drills with Russia, US in waters close by

 If one thought that the American F-35 and the Russian Su-57 fighter aircraft operating from the same airbase at the Indian Air Force’s Bengaluru’s Yelahanka air base with just a couple of hundred metres separating their respective parking bays may be an aberration, think again. The Indian military is now exercising its assets with the Russian and American ones in close vicinity in the eastern seaboard.

Among other things, it underlines India’s growing heft on the high table of big powers and reinforces the deft success of its mantra of ‘strategic autonomy’—which means maintaining equidistance from the two big military powers and yet having its way with both.

On Tuesday, India and the US began the 13-day long fourth edition of the tri-service ‘Exercise Tiger Triumph’, a Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief (HADR) Exercise that aims at “developing interoperability for conducting HADR operations and for the formulation of Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) to establish a Combined Coordination Center (CCC) that would enable rapid and smooth coordination between Indian and US Joint Task Forces (JTF) during exercises and crisis / contingencies”.

The Indian Navy’s assets and platforms taking part in the exercise are warships ‘Jalashwa’, ‘Gharial’, ‘Mumbai’ and ‘Shakti’ along with the integral helicopters and landing crafts besides the Long Range Maritime Patrol Aircraft P8I. The Army is sending soldiers from the 91 Infantry Brigade and the 12 Mechanised Infantry Battalion while the Air Force’s C-130 aircraft and MI-17 Helicopters besides a Rapid Action Medical Team (RAMT).

The US warships are ‘Comstock’ and ‘Ralph Johnson’ besides troops of the US Marine Division.

The week-long harbour phase is scheduled at Visakhapatnam from April 1 to April 7 while the sea phase of ‘Tiger Triumph’ will see the military men from both sides undertaking maritime, amphibious and HADR operations off Kakinada.

Meanwhile, a few hundred kilometers away the Indian Navy and the Russian Navy are engaged in war games at and near Chennai.

As part of the 14th edition of the Indian-Russia bilateral naval exercise ‘Indra’—which epitomises the long-term strategic relationship between the two navies—Indian Navy warships ‘Rana’ and ‘Kuthar’ and a P8l will join forces with Russian warships ‘Pechanga’, ‘Rezkiy’ and ‘Aldar Tsydenzhapov’ to undertake “advanced naval drills, including tactical manoeuvres, live weapon firings, anti-air operations, underway replenishment, helicopter cross-deck landings and exchange of sea-riders”.

While the harbour phase of ‘Indra’ concluded at Chennai on Sunday, the sea phase began on Monday and will conclude on Wednesday in the Bay of Bengal.