India, US navies take insights from collab

Visakhapatnam: The ongoing fourth edition of the India-US bilateral and tri-service exercise Tiger Triumph is witnessing an unprecedented escalation in complexities across multiple domains— surface, in the air, in space, in cyber and under the sea. Speaking to TOI, Rear Admiral Greg Newkirk, US Navy, Commander of the Task Force 70 and US joint forces participating in Tiger Triumph, said in this exercise they are endeavouring to integrate the joint forces to operate cohesively across all domains. "Subsequently, we shall analyse and derive insights from this collaboration. We shall incorporate these learnings back into the Indian Armed Forces and US Armed Forces, refining our operational methodologies and enhancing our effectiveness for potential real-world scenarios, which remains a significant possibility considering the global circumstances," he added."Operating two joint forces under one single command structure to execute a mission is an intricate and sophisticated endeavour, and the objective of such exercises is to enhance and fortify interoperability," Greg Newkirk said."In this exercise , we are trying some fairly complex things, all designed around a capstone mission or a marquee event at the end of this exercise, and that is a humanitarian response mission that will be effected through an amphibious operation to bring supplies and support capabilities from the sea to the shore to a population in need, through some simulated scenario," he added."As for space, for the first-time space technology is being incorporated in Tiger Triumph. We have been trying to incorporate unmanned systems into naval operations for the past three and half years," he said." We have already been having some communication on how to expand unmanned portfolio, and then hopefully in future iterations of Tiger Triumph, we will be utilising some unmanned systems to help solve whatever the problem is of the exercise. We're going to need more unmanned systems in the future as part of our combined operations," he said.Explaining how Tiger Triumph helps in nurturing defense relationships between India and the US, Greg Newkirk said, "Since we deal with the same challenges, the exercise helps exchange of subject matter experts (SME) for a better roadmap."