ABOARD USS KITTY HAWK (Bay of Bengal), Sept 7: The United States hopes to build an alliance with friendly navies such as India’s to form a global force of 1,000 ships and boost maritime security, a top US naval commander said on Friday.

But Washington’s naval cooperation with New Delhi is not intended to send a signal to Beijing and the US navy was not looking to build a base in the Indian Ocean region, Vice-Admiral Doug Crowder said.

The comments by Crowder, commander of the Seventh Fleet, came midway through war games involving five nations, led by the United States and India, in the Bay of Bengal, one of the biggest such peacetime exercises which has raised the hackles of China.

“We all have common interests in keeping the oceans of the world open, free for commerce,” Crowder told journalists on board the US aircraft carrier Kitty Hawk. “But the United States navy just isn’t large enough to do that.”

“We have to find common cause and every nation’s sovereignty is protected. They join us for those missions they have a common interest in ... anti-piracy, humanitarian relief, security of the sea lanes.”

The six-day war games which began on Tuesday, involving nearly 30 ships and over 100 aircraft, is the latest in a series called the “Malabar Exercise”, first held in the mid-1990s between Indian and US forces.

India’s navy now has around 140 ships, compared with about 280 in the US navy. This year the drill has been expanded to include a few ships from Australia, Japan and Singapore in what some analysts see as a new alliance of democracies.—Reuters