PORT BLAIR (India), Sept 9: A massive peacetime military exercise ended in the Indian Ocean on Sunday as navies from five nations, including the United States, disengaged from mock battles.

The USS Nimitz, the world’s largest supercarrier, had already withdrawn from the Bay of Bengal, where navies from Australia, India Japan and Singapore as well as the US launched the drill on Tuesday.

The end of the six-day exercises code-named “Opera-

tion Malabar” was marked

by mock battles involving fighter jets from supercarrier the USS Kitty Hawk and India’s aircraft carrier INS Viraat and other strike groups near the strategic Malacca Straits, officials said.

“A debriefing was held to assess the results and now the exercises have ended,” said an Indian naval official from a “war-room” monitoring the mid-sea event from Port Blair, capital of India’s Andaman archipelago.

“The details will not be revealed,” he said, referring to the results of the aerial dogfights and simulated sea battles in the Bay of Bengal.

Nearly 30 ships, 200 fighter jets and a nuclear-powered submarine participated in the event to practice anti-piracy and anti-gun-running drills off the Andaman island chain.

“It was one hell of a bang and a super experience,” said the pilot of an US F-16 jet, recalling a low-level “attack” he carried out with one of India’s participating Russian-built supersonic fighter jets.

William Crowder, commander of the Seventh Fleet, the largest forward-deployed US naval strike force, has said Malabar’s aim was to build “inter-operability” between the navies.

The exercises symbolised a new alliance between the Indian and US militaries, Cold War adversaries less than two decades ago who now say there is a need for global action against rising extremism and nuclear proliferation.

The green light by India – a Cold War ally of Russia outside the Soviet bloc – to the first-ever US proposals for common procedures for the drill was also a sign of new bonding between Western and Asian militaries.

Less than a decade ago, the United States slapped a slew of sanctions on India in response to a series of nuclear tests in 1998.

But in 2005 the two nations inked a historic atomic energy deal and embraced each other as strategic partners.

The event was closely watched by nearby China amid mounting tensions over Iran’s nuclear programme, seen by Washington and its Western allies as a covert atomic weapons drive.—AFP