Warship Queen Elizabeth to conduct KONKAN war games in Bay of Bengal with Indian Navy in July

On its maiden deployment, HMS Elizabeth Carrier Strike Group will in July participate in a full spectrum tri-service exercise with the Indian military on its return in October with an emphasis on amphibious operations.

Published on: Jun 28, 2021, 08:20:52 IST

By Shishir Gupta, New Delhi

Prefer HTon Google

Share via

Copy link

Sending out an emphatic message of convergence on Indo-Pacific, the United Kingdom’s Queen Elizabeth carrier strike group will participate in full-spectrum exercises with the Indian Navy in the Bay of Bengal under the annual KONKAN war games next month as the 65,000-tonne warship heads for a maiden deployment in the South China Sea.

HMS Queen Elizabeth is presently conducting anti-Islamic State operations on Iraq-Syria border with US Marine F-35B stealth fighters on board.

HMS Elizabeth, with the UK and the US F-35B stealth fighters on board, is currently involved in anti-ISIS operations on the Iraq-Syria border. It is accompanied by destroyers from the UK and the US, frigates from the UK and the Netherlands, and a submarine. The warship left the UK on May 22 for a 28-week deployment through the Mediterranean and Indo-Pacific in pursuit of freedom of navigation operations in the contested South China Sea.

Also read | Rajnath stresses on open, inclusive Indo-Pacific region at ASEAN meet

While the dates of the KONKAN exercise are being finalised with the Indian Navy, the Carrier Group will war game around the Andaman and Nicobar Islands with Indian destroyers, submarines, P8I anti-submarine warfare planes and MiG-29 K fighters. The Indian aircraft carrier INS Vikramaditya is undergoing maintenance and will be out for deployment only at the end of 2021. But this is not all.

Also read | Blinken offers veiled jabs as top China diplomat hosts UN event

While on its way back to the UK via Suez Canal, the Queen Elizabeth carrier strike group will be involved in a tri-service exercise with the Indian armed forces in October off the coast of Goa in the Arabian Sea. All three elements of the Indian military including amphibious forces will be involved in a three-day exercise with UK’s warship and its support elements. The exercise will be conducted in all three domains with the aircraft carrier paying port calls at Mumbai and Karwar, which will be the seat of India’s first maritime theatre command.

During the port calls, the Indian military will be a first-time experience of the punch of F-35B stealth fighters, which are designed for short take-off and vertical landing mode on the carrier. The Indian Navy is also looking for fighters on indigenous aircraft carrier Vikrant, which will be commissioned as India celebrates its 75th year of independence next year.

With Prime Minister Boris Johnson at the helm of affairs, India and the UK have decided to deep military cooperation on Indo-Pacific with the objective of ensuring freedom of navigation in the South China Sea. The Indian Navy on June 23-24 exercised with the USS Ronald Reagan Carrier Strike Group off the coast of Goa as the Nimitz class warship returned from operational deployment in the South China Sea.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Shishir Gupta
Shishir Gupta is Executive Editor at Hindustan Times and one of India's top journalists covering national security, strategic affairs, foreign policy and geopolitics. Over the past three decades, he has extensively reported on India's military, diplomatic and security landscape, covering every major conflict and national security challenge, from the 1999 Kargil War and the 2020 East Ladakh standoff to Operation Sindoor in 2025. He has also covered major terror attacks, including the IC-814 hijacking, the 26/11 Mumbai attacks and the 2025 Pahalgam terror strike, along with numerous Pakistan-backed terrorist incidents in the Kashmir Valley and across India. He has reported on national and state elections for more than three decades. A recognised authority on strategic affairs, Gupta has covered India's nuclear programme since the Pokhran-II (Shakti series) tests in May 1998 and has written extensively on global nuclear issues, Indian diplomacy and the country's expanding global outreach. He has also reported widely on international conflicts and terrorism, with a special focus on the Indian subcontinent. Gupta has interviewed Prime Minister Narendra Modi more than four times, including Modi's first interview with the print media after becoming Prime Minister in May 2014. His other interviews include three with the Dalai Lama, as well as conversations with Benjamin Netanyahu, Amit Shah, Yogi Adityanath, S. Jaishankar, Nirmala Sitharaman and Piyush Goyal. He is the author of Indian Mujahideen: The Enemy Within (Hachette, 2011) and Himalayan Face-off: Chinese Assertion and Indian Riposte (Hachette, 2014). He was awarded the Chevening-Wolfson Joint Scholarship at Wolfson College, University of Cambridge, UK, in 1998 and participated in the International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) of the US State Department in 2006. He received the Ben Gurion Prize from Israel in 2011 and the K. Subrahmanyam Prize for Strategic Studies in 2015 from the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (MP-IDSA). Since 2024, he has hosted Point Blank, Hindustan Times' weekly YouTube show on global geopolitics.Read More

Get the latest India News, breaking headlines and real-time updates from across the country. Stay informed about politics, government policies, crime, weather and major national developments.