Australian Navy ships in India for Indo-Pacific endeavour

Royal Australian Navy ships HMAS Adelaide and Anzac arrived in Visakhapatnam for Exercise 'Indo-Pacific Endeavour' with the Indian Navy.

Indo-Pacific Endeavour (IPE), one of Australia's key regional engagement activities, returns to Southeast Asia and the Northeast Indian Ocean from September to November this year, visiting a record 14 countries in this iteration, read Australian Defence Ministry press release.

IPE 2022 will see engagements with the Maldives, Timor-Leste, Vietnam, the Philippines, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Laos, Cambodia, India, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei and Indonesia.

These engagements are supported by an Australian Defence Force Maritime Task Unit of Royal Australian Navy ships and embarked Army members as well as Royal Australian Air Force air mobility aircraft for fly-in-fly-out engagements, marking a total composition of 1800 personnel, five ships and 11 helicopters, added the release.

IPE began in 2017 as an annual activity coordinated by the Australian Defence Force to deliver on the promise of the 2016 Defence White Paper to strengthen Australia's engagement and partnerships with regional security forces.

Commodore Mal Wise AM, Commander IPE22 said, "I look forward to leading Indo-Pacific Endeavour 2022 to make new relationships and strengthen our ties in the region. We plan to learn from our partners all the way from India to Indonesia."

(ANI)