India's communist party protests about the International naval war games are being held in the wrong place

The Indian communist parties are going to protest against the international naval war games to be held in the Bay of Bengal. But the communists are great at doing these kinds of demonstrations and they are right now planning to do a walk about the Indian countryside to protest against these war games. I seriously think they should go to the place where the war games are actually happening and protest there.

But the main purpose of these wargames is to make sure that navies of various regions work together. Ships are massively complex animals and it is further complicated when you have a group of ships working together, and it becomes a furiously complicated beast when you have navies of different countries working together.

So here is a four dimensional theater (air, surface, underwater and land), in a shallow sea (navies hate shallow seas, it causes bad echo's, sand banks, confusion, etc.), full of moving bottoms (the bottom of the Bay of Bengal, Malacca Straits and other South East Asian areas is very geographically mobile - remember the tsunami?), and more importantly, because of the HUGE distances involved, require all navies to pull together when faced with terrorist and pirate threats.

Oh! yes, there is a huge amount of piracy going on in the world, and the epicentre's of this piracy business is off the east African coast and in the Iindonesian Iislands/Malacca Straits. So this is a great step as we do need an international maritime flotilla and group to stop the rampant piracy in the Indian Ocean region. See here, here, here and here.

All this to be taken with a grain of piquant salt!!!

India's communist party to protest naval war games

Sun Sep 2, 4:58 AM ET

India's communist party, embroiled in a row with the government over a US nuclear deal, has announced plans to protest next week's naval exercises with the United States and Asian nations.

Twenty five warships from Australia, India, Japan, Singapore and the United States will take part in the exercises over five days starting on Tuesday in the Bay of Bengal.

Two US nuclear-powered aircraft carriers will be among ships involved.

"These exercises are seen as a major step towards India joining a strategic security cooperation between India and the United States, Australia and Japan," the Communist Party of India (Marxist) said in a statement Saturday.

"There will be countrywide protests from September 4 to 8 against these exercises."

India's ruling Congress party receives crucial support from left allies but the relationship has been shaky in past weeks, with the communists protesting a recently concluded civilian nuclear agreement with the United States.

Protesters will march along the east coast to the port of Visakhapatnam, headquarters of India's eastern naval command, for a rally next Saturday.

The exercises will be held between Visakhapatnam and India's Andaman and Nicobar archipelago, a chain of more than 500 islands over 1,000 kilometres (620 miles) from the mainland.

The communists, who oppose strategic ties with Washington, say the nuclear deal threatens India's sovereignty, notably the continued development of its nuclear weapons programme.