India and its partners in the Quad — Australia, Japan and the United States — are set to rope in other nations to further expand a network, which the four nations established last year to keep watch on China’s military activities in the Indo-Pacific region.
When the Quad leaders met on the sideline of the G7 summit in Hiroshima last week, they reviewed the progress of the Indo-Pacific Partnership for Maritime Domain Awareness (IPMDA). Since its launch during the Quad Summit in Tokyo in May 2022, the pilot programmes under the IPMDA were rolled out for countries in Southeast Asia and the Pacific. The coverage is now being expanded to the Indian Ocean region, where the PLA Navy’s increasing forays over the past few years triggered concerns for New Delhi.
The IPMDA was launched by the Quad with the professed objective of helping the Indo-Pacific nations combat illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing (IUU fishing), although the network developed by linking the satellites of India, Australia, Japan and the US could also double up to keep watch on the Chinese PLAN’s aggressive moves in the Indo-Pacific regions.
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“(The) Quad pledged to bring a new, cutting-edge maritime domain awareness capability to partners around the region, with the aim of bringing it to Southeast Asia, South Asia, and the Pacific Islands,” Mira Rapp-Hooper, the Director (Indo-Pacific) at the US National Security Council, told journalists during an online briefing. “This is the new technology which will allow many of our partners to see much better pictures of the waters near their shores, near-real-time pictures that will allow them to combat illegal fishing, to respond to climate change, and to provide more timely assistance in the case of humanitarian or natural disasters.”
Rapp-Hooper said that Australia was now taking the lead on bringing the capability to the Pacific Islands through the Forum Fisheries Association, with support from Japan, while India was taking the lead on doing the same for the Indian Ocean region.
The Information Fusion Centre (IFC) – Indian Ocean Region based in Gurugram in India is playing a key role in implementing the IPMDA, in coordination with other such agencies in Japan, Australia and the United Nations. The IFC-IOR is run by the Indian Navy.