INS Sahyadri Leaves Yokosuka After Exercise Malabar 2026

The Indian Navy's indigenously built guided missile stealth frigate INS Sahyadri sailed out of the Yokosuka Naval Base in Japan on 12 November 2026. Her departure closed the port call that followed Exercise Malabar 2026, and the Ministry of Defence announced it on 13 November 2026. The deployment carried an Indian warship deep into the western Pacific and placed her alongside three partner navies for several weeks of training.

The navies that trained together

Four navies worked side by side in Malabar 2026: India, Japan, the United States and Australia. Malabar is today the best known drill that brings these four maritime forces to sea at the same time, and each edition is watched closely as a measure of how smoothly they can operate as one force.

Two phases of training

The exercise was run in two parts. The harbour phase, held alongside in port, was given over to operational synchronisation, visits by sailors to one another's ships, sporting fixtures and cultural evenings. That mix is designed to build familiarity between crews before they meet at sea. The sea phase then took the warships out for coordinated maritime operations.

What the ships practised at sea

• Anti-submarine warfare serials
• Visit, Board, Search and Seizure, known by its short form VBSS
• Maritime interdiction operations
• Gunnery exercises
• Replenishment approaches, in which ships take on stores and fuel while under way
• Cross-deck landings, where a helicopter from one navy lands on another navy's warship

Drills of this kind are not display pieces. Each one tests whether signals, procedures and equipment of different navies fit together, so that the four fleets could act as a single formation during a real emergency at sea.

Why the deployment matters

The Ministry of Defence said the close of the exercise restated a shared promise of maritime cooperation and collective security in the Indo-Pacific. It placed the deployment within India's MAHASAGAR vision, which stands for Mutual and Holistic Advancement for Security and Growth Across Regions. For aspirants, the useful points are the ship, the host port, the four flags and the two phases.