INS Mysore Samudra Laksamana deployment reached Lumut on Wednesday, with the Indian Navy destroyer arriving in Malaysia to open the fourth edition of the bilateral maritime exercise between the Indian Navy and the Royal Malaysian Navy.

Personnel of the Royal Malaysian Navy and officials from the High Commission of India in Malaysia received the ship and her crew at Lumut.

Inside the INS Mysore Samudra Laksamana programme

The exercise runs across a harbour phase and a sea phase. Cross deck visits, operational interactions and sporting engagements are on the programme at Lumut, giving personnel from both navies room to trade professional experience, sharpen interoperability and build a better working understanding of each other's navy.

The INS Mysore Samudra Laksamana line up runs to three ships. The Indian destroyer sails alongside two Royal Malaysian Navy vessels, KD Lekir and KD Gagah Samudera, for this edition.

A guided missile destroyer from the Western Fleet

INS Mysore is a Delhi class guided missile destroyer, one of the larger surface combatants attached to the Indian Navy's Western Fleet.

A bilateral exercise since 2019

The Samudra Laksamana series goes back to 2019, when Indian Naval Ships Sahyadri and Kiltan first took part at Kota Kinabalu. The most recent edition before this one was hosted off Visakhapatnam in early 2024, pairing INS Kiltan with RMN Ship KD Lekir. Lumut is a new venue for the series, and the fourth edition is the first time INS Mysore has sailed it.

Building on the 12th Sub Committee Meeting

The port call builds on a recent run of bilateral engagement, including the 12th India Malaysia Sub Committee Meeting held on 1 July 2026. The Ministry of External Affairs frames the visit as another step in advancing maritime cooperation and widening the scope of professional exchange between the two navies.

MAHASAGAR and the ASEAN India Maritime Cooperation Year

The Indian Navy has placed the port call within the government's MAHASAGAR vision and the ASEAN India Maritime Cooperation Year 2026, the same framework that carried Eastern Fleet warships to Vietnam earlier this year.

Southeast Asia has carried a steady run of Indian defence engagement through 2026, from the India Indonesia defence relationship to service level exchanges across the region. The Royal Malaysian Air Force worked the same interoperability track with the Indian Air Force only weeks earlier, at Exercise Udara Shakti 2026 in Subang.