India Presents a Wonderful Opportunity for U.S. :Pentagon

The U.S.-India Joint Aircraft Carrier Working Group (JACWG) had its first formal meeting in August, led by Vice ADM Cheema, the Commander in Chief of India's Western Fleet, he said.

Shear was in India last week holding talks with Indian officials on developing strategies to implement the vision of the leaders of the two countries – U.S. President Barack Obama, and Prime Minister Narendra Modi - with regard to the Asia Pacific region.

"When President Obama was in India for meetings with Prime Minister Modi in January, they issued a joint strategic vision on the Indian Ocean and East Asia. And we're in the process of devising ways of implementing that joint strategic vision," he said.

In response to a question, Shear said the U.S. already has a robust bilateral cooperation with the India.

"We'll be looking at together ways to strengthening partnership. We conduct an annual exercise, the Malabar exercise in which we and Indians have just decided to include the Japanese. So that will be every year now. That will be a strong trilateral exercise in the region," he said.

"We are looking at other, particularly in maritime domain awareness to strengthen what we do with the Indians because we have very strong common interest," Shear said.