Thaindian News

New Delhi, May 24 (IANS) Top naval commanders Tuesday began a four-day conference here to review the security situation in the region in the backdrop of terror strikes in the South Asian neighbourhood, apart from threats posed by Somali pirates closer to Indian shores.

In the four-day biannual meet to be addressed by Defence Minister A.K. Antony Wednesday, the commanders of important operational formations, led by Navy chief Admiral Nirmal Verma, will also assess the preparedness of naval combatants, in particular the organisational ability to deploy warships, submarines and aviation assets at short notice, both for conventional and peacetime missions.

“The naval commanders conference for 2011 started at New Delhi today (Tuesday). Over the next four days, the commanders of the Indian Navy will discuss issues of operational relevance and future plans,” a navy spokesperson said here in a press release.

“This biannual forum also provides an opportunity for the Chief of the Naval Staff to examine the operational readiness of the Indian Navy; assess the progress made in key projects; and initiate functional, organisational and administrative steps necessary to further enhance the Indian Navy’s readiness for current and emerging challenges,” he said.

Addressing the naval commanders on the subject of operational readiness, Admiral Verma pointed out that “with the security situation being fluid, we need to maintain the organisational ability to deploy ships, submarines and aircraft at immediate notice”.

Drawing the commanders’ attention to “large number of peacetime commitments at hand”, he also noted that “maintenance of war-fighting abilities remained the top-most priority”.

Following the November 2008 Mumbai terror strikes, the navy has been given overall responsibility of securing the 7,500-km-long Indian coastline and vital installations from non-conventional threats such as terrorist attacks.

The navy has effectively put in place a mechanism for coordination among all Indian maritime agencies such as the Coast Guard, customs, marine police, shipping, ports and fisheries. It has also set up joint operations centres on both the eastern and western fronts for coordinated intelligence gathering, sharing and analysis, apart from carrying out combined operations on those inputs.

It has also raised a 1,000-man strong Sagar Prahari Bal, a specialist force for providing security to vital military and strategic installations along the coast.

Regarding the threat from pirates in the Arabian Sea, Verma said the ongoing thrust on anti-piracy operations should be sustained. Apart from destroying about half a dozen motherships of the pirates, the navy has in recent months nabbed about 120 sea brigands and sent them to jail in Mumbai.

Verma highlighted the criticality of “maritime domain awareness” to all aspects of naval operations and recalled the “the vision and contribution” of the Indian Navy in the National Command, Control, Communication and Intelligence Network (NC3I).

The conference will review all aspects of operational, material and logistics preparedness of the navy, apart from discussing the force-level accretion in accordance with the navy’s long term perspective plans and how best to leverage the new defence procurement procedure to build ships within India over the next 15 years at a faster pace with international benchmarks of costs and quality.

The meeting would also discuss the plans for induction of its main combatants such as the Gorshkov aircraft carrier by December 2012, integration of MiG-29K fighter jets on board the carrier, P8I maritime reconnaissance aircraft, indigenous aircraft carriers, and Scorpene submarines and its follow-on orders.