MUMBAI: Indirectly pointing fingers at China, the Indian Navy has termed the growing non-traditional security threats such as maritime terrorism, piracy, robbery, Illegal unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing and drug/human/arm trafficking as ‘gray war zone’ concerns in the South China Seaand that they were closely monitoring and analyzing the activities real-time before taking quick actions.
When pointed out poor state of boats and shortage of staff for coastal policing around Mumbai, chief of western naval command vice admiral D K Tripathi said they had categorically communicated to the state administration not to compromise on coastal security and that they would provide training assistance and other expertise.
Vice admiral Tripathi was addressing a press conference ahead of Indian Navy Day celebrations. For the first time, Indian Navy’s western naval command will host the celebrations on December 4 in Malwan, Sindhudurg, a distant district down Konkan instead of the Mumbai headquarters in the presence of the prime minister. The celebrations have been arranged as a mark of respect to Navy’s founder Chhatrapati Shivaji coinciding with his 350th coronation anniversary this year. With the commissioning of 21 ships and five submarines in the last nine years, all constructed in Indian shipyards, the Indian Navy is determined to be self-reliant. Navy has concluded 12 shipbuilding contracts worth over Rs 1.15 lakh cr and as on today 65 out of 67 ships and submarines are in various stages of construction in the Indian shipyards.
“The IUU fishing and human/arms and drugs trafficking are necessitating development of fresh paradigms of maritime security. Piracy and armed robbery at sea have flared up in new regions over the past decade and remain a significant threat to international shipping and seafarers constant unregulated activities pose a considerable challenge. In May this year one of our ships intercepted and seized a narcotics shipment of 2525 kg with an estimated value of Rs 25000 crore from a boat in the West Arabian Sea making it the largest narcotics seizure ever by any Indian agency,” said Tripathi.
Commenting on gray areas of concern, vice admiral Tripathi said, “Indian as well as other navies are fully aware of seriousness of the threats in not just the Indian ocean but also in south China sea. We are continuously monitoring who is doing what and where. All activities are being analyzed and relevant extracts after analysis are being provided to the authorities at headquarters followed by actions by deploying units.” Similarly, he termed cyber domain, the fifth dimension of warfare, as a serious threat. “There are structures working in open domain. We have done a full assessment and audit of the vulnerability of cyber control on our weapon sensors, communication set ups, and other equipments and know what is at stake. It’s like ‘chor (thief)-police game’ where police have to assess what thief can do to crack cyber security. Cyber agencies of navy are working to safeguard our network which is robust,” he said pointing out that navy had instructed even officials to stay away from enticing mobile apps which can monitor and analyze them, and the same information can be used against us.
Vice Admiral Dinesh K Tripathi said very soon a woman commanding officer will be commissioned (on fast attack craft INS Trinkat) in the western naval command and 20 years down the line we may have a woman chief of western naval command addressing the naval day press conference. He praised the newly inducted women agniveers for their passion.
Meanwhile, to a query he said the navy was looking at inducting a more improvised version of minesweepers since there was a deficiency of them. These minesweeper ships are mainly aimed at clearing the areas of mines laid during the wartime in the sea lanes and thus protect the warships and merchant navy ships from the damages. “We will start the acquisition process for them with little amendment in their specifications,” he added.
Source : TheTimesOfIndia
