South East Asia is fast becoming a potential threat to the world commerce due to rising incidents of sea piracy. In past few years the region has witnessed an increase in the pirate attacks near Strait of Malacca and South China Sea. This is becoming a significant problem and it seems to be escalating as the value of the oil stolen in 2015 alone in the area stands at $5 million. There have been 124… Read More »Increasing Piracy Activities

Anti-submarine warfare is a multi-dimensional asset deployment in the water, on the surface and in the air to look for, track, identify and finally destroy an enemy submarine. With so much ocean space to patrol (Arabian Sea 3,86,200 sq km; Bay of Bengal 2,17,200 sq km, Indian Ocean 70,560,000 sq km), visiting just the littoral waters and the chokepoints in the west and south-east Asia requires massive human effort and a plethora of technical tools.… Read More »Anti-Submarine Operations

The effectiveness of the coastal radar network and security of peninsular India was demonstrated at its worst during the recent crash of the Coast Guard Dornier aircraft. It took 33 days and nearly a dozen institutions that have anything to do with the sea to cooperate and find the wreckage of the Dornier, some human remains and a watch that could finally confirm the death of its owner. Neither the radar at Thiruchirapally (Trichy) about… Read More »State of coastal security

Indian Navy has been bestowed with the huge responsibility of keeping a round the clock watch on the Indian Ocean spanning from the African Coast to Australia and up to the Malacca Strait with limited resources. Though the Indian Navy started inducting the Offshore Patrol Vessels from the late eighties, the Navy has not been able to acquire a sufficient force of Offshore Patrol Vessels considering the vastly increased requirement of safeguarding the maritime assets,… Read More »Role of OPVs

The Manmohan Singh government has presented it as a fait accompli for the next Indian government to go ahead with the decision of inviting Japan in the revived multilateral Malabar naval exercise, a decision of far reaching strategic significance. If the coming Indian leadership shows guts, the trilateral Malabar may prove to be a game changer in India’s maritime military engagement. On the sea bed of the trilateral maritime exercise the three nations can build… Read More »Malabar Exercise

Bidur Thapa remembers the day six years ago when he came to Nepal as a refugee from Bhutan. He struggled to understand the culture and language of his new land as most Bhutanese are unfamiliar with Nepalese way of life. Six years into the resettlement of tens of thousands of Bhutanese refugees to third countries from camps in Nepal, experts say there are lessons from the operation that can inform similar efforts around the world.… Read More »Bhutanese Refugees

Anti-submarine warfare is a multi-layered activity. There is the submarine-submarine killer (SSK) level where one predator is in constant search for similar predators below the surface of the oceans. The other is surface vessels fitted with sonar as integral equipment supplemented by helicopters armed with dipping or “dunking” listening devices and ready-to-use torpedoes, and the third is the long-range fixed-wing aircraft fitted with a “sting in the tail” magnetic anomaly detector that indicates the presence… Read More »ASW capabilities

Pirates are increasingly getting assertive in Gulf of Guinea Since the global attention is turning towards Africa and its resource rich regions, the number of pirate attacks in the Indian Ocean region and Gulf of Guinea could double next year if governments do not act to protect off-shore assets. There have been over 360 attacks on merchant shipping this year, and without action by West African governments this could rise to over 700 incidents in… Read More »Floating Enemies