NEW DELHI: Clearly the Indian Navy is on the overdrive. Sailing with strategic aims in mind, priority on mission-based deployment and humanitarian missions, the Indian Navy may have clocked the longest time on sea ever under a single mission.
And on Christmas day, when the Indian Navy’s Kesari—a landing ship tank (large)—entered the Port of Maputo, Mozambique became the 15th friendly nation to host an Indian Naval ship under SAGAR (Security And Growth for All in the Region) in the eighth such deployment.
In doing so, Indian Navy’s ships have spent 215 days at sea clocking a cumulative distance of about 40,000 nautical miles, which is nearly twice the circumference of earth under a single mission.
A Navy official told ETV Bharat on condition of anonymity: “It is very likely that this is the longest distance traversed distance-wise by Indian Navy’s ships under a single mission although we haven’t gone into such details with the other missions as it will be difficult to provide the accurate data. But yes, we have invested about a million man-hours in this effort.”
Under the shadow of the pandemic, the ships have ferried food, medicines, medical equipment and equipment to enhance capacity building in self-defence of the friendly nations.
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Interestingly, INS Kesari is carrying two Fast Interceptor Craft and self defence equipment to be handed over to the Mozambique military.
According to an official release, since May 2020, Indian Navy ships under the SAGAR mission have “delivered a cumulative assistance of more than 3,000 MT of food aid, over 300 MT LMO, 900 Oxygen Concentrators and 20 ISO containers.”
These missions under SAGAR have also been aligned with other bilateral and multilateral exercises of which there have been about 22 this year including ‘Varuna’ with French Navy in April, ‘INDRA’ with the Russian Navy in July, ‘Konkan’ with Royal Navy in August, ‘MALABAR’ with QUAD nations in August and October, ‘AUSINDEX’ with Australian Navy in September, ‘JIMEX’ with Japan in October and ‘SITMEX, with Singapore and Thailand Navies in November.
Besides, these there have been joint EEZ surveillance with Mauritius, coordinated patrols with Thailand and Indonesia, hydrographic surveys for friendly littoral countries on their request etc.
