Admitting that the straying of merchant vessel Pavit into the Mumbai coast last month was an “aberration,” Chief of the Naval Staff Admiral Nirmal Verma on Saturday said the Navy had drawn lessons from it to fill in the gaps so that such incidents did not recur.
Having taken flak for the incident that saw the 1000-tonne abandoned vessel running aground on the Juhu beach, the Navy, he said, was re-tracing the path studying the tide and weather charts and juxtaposing it with patrolling duties mounted during those days. This would establish if the ghost ship slipped past the surveillance, including those mounted by international navies on an anti-piracy mission.
Making ingress tough
“It was an aberration and lessons have been drawn, I do not see it happening again... there are gaps to be plugged and each step we take is to make ingress difficult,” Admiral Verma said at a press conference after commissioning the latest indigenously-built stealth frigate ‘INS Satpura,' at the Naval dockyard here. The ship is the second of the Rs. 8,000 crore Project-17 class with ‘INS Shivalik' commissioned earlier and ‘INS Sayhadri' expected to follow-suit.
In the absence of Defence Minister A.K. Antony, the Navy Chief was the Chief Guest. Admiral Verma announced that he stepped in since the Minister was ‘indisposed' and could not travel to from Delhi for the function amid reports that Mr. Antony had to stay back on account of the situation emerging in the wake of the indefinite fast by social activist Anna Hazare and his supporters.
Impounding m.v. Nafis
While asserting that the Navy was tasked with the overall responsibility of coastal security since early 2009, Admiral Verma said the efficacy of the system that was being refined on a regular basis could be seen in seizing m.v. Nafis earlier this month. The merchant vessel too was drifting on the high seas and the Navy launched a marine commando operation to apprehend the crew with arms and ammunition. He said right now the Navy was tracking a suspicious vessel some 250 miles off Mumbai and trying to ascertain its identity.
He said the technology required in the form of coastal radars were still in the process of being installed, with the first expected to be set up towards the end of the year. In addition, work remained to be done on installing automatic identification systems on boats, and the National Command, Control, Communication Intelligence network for better information sharing among different users too was not in place.
Relying on hotlines
In the absence of the network, the Navy and other agencies were depending on hotlines, while 18 lakh fishermen were being trained to become the ‘eyes and ears' in providing timely information and also in effective use of mobile networks, the signals of which are available as far as 15 miles from the shores. Stating that the level of coordination among 15-odd different maritime agencies was much better than before the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks, he said there were other suggestions, including appointment of a Maritime Security Adviser.
Asked whether additional responsibility of coastal security had had an impact on its overall preparation, Admiral Verma said the Navy was not compromising on the level of preparedness but prioritising its task to make the “best possible deployment” with available resources.
Call to shipyards
Earlier addressing the gathering at the official ceremony, Admiral Verma asked the Defence Public Sector shipyards to bring down the time taken to build warships so that the Navy was not compelled to look elsewhere. Officials of the Mazagoan Docks maintain that it takes between 7 and 9 years to build the first of its class warship.
Array of weaponry
INS Satpura is a multi-role stealth frigate with an array of weaponry, including long-range anti-ship missiles, and ability to destroy enemy surface vessels at extended ranges. It also has two integral multi-role helicopters and anti-submarine rockets and is capable of thwarting sub-surface threats.
It is equipped with sensors to detect and classify threats from air, surface and sub-surface.
