The way forward for the Indian Ocean Naval Symposium, a multinational naval forum in the Indian Ocean Region which is in its 10th year, is to translate the deliberations so far into ‘interactions at sea’, points out Vice Admiral G. Ashok Kumar, deputy chief of the Indian Navy.
As part of the efforts to ‘practicalise’ the interactions, an information fusion centre (IFC) for the Indian Ocean Region would be launched by India’s Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on December 21.
India is currently chairing the Indian Ocean Naval Symposium (IONS) working group on information sharing and interoperability.
“The centre would be located initially at the Information Management Analysis Centre (IMAC) of the Indian Navy in Gurugram, where international liaison officers (ILOs) of interested IONS members would be present virtually. Once the IFC gets its own building, there will be physical presence of ILOs there,” he said in an interaction with The Hindu on the eve of the 10th anniversary commemorative meeting of the forum here on Monday.
The Vice Admiral said efforts had already begun to bring operational relevance to the interactions at IONS, with a multilateral search and rescue exercise at sea coordinated by Bangladesh, chairing the working group on SAR, last year.
India, in the chair of the working group on humanitarian assistance and disaster relief (HADR), hosted a table top exercise at Visakhapatnam. This was preceded by the preparation of a guidebook on HADR and a listing of the assets possessed by the members for mobilisation during disasters.
24 members
There was a need being felt by countries in the IOR and beyond to be part of the dynamic forum, he said. “The IONS now has 24 member countries and eight observers. Qatar and Nigeria have now expressed their desire to be part of it. Malaysia, which was an observer, became a full member early this year.” He said continuous mission-based deployment of platforms at all chokepoints on the Indian Ocean had not only helped the Navy keep a watch over the seas, but also made it the first responder to mishaps and calamities in the region.
“This, along with joint patrols with several nations, EEZ patrols carried out on a regular basis for countries such as the Maldives with their personnel on board Indian ships, bilateral and multilateral exercises, has won the Indian Navy a huge amount of goodwill and trust in the region and beyond,” he said.
