Military & Aerospace

Indian Naval Ships Enter Sihanoukville, Cambodia & Sattahip, Thailand
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Issue Net Edition | Date : 23 Jun , 2015

INS Shakti entering Sattahip Harbour

In pursuit of India’s ‘Look East’ and ‘Act East’ policy, the Indian Navy’s Eastern Fleet ships under the command of Rear Admiral Ajendra Bahadur Singh, VSM, Flag Officer Commanding Eastern Fleet (FOCEF), are on a two month long operational deployment to South East Asia and Southern Indian Ocean.

As part of the deployment, two of the Indian warships, INS Ranvir (a Guided Missile Destroyer) and INS Kamorta (an indigenously built Anti Submarine Corvette) entered Sihanoukville, Cambodia and the other two warships including INS Satpura, an indigenously built guided missile stealth frigate and INS Shakti, a sophisticated fleet tanker and support ship, entered Sattahip, Thailand today on a four day visit respectively. The previous visit by an Indian Naval ship to Thailand was in Jun 10.

The visit is aimed at strengthening bilateral ties between the two countries as well as fostering inter-operability between the navies of these two friendly nations.

These ships are on the return leg after a 45 day deployment. During the stay in harbour, various activities such as official calls, professional interaction between personnel of both the navies, reception onboard and ship visits have been planned.

On departure from Sihanoukville, INS Ranvir & INS Kamorta will exercise with the Cambodian Navy for enhancing interoperability in Maritime Operations including Search and Rescue. These ships have visited Singapore, Jakarta (Indonesia), Freemantle (Australia) and Kuantan (Malaysia) during deployment. During this deployment two warships also participated in the bilateral exercise SIMBEX-15 with the Royal Singapore Navy from 20-26 May 15.

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One thought on “Indian Naval Ships Enter Sihanoukville, Cambodia & Sattahip, Thailand

  1. This is just “showing the flag” and nothing much can be read into it. India’s economic means and military wherewithal are known to everybody. How India gears up over borders in land and air and in the near oceans is really what will be taken seriously. I have long maintained the need of tiny “fortresses” distributed along India’s many archipleagos (Lakshadweep, Minicoy, and Andamans) among which missiles, motor torpedo boats, attack subs, attack aircraft can be distributed and moved around to “swarm” against an extant threat giving India complete defensive control over the Indian Ocean augmented by Nuclear armed nuclear submarines for deterrence as the priority for the Indian Navy. This should have been done forty years ago and is a far greater priority that “showing the flag” or acquiring expensive, obsolete and entirely irrelevant aircraft carriers that are of little use beyond “Fleet Reviews” and playing the role of an Indian Traffic Policeman or a Scare Crow in today’s geo-strategic salience on India. But, yes, this does send a message that India has a navy and that it has friends in South East Asia. But this significance will be lost on a China that is cumulatively more powerful than all other forces in the area put together, including the US (as most of the US has other preoccupations such as the Third World War (Islam) and the Second Cold War (Europe) and maintaining the appearance of a Global Policeman that it used to be until it dismantled International Law and the UN by bombing Belgrade and invading Iraq with disastrous consequences to its own economy and military capacity). Compare the lessons of Nelson against the Spanish Armada at Trafalgar versus the sinking of the Bismark.

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