Bengaluru, Jan 10 (IANS) India is fully prepared to protect its long coastal region and secure its maritime interests with round-the-clock surveillance, Chief of Naval Staff Admiral R.K. Dhowan said Saturday.
"As we operate in a challenging environment, we ensure to maintain all aspects of coastal surveillance because we have a huge coastline of 7,516 km, an exclusive economic zone of two-million square km, thousands of merchant ships and about 240,000 fishing boats at any given time in our region," Dhowan told reporters at an event here.
Admitting that dealing with non-state actors was always a difficult situation, the navy chief said patrolling was already stepped up in the coastal region much before the Dec 31 incident in which a Pakistani boat laden with explosives blew up when the Indian Coast Guard intercepted it and chased it.
"We have been on a heightened state of alert over the last two months with our units, including warships, aircraft carrier and UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles) deployed in our waters," Dhowan said in his inaugural remarks at the second Admiral R.L. Pereira Memorial Lecture.
The lecture on "Accelerating Technology Change and National Security" was delivered by Arogyaswami Paulraj, emeritus professor at Stanford University in the US.
After the Nov 26, 2008 terror attack in Mumbai, the navy set up a national command, control and communications and intelligence centre (NC3I) at Gurgaon in Haryana at a cost of Rs.450 crore to beef up surveillance and patrolling.
As an Information Management Analysis Centre (IMAC), the command post with next-generation intelligence system tracks movement of all ships and fishing boats sailing in the waters along the country's long coastline.
"The NC3I, which is integrated with 51 coastal radar stations, including 20 of the navy and 31 of the coast guard, leverages technology to keep our long coastal region under surveillance all the time," Dhowan said.
Organised by the Bengaluru chapter of the Navy Foundation in association with the state-run defence behemoth Bharat Electronics Ltd., the memorial lecture is held annually in honour of Admiral Pereira, who was the ninth naval chief from 1979 to 1982.
To stop the march of farmers to Delhi, the issue of guaranteeing minimum support price (MSP) of c
The meritorious people of Devbhoomi Himachal have also shone in the JEE Main result. Meritorious
The country is celebrating independence on Monday. Meanwhile, India has handed over a Dornier air
Threads: Instagram launches Threads app, can be used in more than 100 countries
Meta's popular photo and video sharing platform Instagram has launched its new text-based convers
73-year-old died in Udaipur, the report of being corona negative came a day earlier
A 73-year-old elderly man admitted to Rajasthan's Udaipur MB Hospital succumbed to post-Covid ear
India's excellent performance continues in the ongoing Asian Games 2023 in Hangzhou, China. India
The price of petrol, diesel, and kerosene in Pakistan has been increased by Rs 30 per liter (in P
The speculation of a change of leadership in Uttarakhand has intensified after two days today fro
Voting for the post of Vice President is to be held today. Jagdeep Dhankhar from NDA and Margaret
ISRO to build third launch pad at Sriharikota
New Delhi, March 12 (IANS) Indian space agency has proposed to set up its third rocket launch p