Indian Navy Coordinates Largest Ever Coastal Defence Exercise Ten Years After '26/11'

Indian Navy Coordinates Largest Ever Coastal Defence Exercise Ten Years After '26/11'

Ten years after '26/11', the Indian Navy commenced the largest coastal defence exercise off the Indian coast on 22 January 2019. Exercise 'Sea Vigil', a first of its kind, is being undertaken along the entire 7516.6 kms coastline and Exclusive Economic Zone of India and involves all the 13 coastal states and Union Territories along with all maritime stakeholders, including the fishing and coastal communities.

Exercise 'Sea Vigil' aims to comprehensively and holistically validate the efficacy of measures taken since '26/11'. Seaward monitoring during the exercise will entail patrolling off coast, in Offshore Development Areas and off our islands by the Indian Navy, Indian Coast Guard, supported by the State Marine Police. Closer coast, strategic assets, ports, single point moorings will be patrolled by designated agencies.  Seaward monitoring will also entail inputs from technical means, including intelligence sources. Shore-based monitoring will entail enhanced vigil by the State Police along the coast; monitoring of fish landing centres by state fisheries departments; as also monitoring of port areas by respective port authorities.

The exercise aims to simultaneously activate the coastal security mechanism across all States and Union Territories. The exercise will cover a wide frontage covering for the first time the entire coast of India, including island territories. The exercise will also go deeper, being spread over seaward, coastal, and hinterland areas. Evaluation of critical areas and processes, including inter-agency coordination, information sharing and technical surveillance will be undertaken. Multi Agency Audit and identification of gaps, shortfalls and incorporation of lessons learnt into SOPs are also the desired outcomes.

While smaller exercises are conducted in coastal states on a biannual basis, including combined exercises amongst adjoining states, the conduct of a security exercise at a national-level is perhaps the first of its kind. It reflects the distance that has been covered since '26/11' and the relative maturing of the organisation for coastal security to take on this large-scale endeavour. Despite, the gains, the challenges are enormous. Exercise 'Sea Vigil' will provide a realistic assessment of our strengths and weakness and this will certainly help further strengthening of maritime security and in turn national security.

The scale of the exercise is unprecedented in terms of the geographical extent, the number of stakeholders involved, the number of units participating and in terms of the objectives to be met. The exercise is a build up towards the major theatre level tri-service exercise Theatre-level Readiness Operational Exercise (TROPEX) which Indian Navy conducts every two years. 'Sea Vigil' and TROPEX together will cover the entire spectrum of maritime security, including transition from peace to conflict. All Operational assets of the Indian Navy and Indian Coast Guard are participating in the 'Sea Vigil'. The conduct of the exercise 'Sea Vigil' is also being facilitated by the Ministries of Defence, Home Affairs, Shipping, Petroleum and Natural Gas, Fisheries, Customs, State Governments and other agencies of Centre and State.