Commanding Officer
Commodore AP Kumar
Cmde AP Kumar was commissioned into the Electrical Branch of the Indian Navy on 01 Jan 1997. He has held a variety of appointments in his service, including afloat tenures, dockyard appointments, staff billets at the Naval Headquarters, Research & Development and instructional duties. Prior to assuming command of INS Valsura, he was tenanting the appointment of the AGM(Planning & Progress) at the Naval Dockyard, Visakhapatnam.
Having joined the Navy as part of 9th Naval Engineering Course, he is an alumnus of the Naval College of Engineering, INS Shivaji, from where he earned his Bachelor’s Degree. He completed his Electrical Specialisation with the O-130 Course at INS Valsura. The officer underwent afloat training on IN Ships Ranvir, Shakti, Dunagiri and Delhi during his ab-initio courses. As part of mid career courses, the officer was awarded a Master’s Degree in Communications from the Indian Institute of Technology (Delhi). An alumnus of the 66th Course of the Defence Services Staff College, Wellington, the officer earned a Master’s Degree in Military Studies. He is also an alumnus of the Naval War College, Goa where he underwent the 28th Naval Higher Command Course.
The officer’s sea appointments include the Assistant Electrical Officer(ND&C) on INS Delhi and the Assistant Electrical Officer(General Gunnery) on INS Mumbai, and the commissioning Electrical Officer of the first of the P-15A class destroyers, INS Kolkata. His other appointments in the field include tenures in the Naval Dockyards, both Mumbai and Visakhpatnam. He has served as the DGM(Weapons Production) at ND(Mbi), as well as the AGM(Weapons) at ND(Vzg), subsequently moving to AGM(PP) at the same Dockyard.
Post his first sea appointment, the officer carried out instructional duties at the Electrical Equipment School at INS Valsura, imparting training on P-15 class equipment, besides also taking theory classes at the Electrical Technology School. The officer was engaged in R&D while at the Weapons & Electronic Systems Engineering Establishment (WESEE), where he was involved in the design and development of indigenous Combat Management Systems for submarines, using Real Time Operating Systems and Data Distribution Service (DDS) Middleware.
The officer’s staff appointments at the Naval Headquarters (NHQ) include the Joint Director(Networking Systems) at the Directorate of Electrical Engineering (DEE), where he drove policy initiatives relating to development, induction and lifecycle management of Combat Management Systems (CMS), Datalinks and Ship Data Networks (SDN) besides System Integration. Later in his career he was selected to tenant the prestigious appointment of the Technical Assistant to the Chief of Materiel, where he aided the COM in all staff matters relating to the Materiel Branch of NHQ. He was subsequently reappointed as a Director at DEE, where he further progressed the induction of new generation of DDS based CMS, Gigabit Ethernet based SDN, besides interoperability between latest generation indigenous and foreign datalinks.
The officer is married to Mrs Archana Kumar, a qualified HR professional who has worked as a corporate consultant. The couple have a school going son named Vedanth. The officer is keenly interested in music, travel and adventure, besides sports such as Football, Hockey, Tennis, Squash and Cycling.
Previous Commanding Officers of INS Valsura
