Without advanced towed array sonar systems, all warships the navy has built and bought since the 1990s would be sitting ducks in war.
Four Indian Navy's frontline warships have docked in Malaysia at the last leg of their goodwill tour of seven nations.
The Chinese and American naval warships had a major face-off in the South China sea, with Beijing telling Washington to stop what it called "illegal activities" in the area.
This is the first time an Indian shipyard has been commissioned to design and build a warship to specifications formulated by a buyer country. This marks an important first landmark in the Bharatiya Janata Party-led government's drive to increase defence exports.
As per reports, the vessel was mistakenly hit by a missile during the drills, since it was located too close to the intended target.
The total allocation to the defence sector is 12.9 per cent of the total budget of the government of India for the financial year 2024-25.
Indian warship INS Sharda came to the rescue of the vessel FV Omaril with 11 Iranian and eight Pakistani crew members after it came under attack from pirates, they said.
As tension escalates in West Asia, the United States has dispatched three warships to the region to be on standby in the event of a need, even as President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton spoke to world leaders in efforts to defuse the crisis.
Fire-fighters, along with Navy personnel, are battling a major blaze to salvage warship INS Vindhyagiri, which is listing after colliding with a merchant vessel at the Mumbai harbour. "The fire broke out soon after the ship collided with another vessel on Sunday evening. The Mumbai fire brigade was alerted early on Monday," fire brigade sources said. There is nobody on board the warship as everybody was evacuated on Sunday evening.
Ready to protect the waters, India's first indigenously-built anti-submarine warfare corvette INS Kamorta will be handed over to the Indian Navy on Saturday, defence officials said.
The new frigates will be fitted with BrahMos supersonic cruise missiles.
However, the government official maintained that the export of the ship would violate the Basel Convention only if it carried toxic cargo, which it does not.
Joining global efforts to locate the Malaysian plane, India has deployed four warships along with six aircraft, including the latest special surveillance P-8I plane and three helicopters, under the 'Operation Searchlight'.
The sprawling warship building facility caters to the combat vessel requirements of not only the Navy, but also the Coast Guard.
Twenty five Indian crew members and their vessel were rescued from pirates in the Gulf of Aden by a European warship operating there last week. The EUNAVFOR warship FGS Berlin had launched a rescue mission after receiving a distress call from an Indian flagged merchant vessel on February 28 by sending a chopper there.
Bharat Electronics (BEL) reported excellent results for the January-March quarter (Q4) of FY24, which were driven by decent EBITDA margins and higher PAT as well as good revenue growth. Order inflows were also good. BEL is a major beneficiary of the policy of defence indigenisation.
Modi lauded the Navy following the announcement that a woman officer would be commanding a Naval ship for the time time.
Naval warship INS Kochi, the stealth guided missile destroyers, has been commissioned by Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar at the Naval Dockyard in Mumbai.
Notwithstanding the strain in ties, the navies of India and China carried out a well coordinated operation to rescue a merchant ship in the Gulf of Aden which was hijacked by Somali pirates on Saturday night.
"The government on Thursday approved deployment of Indian naval warships in Gulf of Aden to patrol the normal route followed by Indian flagships during passage between Salalah in Oman and Aden in Yemen," a defence ministry spokesperson announced in Delhi.
Indian Navy's mission deployed platforms responded swiftly to a maritime incident in the Arabian Sea involving the hijacking on board a Liberia-flagged bulk carrier, a Navy spokesperson said.
In a significant move, the Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS) has accorded approval for the procurement of more than 200 BrahMos supersonic cruise missiles and associated equipment for the Indian Navy at a cost of around Rs 19,000 crore, people familiar with the matter said on Thursday.
The Navy on Thursday pulled out its warship from escorting MV Suez, released by pirates, towards Salalah port in Oman after the Egyptian vessel, under the command of a Pakistani national, did not respond to its calls.
According to officials, the Indian Navy has opened an investigation into whether the drone used to attack the vessel was launched from long range or from a nearby vessel.
The Indian Navy has sent a naval warship to the Somali coast in order to secure the release of seven of its citizens held captive by pirates despite taking ransom.A Talwar Class stealth warship has been deployed near the Somali coast, which will remain close to the hijacked ship and ensure that MV Asphalt Venture doesn't get hijacked again and other groups don't harm its crew.The decision was taken in a high level meeting.
Bangladesh on Friday moved two warships to confront an alleged 'intrusion' by three Indian vessels, for hydrocarbon exploration in its territorial waters, in the resource-rich Bay of Bengal.The move came after the Bangladesh Navy protested the incident and the government ordered a probe, following which 'appropriate' action will be taken.A news agency, quoting Foreign Ministry officials, said that 1 survey vessel backed by two Navy ships intruded for hydrocarbon exploration
INS Vindhyagiri (F-42), the sixth and the last of the Nilgiri class of frigates which was damaged in an accident last year, has been decommissioned.
A "minor" fire broke out in one of the living compartments of warship 'INS Savitri' in the Naval dockyard in Visakhapatnam but there were no casualties.
The Indian Navy rescued an Iranian-flagged fishing vessel with 19 Pakistani crew members and a Sri Lankan trawler in two swift operations after armed pirates hijacked the boats in the Arabian Sea amid deteriorating security situation arising out of Iran-backed Houthi rebels targeting various cargo ships in the region.
The Indian Navy's P8I maritime patrol aircraft on Thursday located a Chinese fishing vessel that capsized three days ago in the Indian Ocean, officials said.
Russia will build three stealth warships for India under a Rs 5,514-contract signed in New Delhi on Tuesday.
A merchant vessel, with around 20 Indian crew, was hit by a suspected drone about 217 nautical miles off the Porbandar coast in the Arabian Sea on Saturday but there was no report of any casualties in the incident, Indian military sources and a maritime security agency said.
India on Monday successfully test-fired the 290 km-range BrahMos supersonic anti-ship cruise missile from the country's largest indigenous warship INS Kolkata off the coast of Karwar in Karnataka.
An Indian Navy warship successfully intercepted a fleeing Bahamas-flag merchant vessel off the Diu coast after being pursued for a couple of hours on Tuesday.
The defence ministry is planning to have a tie-up between the Kerala-based National Institute of Research and Development in Defence Shipbuilding and Russian Krylov Institute for working in this direction, officials said in New Delhi.
"The Navy has already re-deployed a warship to the Gulf of Aden. The ship, which was in the region, was asked to rush to the Gulf of Aden following the government orders," a naval officer said in New Delhi.
Seven Chinese warships, including two destroyers, were sighted on Tuesday in waters off a Japanese island, according to the defence ministry, as tension mounted between the two Asian giants over territorial disputes. The naval ships passed the contiguous zone, a band of water just outside Japan's territorial waters, which are governed by international maritime law.
China on Wednesday said the US' naval and air incursions in the artificial islands in the South China Sea will be counter-productive leading to "miscalculation" and "crisis", as Beijing summoned the American ambassador to protest the US Navy's sailing of a warship into the disputed waters.
With the search for missing Malaysian plane turning to India's neighbourhood, China has sought permission for sending its four warships into the Indian waters, causing a major dilemma for the authorities.
Neither the BJP, nor the Congress before it, made any manifesto commitments on defence spending, even though allocations have plummeted from 4 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP) in the late 1980s to less than 2 per cent today, points out Ajai Shukla.
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