The Navy’s major theatre-level operational readiness exercise ‘Tropex’ for the year 2023 which was being conducted across the Indian Ocean Region for the past four months, concluded earlier this week in the Arabian Sea, the Navy said Thursday.
Tropex-2023 witnessed the participation of approximately 70 Navy ships, six submarines and over 75 airborne assets. These exercises also witnessed significant participation from the Army, the Air Force and the Coast Guard — to strengthen interoperability and jointness.
As part of the final joint operations, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh spent a day at sea onboard the recently commissioned indigenous aircraft carrier Vikrant on March 6. He reviewed the Navy’s operational preparedness and material readiness.
Deck operations of indigenous Light Combat Aircraft and live weapon firing were conducted as part of the demonstration of operational manoeuvres.
The overall exercise included a pan-India coastal defence exercise sea vigil, which was conceptualised to validate various post-26/11 maritime security measures and the amphibious exercise ‘Amphex’.
While addressing the fleets, the defence minister emphasised that the country looks up to the Navy to ensure that the economic lifelines and military capabilities of our adversaries are disrupted to the extent where their warfighting endeavours can no longer be sustained.
The Ministry of Defence, in a statement, quoted the minister as saying that the Navy is wholly capable of safeguarding India’s national interests in the maritime domain and will thwart the diabolical designs of any potential adversaries who seek to threaten India’s peaceful existence.
Set in the Indian Ocean, including the Arabian Sea and the Bay of Bengal, the theatre of operations for the exercise extended approximately 4,300 nautical miles north to south up to 35 degrees south latitude and 5,000 nautical miles from Persian Gulf in the West to North Australia coast in the East, spanning an area of over 21 million square nautical miles.
Officials said that the coastal security being a major sub-set of coastal defence construct, the sea vigil component of the Tropex saw the activation of the entire coastal security apparatus across India. The sea vigil was undertaken along the entire 7,516-km coastline and Exclusive Economic Zone of India and involved all the coastal states and Union Territories along with other maritime stakeholders, including the fishing and coastal communities.
