Post 26/11, the Navy was made responsible for the security of the country’s vast coastline of 7,516 km in coordination with other agencies like the Coast Guard, Marine Police and Fisheries.
Following this, and to enhance the surveillance capability and response to security threats by the Indian Navy, it has inaugurated two state-of-the-art harbour defence systems at the Naval Dockyard in Vishakhapatnam.
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- The Integrated Underwater Harbour Defence and Surveillance System (IUHDSS) and Mine Warfare Data Centre (MWDC) were inaugurated on Tuesday, 10th May by Vice Admiral HCS Bisht, AVSM flag officer Commanding-In-Chief, Eastern Naval Command.
- This underwater vigil system is capable of detecting, identifying, tracking and generating warnings for all types of surface and underwater threats to Visakhapatnam harbour.
- The IUHDSS is a multi-sensor system capable of detecting, identifying, tracking and generating warnings for all types of surface and underwater threats to the harbour.
- The creation of the Sagar Prahari Bal, induction of Fast Interceptor Crafts and commissioning of the IUHDSS are some of the Navy’s measures to strengthen security.
- The MWDC will collate, analyse and classify data collected by the Navy’s Mine Hunting Ships from various ports along the East coast. This state-of-the-art facility will be the nodal centre for maintaining an underwater database of harbours along the coast.
- The Harbour Defence Systems will function under the control of the Naval Officer-in-Charge (Andhra Pradesh), Commodore Sanjiv Issar.
- This comes in line with the news of Navy making a Secret Naval Base (INS Varsha), near Vishakhapatnam.
