In pursuit of India’s ‘Look East’ and ‘Act East’ policy, the Indian Navy’s Eastern Fleet under the command of Rear Admiral Ajendra Bahadur Singh, VSM, Flag Officer Commanding Eastern Fleet, is on an operational deployment to South East Asia and Southern Indian Ocean. Warships of the Eastern Fleet participated in the bilateral naval exercise SIMBEX with the Republic of Singapore Navy (RSN) from 20 – 26 May 15. As part of the deployment, two Indian warships, INS Ranvir (a Guided Missile Destroyer) commanded by Captain Jaswinder Singh and INS Shakti (a sophisticated Fleet Tanker and Support Ship) commanded by Captain Vikram Menon, have arrived at Jakarta a four day visit.
The visit is aimed at further strengthening its already robust bilateral ties between the two countries and fostering inter-operability between the navies of these two friendly nations. Both navies conduct regular coordinated patrols on their IMBL and an annual bilateral exercise is scheduled to commence between both navies this year. During the stay in harbour, various activities such as official calls, professional interaction between personnel of both the navies, reception onboard and ship visits have been planned. On departure, the ships will exercise with Indonesian Navy for improving interoperability in Maritime Operations and Search and Rescue. These ships along with INS Satpura (an indigenously built Guided Missile Stealth Frigate) and INS Kamorta (an indigenously built Anti Submarine Corvette) are on a two-month long deployment. During this deployment, the ships have visited Singapore and would also visit Freemantle (Australia), Kuantan (Malaysia), Sattahip (Thailand) and Sihanoukville (Cambodia).