Early on November 11, the Indian navy’s recently acquired stealth frigate, INS Tabar, launched marine commandos on a helicopter to intercept a pirate attack. Within minutes, the chopper had staved off the attack, only to receive a new distress call from another sector. It swung its way to the new threat, the commandos springing into action immediately. Seven days later, the Tabar was still seeing action, rescuing one ship and sinking a pirate "mother ship".
For the Indian navy, the action in the Gulf of Aden comes a couple of decades after one of its ships had sunk an ltte vessel during the ipkf engagement in Sri Lanka. The intervening years have been stormy for the navy—a service chief was sacked in 1998, fresh assets were not being acquired. In 2001, finally, the navy took a tentative step to acquiring ‘blue water capability’—to carry out operations far from the Indian coast. The move received a fillip with the concerted attempts to establish linkages and joint exercises with foreign naval forces (like the Malabar series with the Americans, indra with the Russians, varuna with the French and Tamar-al-Tahir with Oman).
In February this year, navy chief Admiral Sureesh Mehta initiated a plan to forge alliances with all major navies operating in the Indian Ocean. The ions (Indian Ocean Naval Symposium) initiative helped build partnerships with over 30 countries in the region, mostly the Gulf nations. Naturally, the navy had to wait for government permission to engage in the anti-piracy operations. "We had a plan in place to rescue the hijacked Stolt Valor...if we were given the go-ahead," a top naval source told Outlook.
By the time the navy was given clearance to engage, the Tabar had already set sail to patrol a 500 nautical mile area in the Gulf. Admiral Mehta had earlier made the navy’s intentions clear. "Piracy is a crime which all men of war are required to combat at all times. Indian naval ships operating in piracy-infested areas have the capability to intervene by air or with ship-borne weapons. The mandate is to ensure the safety of our sovereign assets."
