Activity in Arabian Sea put Pak on the back foot: Navy
NEW DELHI: Rising military tensions between Indian and Pakistan after the February 14 Pulwama suicide car bombing led the Indian Navy to cut short a major exercise in the Indian Ocean region and swiftly redeploy its frontline assets to the north Arabian Sea for operations, the navy said in a rare announcement.
It said on Sunday that the buildup consisting of an aircraft carrier, nuclear-powered attack submarines and scores of frontline warships and maritime aircraft put the Pakistan Navy on the back foot.
Experts and senior navy officials said the naval mobilisation was the biggest since Operation Parakram following the December 2001 terror attack on Parliament that brought India and Pakistan to the brink of war.
In a strongly worded statement, the navy said its “overwhelming superiority” forced the Pakistan Navy to remain deployed near the Makran coast and not venture out in the open ocean. “It is interesting to see the scale reflected in the navy’s statement. But one imagines that what may not and cannot be said is what worries our enemies more. That serves to deter which is not bad at all,” said military affairs expert Rear Admiral Sudarshan Shrikhande (retd).
India had enough warships at sea for the redeployment on very short notice. As many as 72 Indian warships and 60 aircraft were involved in the Theatre Level Operational Readiness Exercise (Tropex 19) that began on January 7 and was to go on till March 10, had the Pulwama terror strike not led to a change of plan. India responded to the Pulwama attack by sending its fighter jets to bomb a terror base in Balakot on February 26.
Army elements were also a part of Tropex 19, a biennial exercise, for carrying out amphibious assaults. Apart from a carrier battle group consisting of INS Vikramaditya and its escort ships, the assets redeployed to the north Arabian Sea included the nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarine INS Arihant, Akula-II nuclear-powered attack boat INS Chakra and the Scorpene-class submarine INS Kalvari.