New Delhi. 21 Apr 2019. The first edition of Naval Commanders’ Conference of 2019 took off today. The conference is the apex forum within the Service for interaction between the Naval Commanders. The Chief of the Naval Staff, with the Commanders-in-Chief, will review major operational, materiel, logistics, HR, training and administrative activities undertaken during the previous six months and deliberate upon the course to be steered in the ensuing six months.
The Conference assumes greater significance in the backdrop of Pulwama associated events that have brought country’s defence under sharper focus and will provide the higher naval leadership a forum to discuss the emerging challenges in the maritime domain and fine tune the strategies for responding to the evolving geo-strategic environment.
Minister of Defence Nirmala Sitharaman addressed the Naval Commanders. The conference also serves as a platform for institutionalised interaction of Naval Commanders with senior Government Officials.
Interaction with Chiefs of Indian Army and Indian Air Force during the conference would be utilised to analyse the operational environment, deliberate on Tri-Service synergy and readiness to deter and neutralise threats aimed at the country’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.
The themes of ‘Functional Reorganisation of Indian Navy towards improving Operational Efficiency’ and ‘Optimal Manning’ will form the core of discussions towards finalising long term road map for the IN.
Discussions are planned on acquisition of new capabilities, harnessing niche technologies like ‘Big Data Analytics’ and ‘Artificial Intelligence’ for solutions in the domains of naval combat, convergence of networks/ information, logistics, administration and equipment health monitoring for sustained operations.
In keeping with the expectation of IN being the Net Security Provider in the IOR and first responder to any crisis, the forum will also deliberate upon the lessons learnt from the recently concluded HADR operations by the IN and various other maritime security initiatives such as the IFC-IOR.
