MHOW: The Indian Navy had carried out a "forward posture" move with fully loaded warships and submarines along with its aircraft carrier with 15 MiG-29 K onboard it. This posture had resulted in bottling up the Pakistan Navy, said Vice Admiral Tarun Sobty, Deputy Chief of Naval Staff (DCNS) on Tuesday.
When asked about Indian Navy's preparations during Operation Sindoor, Admiral Sobti brought out that ships are not kept fully loaded for different reasons, principally technical reasons. This practice is followed even during the naval exercise.
At the time of the Pahalgam attack, it so happened that the Indian Navy's large number of platforms were on the Western Seaboard.
"When it took place, we realized that things could lead to military action and therefore, within a period of 96 hours, all the ships which were operational and we were deployed at sea at that point in time, we came into harbour," said Admiral Sobti.
"We topped up, we loaded all ships, we loaded our submarines and we sailed out, we embarked 15 MiG-29s on our new aircraft carrier Vikrant and we were ready at sea, the aim was to have a forward posture, a deterrent posture, so that the Navy of the other side does not threaten us in any way, does not threaten our trade lines, our economic lifelines or our coastline in any way...." DCNS said while speaking with media along side tri-service dialogue on war, warfare and warfighting, RAN SAMWAD-2025, held at the Army War College in Dr Ambedkar Nagar, Madhya Pradesh.
And the strategy worked as "I think we were extremely successful in this because we were able to push back the Pakistani Navy right bottled up into the coast, they had no freedom of manoeuvre, they did not dare to step out, they remained close to the coast and we maintain that posture and that I should say was the preparation and the action of the Indian Navy, so we were fully ready."
Elaborating on the post-operation lessons learnt, Admiral said that many lessons have been learned from Operation Sindoor, not just by the Navy, but the armed forces, and from these lessons, the actions some have been implemented, some of them are rapidly under implementation. Linking the lessons learnt post Operation Sindoor in context with Ran Samvad, he said that the work is on long-term plans.
"I would like to draw upon the words of the Chief of Defence Staff, who actually said that we are looking beyond Operation Sindoor, we are not looking purely at lessons learned from this limited operation." He added, "We are trying to examine a much wider field of what is the impact of technology as we have seen over the last few years, the conflicts over the last few years, what is the impact of technology on war and how should we thereafter envision future war and prepare for it as military practitioners, as people in uniform."