NEW DELHI: The Navy on Wednesday kicked off the fifth edition of Sea Vigil, the country's largest coastal defence exercise, mobilising security agencies across India's entire coastline and Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) to test the maritime security architecture put in place after the 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks.
The nine-day exercise is the first since Operation Sindoor in May last year. It is also the first since India's coastline was officially re-measured at 11,098.81 km, nearly 48 percent longer than the 7,516.6 km figure used for decades.
The latest edition will involve the Coast Guard, coastal security police, Customs and other maritime agencies across all coastal states and Union Territories. Fishermen and coastal communities will also be roped in. Additionally, five Union ministries, including Home Affairs, Shipping and Petroleum, along with coastal state governments, are supporting the exercise.
The exercise will unfold in two phases. The Coastal Defence and Security Readiness Evaluation (CDSRE) phase will run for a week, followed by a two-day sea phase on November 18 and 19, a week before the 18th anniversary of 26/11.
The drill is rooted in the lessons of November 2008, when 10 Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) terrorists sailed from Karachi, hijacked the Indian fishing trawler Kuber, killed its captain and reached Mumbai undetected before landing in inflatable dinghies. The attacks left 166 people dead.
The Pahalgam terror attack, which killed 26 civilians and triggered Op Sindoor, was claimed by The Resistance Front (TRF), which is a front and proxy of LeT.
The overhaul that followed the 26/11 attack made the Navy responsible for overall maritime security, including coastal and offshore security. Its commanders-in-chief at Mumbai, Kochi, Visakhapatnam and Port Blair were designated C-in-Cs Coastal Defence.
"The conduct of Sea Vigil at the national level provides an opportunity, at the apex level, to assess the nation's preparedness towards maritime security and coastal defence," the Navy said in a statement.
The exercise has grown with each edition. The inaugural drill in 2019 involved nearly 150 ships and 40 aircraft. The last edition, in 2024, brought together six ministries and 21 organisations, with the National Security Council Secretariat participating for the first time and the Army and Indian Air Force (IAF) also drawn in. Its readiness phase audited over 950 critical coastal locations, with a focus on ports, oil rigs, single-point moorings and cable landing points.
Sea Vigil also serves as a precursor to the Navy's biennial Theatre Level Readiness Operational Exercise (TROPEX). Together, the two drills are geared to cover the full spectrum of maritime security challenges, from coastal defence and infiltration threats to operations on the high seas.
