To counter the escalating piracy in Arabian Sea and the bottleneck in the Gulf of Aden, the Indian Navy has deployed over 10 warships with Marine Commandos (also known as MARCOS) to counter piracy and increasing drone attacks.

A hotspot of piracy for years, the Gulf of Aden and Red Sea are infamous routes for attacks on trade ships and cargo.

The Indian Navy has deployed P-8I aircraft and MQ-9B Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) Sea Guardian drones.

The deployed warships include INS Kolkata, INS Kochi, INS Chennai, INS Mormugao, INS Talwar, and INS Tarkash.

Indian Coast Guards are also in the loop with the Indian Navy in the anti-piracy operation.

Indian Navy to the rescue

Recently, in a swift operation, the Indian Navy’s Marine Commandos rescued a total of 15 Indian crew members aboard a Liberian-flagged cargo ship, barely 20 hours after it reported a hijack off the northeastern coast of Africa.

The operation was initiated on Jan 5 when the ship ‘MV Lila Norfolk’ was taken over by around 5–6 pirates when it was on a voyage from Port Du Aco in Brazil to Khalifa Bin Salman Port in Bahrain, as it was around 550 km off the Somali coast.

Warship INS Chennai was diverted from anti-piracy patrol to the spot, and the elite MARCOS initiated sanitisation operations.

The Indian Navy has 68 warships on order at the moment. As per the Indian Navy’s official website, the Navy has deployed one ship in the Gulf of Aden on anti-piracy tasking since October 2008.

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