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Navy to showcase stealth frigates, marine aircraft off coast of Singapore

The exercises will be aimed at the defence of the strategic Malacca Straits, which is the main ingress to South China Sea.

Updated on: May 10, 2017, 23:00:30 IST
Hindustan Times, New Delhi | By
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The Indian Navy’s top-of-the-line stealth frigates and Boeing P-8I anti-submarine and maritime reconnaissance aircraft will take part in a six-day advanced exercise with the Singapore Navy from Malacca Straits to South China Sea this month. The exercise begins on May 18 and will continue till May 24 off the coast of Singapore.

The exercises will be aimed at the defence of the strategic Malacca Straits, which is the main ingress to South China Sea. (AFP File Photo)
The exercises will be aimed at the defence of the strategic Malacca Straits, which is the main ingress to South China Sea. (AFP File Photo)

South Block sources said INS Sahyadri, armed with land attack Brahmos missiles, along with state-of-the-art Kamorta missile corvette will participate in the International Maritime Review to commemorate 50 years of the Singapore Navy.

This event will be attended by Navy Chief Sunil Lanba even as top Indian defence companies such as Mazagon Dock Limited (MDL), Garden Reach Shipbuilders and Engineers (GRSE), Goa Shipyard, Bharat Electronics Limited, Bharat Dynamics Limited, Ordnance Factory Board, Brahmos, and Larsen and Toubro participate in the International Maritime Defence Exhibition (IMDEX) to explore hardware export opportunities. The review and exhibition will be held between May 15-18.

On May 18, the two Indian ships will be joined by frigate INS Shivalik, tanker INS Jyoti and P-8I aircraft for bilateral exercises in the South China Sea with Royal Singapore Navy.
The Singapore Navy will also field its top ships and maritime patrol fighter aircraft like F-15s in the event.

The exercises will be aimed at the defence of the strategic Malacca Straits, which is the main ingress to South China Sea.

Expanding their naval footprint, the Indian warships will make port calls at Djakarta, Kuantan port (Malaysia), Port Moresby, Surabaya in Java and Freemantle port in Australia.

Meanwhile, three Indian warships, led by guided missile destroyer INS Mumbai have reached Haifa in Israel on a goodwill mission.

  • Shishir Gupta
    ABOUT THE AUTHOR
    Shishir Gupta

    Shishir Gupta is Executive Editor at Hindustan Times and one of India's top journalists covering national security, strategic affairs, foreign policy and geopolitics. Over the past three decades, he has extensively reported on India's military, diplomatic and security landscape, covering every major conflict and national security challenge, from the 1999 Kargil War and the 2020 East Ladakh standoff to Operation Sindoor in 2025. He has also covered major terror attacks, including the IC-814 hijacking, the 26/11 Mumbai attacks and the 2025 Pahalgam terror strike, along with numerous Pakistan-backed terrorist incidents in the Kashmir Valley and across India. He has reported on national and state elections for more than three decades. A recognised authority on strategic affairs, Gupta has covered India's nuclear programme since the Pokhran-II (Shakti series) tests in May 1998 and has written extensively on global nuclear issues, Indian diplomacy and the country's expanding global outreach. He has also reported widely on international conflicts and terrorism, with a special focus on the Indian subcontinent. Gupta has interviewed Prime Minister Narendra Modi more than four times, including Modi's first interview with the print media after becoming Prime Minister in May 2014. His other interviews include three with the Dalai Lama, as well as conversations with Benjamin Netanyahu, Amit Shah, Yogi Adityanath, S. Jaishankar, Nirmala Sitharaman and Piyush Goyal. He is the author of Indian Mujahideen: The Enemy Within (Hachette, 2011) and Himalayan Face-off: Chinese Assertion and Indian Riposte (Hachette, 2014). He was awarded the Chevening-Wolfson Joint Scholarship at Wolfson College, University of Cambridge, UK, in 1998 and participated in the International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) of the US State Department in 2006. He received the Ben Gurion Prize from Israel in 2011 and the K. Subrahmanyam Prize for Strategic Studies in 2015 from the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (MP-IDSA). Since 2024, he has hosted Point Blank, Hindustan Times' weekly YouTube show on global geopolitics.Read More