Eastern Naval Command chief: Our focus is on maritime domain awareness in Indian Ocean Region

Eastern Naval Command (ENC) Flag Officer Commanding-in-Chief Vice Admiral AK Jain has said that the focus of the Navy is on maritime domain awareness considering the security threat in the Indian Ocean Region.

"Security threat in the Indian Ocean out at sea has gone up. So our entire focus has been on maritime domain awareness in the Indian Ocean Region. We maintain surveillance with P-8Is, Dornier aircraft and helicopters 24x7. We are getting four more P-8Is," said AK Jain at a press conference on Thursday.

Regarding COVID-19, he said, "The world, in general, has seen this extraordinary challenge of the pandemic which came as a big surprise and initially nobody knew what is this monster called COVID-19 pandemic. In March our honourable Prime Minister Narendra Modi took a call and declared lockdown that is the time we realized that for us- the defense forces- the lockdown is not relevant because the security scenario trans Himalayan threat was prevailing at that time and we had to do our core job of fighting. So we realize that we have to keep aside COVID and quickly get down with our business of combat readiness."

"Our officers and all came together keeping aside the threat posed by COVID-19 and they all worked to get our ships and submarines going. The crew onboard also got into action. Despite the COVID threat we all did our job well and maintained a very high operational tempo out there at sea," he added.

(ANI)