Will board suspicious boats to fight pirates: Navy chief Admiral R Hari Kumar

HYDERABAD: The Indian Navy is proactively deploying its fleet to counter piracy and conducting anti-drone operations to tackle the increasing attacks on merchant ships by drones, chief of naval staff Admiral R Hari Kumar said here on Wednesday.

“We have now decided that we will board any suspicious dhow, ship or fishing boat, look for piracy triggers and if we find any we will take action,” the Navy chief said on the sidelines of the handing over ceremony of the indigenously manufactured Drishti 10 Starliner medium altitude long endurance drone at the Adani Aerospace Park here.

“The Maritime Anti-Piracy Act of 2022 has been a great enabler. It has empowered the Indian Navy and maritime security agencies to take proactive action,” he said. He said there are two types of operations that the Indian Navy is engaged in. “One is anti-piracy operations of which we have largely had two incidents of late. Both were not Indian flagged vessels but in the second case we had an Indian crew so we could respond because we got the clearance from the owner. We rescued the crew,” he said.

But they are now seeing a surge in drone attacks with over 35 attacks on merchant ships, especially those that are Israeli-owned or flagged, in the Red Sea as well as North and Central Arabian Sea over the past 40-42 days. He said though they are yet to figure out where these drone attacks are emanating from, they have collected debris from at least three ships and are conducting a forensic analysis of the drone remains.