New Delhi. The first edition of Naval Commanders’ Conference of 2019 is all set to begin in New Delhi from April 23.
The conference, which would continue till April 25, is the apex forum within the Service for interaction between the Naval Commanders. The Chief of the Naval Staff, with the Commanders-in-Chief, would review major operational, materiel, logistics, HR, training and administrative activities undertaken during the previous six months and deliberate upon the course to be steered in the ensuing six months.
The Conference assumes greater significance in the backdrop of Pulwama associated events that have brought country’s defence under sharper focus and would provide the higher naval leadership a forum to discuss the emerging challenges in the maritime domain and fine tune the strategies for responding to the evolving geo-strategic environment.
Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman is scheduled to address the Naval Commanders on the opening day and interact with them. The conference also serves as a platform for institutionalised interaction of Naval Commanders with senior Government Officials.
Interaction with Chiefs of Indian Army and Indian Air Force during the conference would be utilised to analyse the operational environment, deliberate on Tri-Service synergy and readiness to deter and neutralise threats aimed at the country’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.
The themes of ‘Functional Reorganisation of Indian Navy towards improving Operational Efficiency’ and ‘Optimal Manning’ would form the core of discussions towards finalising long term road map for the IN.
Discussions are planned on acquisition of new capabilities, harnessing niche technologies like ‘Big Data Analytics’ and ‘Artificial Intelligence’ for solutions in the domains of naval combat, convergence of networks/ information, logistics, administration and equipment health monitoring for sustained operations.
In keeping with the expectation of IN being the Net Security Provider in the Indian Ocean Region (IOR) and first responder to any crisis, the forum would also deliberate upon the lessons learnt from the recently concluded HADR operations by the IN and various other maritime security initiatives such as the IFC-IOR.
