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| Image: Narendra Modi via Twitter |
By Ankit Panda
With an eye on maritime domain awareness, India is investing in coastal surveillance networks.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s tour across the Indian Ocean this month was long overdue. Despite its name, the Indian Ocean has not firmly been under India’s custodianship, despite New Delhi’s status as the most capable sea-faring state in the region. During his trip, Modi visited Sri Lanka, Seychelles, and Mauritius — Maldives was struck from his original itinerary after the government there jailed an opposition leader— and addressed defense and security cooperation in each capital.
In concrete terms, Modi’s visit highlighted India’s continuing interest in deploying and maintaining a network of coastal surveillance radars across the region, leading to heightened intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) capabilities and maritime domain awareness for the Indian Navy and Coast Guard.
The high point for India’s planned CSR network came during Modi’s one-day visit to Seychelles, where he publicly launched (and posed with) the first of a planned 32 CSR stations in the Indian Ocean. On March 11, Modi tweeted that he had “Unveiled the Plaque and Operationalization of Radar for the CSRS India-Seychelles Cooperation Project,” with an accompanying picture of him attentively operating a radar monitor. The public nature of the CSR deployment highlights India’s eagerness to signal its enduring security interest in the Indian Ocean.
Read the full story at The Diplomat