Navy ready with coastal security hub

Six years after the Mumbai terror attack, Indian Navy has readied a national hub to tackle all aspects of coastal security to prevent another 26/11.

The maritime force, however, will have to overcome several challenges to information flow to make the security net foolproof.

Located at Gurgaon, the national command, control, communication and intelligence centre (NC3I) now receives real time information from 51 naval stations, including 46 Doppler radar units along the coast and maritime operational centres of all commands, sources told Deccan Herald.

Inputs from 40 odd Indian Coast Guard stations too would soon be fed into the NC3I centre and analysed to decide the threat to  brown waters (inland, coastal waterways). After 26/11, Indian Navy was made the lead agency for coastal security.

Operationalisation of the NC3I hub and subsequent challenges to foolproof coastal security were discussed at the ongoing naval commanders conference here, attended by close to 40 top officers.

Information flow from central and state agencies involved in coastal security poses the biggest challenge to a fully functional hub for coastal security. For instance, there is still no mechanism to monitor thousands of small fishing boats that go out to sea every day.

While Indian Coast Guard keep an eye on all boats measuring more than 20 mt in length as these vessels have automated identification system (AIS) on-board, smaller vessels like the one used by Ajmal Kasab and his mates to enter Mumbai, pose the real problem as they lack AIS.

“Smaller boats have been registered by the state governments. We plan to install radio-frequency identification tags on those boats. A prototype has been made and a card reader to examine those tags are also being developed under the supervision of Home Ministry,” said a source.

There are close to 2 lakh fishing boats in India, out of which 60,000-70,000 go out to sea every day.

“Boat owners are now asking for money to install these systems on-board,” said an officer. Though the Cabinet Secretary reviews  monthly progress, there are still many obstacles as close to a dozen agencies from fisheries and customs to Navy and Coast Guard are involved.