Defence News India: Navies of India and Bangladesh have started joint patrolling in northern region of Bay of Bengal. The second edition of coordinated patrol (CORPAT) began on Thursday. Indian Navy has deployed INS Ranvijay, a guided-missile destroyer and INS Kuthar, an ingeniously built missile Corvette while Bangladesh Navy has sent BNS Ali Haider, a Type 053 frigate and BNS Shadinota, a Type 056 stealth guided missile corvette for this joint patrolling.
This two day long joint patrolling (CORPAT) will be followed by the first India-Bangaldesh bilateral naval exercise at Vishakhapatnam. The five day long joint military exercise is commencing today and will complete on Wednesday (October 16, 2019).
The India-Bangladesh Navy CORPAT which commenced last year is aimed at upgrading to a bilateral exercise with the navies engaging in seamanship evolution, flying exercises with integral helicopters and maritime patrol aircraft at sea.
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In addition to this, the exercises entailing the development of mutual communication and sharing of best practices would also be undertaken which is expected to add a new dimension to the Indo-Bangladesh maritime relations.
“With a common territorial boundary of over 4,000 kilometers and a maritime boundary, navies of both the counties aim to practice and hone their mutual cooperation,” said the defence ministry in a statement.
India-Bangladesh to begin maiden naval exercise
This year the patrolling is conducted near the International Maritime Boundary Line (IMBL).
The sea phase would be followed by harbour phase that would include professional interaction between the navies,
visits to the Indian Naval training and maintenance facilities at Visakhapatnam.
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The exercise would also include air familiarisation of Bangladesh Navies aircrew towards a better understanding of MPA operations at INS Dega.
In addition to this, a ten-day long training exercise between Indian Navies Marine Commandos (Marcos) and Bangladesh Navies SWADS commandos will also be undertaken.
Indian Navy’s Marcos commandos are known for their grueling training regime and they were deployed during 26/11 terror attack on Mumbai by Pakistan based terrorists. However, later the Navy Marcos were withdrawn after specialized anti-terror squad of National Security Guard (NSG) had arrived in the city.
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