With the aim to enhance security cooperation in the realm of maritime security, India’s high-tech control centre for covering business through the Indian Ocean region on Tuesday agreed to cooperate with Seychelles, in the southern Indian ocean. 

The Indian Navy established the Information Fusion Centre For Indian Ocean Region in time 2019 in Gurugram and inked a Memorandum Of Understanding with the Regional Coordination Operation Centre (RCOC), Seychelles.

“(This) aims to promote collaboration between the two centres towards enhancing maritime domain awareness, information sharing and expertise development,” the Ministry of Defence (MoD) stated on Wednesday.

The IFC-OIR is a political action that states India’s status as the guardian of the Indian Ocean- a net security provider who brings together indigenous countries to cover common pretensions of the world, freedom of navigation and give security against challenges similar as pirating, terrorism, anaesthetics, mortal migration and illegal fishing. It also obtains feeds from a range of space-grounded and terrestrial detectors to track fishing boats and marketable vessels near India’s seacoast and in the vast maritime sphere and beyond. 

The MOD said that the ‘IFC-IOR’ hosted by the Indian Navy was established by the government of India at Gurugram on December 22 2018, to enhance maritime cooperative security in the Indian Ocean Region in line with India’s Vision Of Security and Growth for All in the Region (SAGAR).

The IFC-IOR primarily watches over the Northern Indian Ocean, through which run sea lines of communications (SLOCs) that carry 75 per cent of the world’s maritime trade and half of daily oil consumption.

Now the IFC-IOR’s partnership with the RCOC, Seychelles, allows the Indian Navy to focus its watch further south.

The maritime security architecture in the Western Indian Ocean is supported by the Regional Maritime Information Fusion Centre (RMIFC), the RCOC in Seychelles and the national centres of seven signatory countries: Comoros, Djibouti, France, Kenya, Madagascar, Mauritius, and Seychelles, said the MoD.

The thrust of this action remains to track civil and marketable shipping. For tracking its own and hostile warships the Navy maintains a separate operations room. There's a deliberate firewall between the two. Information is also generated from white shipping agreements that India has with 36 countries and three transnational agencies. 

IMAC incorporates inputs from LRIT (Long Range Identification and Tracking). This medium which works under the International Maritime association paves way for 174 countries to give major information on marketable shipping.

Image source: Business Standard