VASCO: Due to increasing number of natural calamities, the Naval Area (GNA) has to be constantly ready for responding to emergency situations, Flag Officer Goa Naval Area (FOGA), Rear Admiral Vikram Menon said, while emphasising on the importance of strong bond between the people and the service.
“Two years ago, when we had floods in South Maharashtra, Karnataka-Goa border, our choppers were deployed under ‘Operation Rahat’. When there was Cyclone Tauktae last year, our helicopters responded for search and rescue operations. Nowadays, with the increasing number of natural calamities occurring, we have to be constantly ready for response,” Rear Admiral Menon told Herald.
Rear Admiral Menon was speaking on the sidelines of Navy Day celebrations on Sunday.
When asked whether this growing deployment for providing aid to civilian government due to natural calamities would stretch the Navy’s assets, the FOGA said that there is a structure in place and “depending on what is more critical at that time, we will respond to that, but responding to natural calamities is one of our key operational charters”.
Speaking on the importance of GNA for the Indian Navy, Rear Admiral Menon, who is also the Flag Officer Naval Aviation (FONA), said that the Naval base of Goa comes under the Western Naval Command, which is the most active and sensitive Command.
“The GNA assumes a lot of importance because it has the largest airbase of the Indian Navy, INS Hansa, in terms of the number of aircrafts it operates and the complexities of operations. It is a 24×7 military base because not only our military aircrafts are flying, we are also handling a large number of civilian flights,” the FONA said.
“We also have a lot of joint exercises with friendly nations. Possibly in January or February, we will have joint exercise with French naval ships. It is the destination of choice and speaks volumes about the State of Goa, which welcomes everybody. Also because of the proximity of our operational assets. It is a very crucial base,” he said.
Rear Admiral Menon said that along the west coast, there are a lot of important naval bases. Karwar is coming up, Goa is there, Mumbai is of course a very large base.
“Like any other organisation, we have distributed our assets in a way to ensure flexibility. Goa is mainly an aviation base. We have two smaller ships here. Lot of larger ships come visiting here. But, the aircrafts can be deployed very fast,” he said.
According to him, as the FOGA, my prime responsibility would be to ensure high operational availability of our assets for any kind of situation as it demands, along with it is quality training and also enhancing the infrastructure and having a strong outreach for the State of Goa.
“Strong outreach is very important, considering the kind of support we get from Goa. A strong bond between the State and the service, only adds to the synergistic approach while responding to any situation,” he said.
