Sri Lanka Navy's Sayurala in India for largest naval exercise

COLOMBO (News 1st); Sri Lanka Navy Ship Sayurala is in Visakhapatnam, India to participate in India's largest naval exercise ever, Milan 2022.

SLNS Sayurala was built by M/s Goa Shipyard Limited and was commission into the Sri Lanka Navy on 2nd August 2017, making it a significant milestone in the close naval and maritimes ties that exist between India and Sri Lanka, tweeted Indian Naval officials.

Stage is all set for the largest and the latest edition of Indian Navy’s multilateral Ex MILAN 2022. The nine day exercise scheduled to start from February 25 until March 4, 2022 will begin in the ‘City of Destiny’, Visakhapatnam.

‘Camaraderie – Cohesion – Collaboration’ is the theme in this edition and the aim is to project India as a responsible maritime power to the world.

According to the Indian Navy, through professional interaction between friendly navies, the aim is to enable doctrinal learning in the maritime domain, hone operational skills, and imbibe best practices and procedures.

This is a biennial naval exercise which is at the multilateral level and was incepted by Indian Navy in 1995 at Andaman and Nicobar Command.

This year it will be conducted in three phases — Harbour Phase which is scheduled from Feb 25 to 28 and the Sea Phase is from March 1-4, 2022.

From the time this exercise started, it has taken place biennially except for 2001, 2005, 2016 and 2020.

According to the Indian Navy, in 2001 and 2016 editions were not held due to International Fleet Reviews, and then in 2005 it had to be rescheduled to 2006 and this was done due to the Tsunami in 2004.

And the 2020 edition had to be rescheduled to 2022. This was done because of the global pandemic of COVID-19.

It all started with just four countries — Indonesia, Singapore, Sri Lanka and Thailand, participating in the 1995 edition. And from there on, the drill has grown in the number of countries participants and the complexity of the exercise.

This year, so far 41 countries including US, Russia, France, and more have confirmed their participation.

Originally the exercise was conceived in line with India’s ‘Look East Policy’, and now it has expanded and is in line with the government’s’Act East policy’ and Security and Growth for All in the Region (SAGAR) initiative.

Countries from Island nations in the Western IOR as also IOR littorals are all participating. From six regional countries to 18 countries in 2014 which included IOR littorals, it has gone up to almost 40 and more countries. And this is because of the growing engagement of the Indian navy with Friendly Foreign Countries (FFCs) and because of this the scale and complexity of the MILAN has gone up.