Source: PIB & India Today
Objective
To test maritime interoperability between the navies of the three countries in the Indian Ocean Region.
Key highlights
- Singapore-India-Thailand Maritime Exercise (SITMEX) is the first-ever trilateral exercise involving the Republic of Singapore Navy, the Indian Navy, and the Royal Thai Navy
- Indian Navy Ships that participated in the exercise are;
- Ranvir: A guided-missile destroyer
- Kora: A missile corvette
- Sukanya: An offshore patrol vessel and
- P8I: Long-range maritime reconnaissance aircraft
- Other deployments by India include the warships RSS Tenacious, a formidable-class guided missile stealth frigate and HTMS Kraburi, a guided missile frigate.
- The exercise held in two phases i. e., Sea phase, and the Harbour phase
- The harbour phase of SITMEX-19 culminated at Port Blair and included professional interaction in the form of Subject Matter Expert Exchanges(SMEE), Pre-Sail Conferences which was attended by Command teams and friendly basketball matches between joint teams drawn from participating ships.
- A Food Festival was also organized during the harbour phase to showcase delicacies of each participating countries
- In the Sea phase, it involved maneuvering, navigation, and gunnery drills, along with boarding operations, in the Andaman Sea.
