Joining an elite club of nations with access to nuclear missile tracking vessels, the Indian Navy secretly commissioned the highly secretive Ocean Surveillance Ship, bestowing it with the coden ame VC-1118. Reports suggest that this move will boost India’s ballistic missile defense system as well as systematically improve ways of increasing its electronic warfare capabilities.
The vessel has been under construction since 2014 and was commissioned in October 2019 without any public ceremony, according to the Economic Times. The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic delayed the commissioning process by a few months, but the vessel passed all its trials before being put into service.
To realize the strategic importance of the move, one has to understand that India is only the fifth country in the world after the U.S., France, China, and Russia to operate such a vessel, which will prove to be a great tool for monitoring the developmental trial of its domestic missile program.
