The
Indian Navy's reconnaissance aircraft and spy drones detected, tracked and photographed a
new Chinese destroyer and a tanker traversing through the Indian Ocean region. The newly-commissioned Sovremenny class destroyer, built for the People’s Liberation Army (Navy) at Russia’s St Petersburg-based North Shipyard, was picked up as soon as it entered the
Arabian Sea from the Red Sea. A Tupolev-142M long-range maritime patrol aircraft, flying from the Goa naval airbase, spotted the Chinese destroyer and the accompanying tanker off Yemen’s Socotra Island, located east of the Gulf of Aden, almost 2,300 km away from the Indian mainland. Once the Chinese warships were pinpointed, the Navy kept them under constant surveillance throughout their passage in the Indian Ocean on way to
South China Sea. Apart from TU-142Ms, Ilyushin-38s and Israeli Searcher and Heron UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles) were deployed to keep track of the two ships. This, incidentally, is the second time in recent months that the Navy has caught the Chinese on the high seas. In December, a TU-142M had photographed
two new Chinese submarines near the Cape of Good Hope. (Source: The Times of India)