Navy war games with French, British in Atlantic next month

May 29: In tune with its ambitions of being a blue water force, four warships of the Navy will for the first time sail to the Atlantic, where they would hold war games with the French, British, Russian and Germans vessels and practice anti-submarine warfare.

During the four-month deployment, the four warships -- INS Beas, INS Delhi, INS Brahmaputra and INS Aditya -- would sail through the Arabian and Mediterranean seas all the way up to the north Russian port of St Petersburg and conduct passage exercises with most Gulf countries along the way, Naval sources said today.

While INS Delhi is a guided missile destroyer, Brahmaputra and Beas are guided missile frigates, and Aditya is a fleet replenishment tanker that carries supplies for warships, enabling them to stay away from port for long, thus enhancing their maritime warfare capabilities.

All the four ships are already on their voyage, setting sail from Mumbai on different dates. While INS Beas had sailed out on April 27 and carried out some anti-piracy operations in the Gulf, the other three warships left Mumbai on May 13, sources said.

They would join the British Royal Navy in the annual Konkan series of exercises off Portsmouth in the south-west of United Kingdom between June 20 and 25 and later the Varuna series with the French Navy off Brest in Northwest France from June 30 to July 4.