Naval academy to get foreign cadets from December

NEW DELHI: The doors of the sprawling new Indian Naval Academy (INA) at Ezhimala in Kerala will be thrown open to cadets from several friendly countries, especially from the Indian Ocean Region (IOR), later this year.

As the Navy's ongoing endeavour to create an officer-cadre of "high-tech sea warriors", all armed with a B.Tech degree or a MSc (applied electronics) degree at the very least, gets going at the INA, it is moving to induct foreign trainees as well from December 2014 onwards.

Speaking ahead of the passing-out-parade of the third-batch of officers from the INA on May 31, which will include 30 women in a batch of 268 cadets, assistant chief of personnel (HRD) Rear Admiral S N Ghormade said the foreign cadets will come from countries like Maldives, Mauritius, Sri Lanka, Kenya and Tanzania. "Initially, we are looking at a small batch of 15-20 foreign cadets, which will be progressively increased later," he said.

The Navy does train around 900 foreign personnel, both officers and sailors, every year in its different training establishments. But this is the first time the INA - Asia's largest naval academy spread over 2,538 acres -will also help in training them.

The INA is geared towards producing "tech-savvy officers" because of the unprecedented expansion in warship and weapon technology, with state-of-the-art weapon and sensor systems becoming the norm. From an existing annual capacity of 1,180 trainees, INA will begin training almost 2,500 cadets from 2019 onwards.