CDS (II) 2021 General Knowledge · Question 113 of 120

Correct — C, Tyrrhenian Sea. INS Tabar, a Talwar-class frigate commissioned in April 2004, spent the summer of 2021 on a long deployment to Europe, and on 4 and 5 July 2021 it exercised with the Italian Navy frigate ITS Antonio Marceglia in the Tyrrhenian Sea — the arm of the Mediterranean enclosed by mainland Italy, Sicily, Sardinia and Corsica. The two ships worked through air defence drills, replenishment at sea, communication exercises and cross-deck helicopter operations by day and by night, which is the standard content of a short bilateral passage exercise. The same deployment took the ship on to the Bay of Biscay for an exercise with the French frigate FNS Aquitaine on 15 and 16 July, and then to St Petersburg for Russian Navy Day and Exercise INDRA in the Baltic at the end of the month — three navies in four weeks, which was the point of sending her.

• (a)Ionian Sea — The Ionian lies on the other side of Italy's toe, between southern Italy, Sicily and Greece. Italian warships operate there routinely, but this exercise was on the western side.
• (b)Adriatic Sea — The Adriatic is the long arm between the eastern Italian coast and the Balkan shore. Again Italian waters, and again not where this exercise took place.
• (d)Mediterranean Sea. — The trap of the general answer. The Tyrrhenian is itself a part of the Mediterranean, so this option is not false in any strict sense — but when a question offers a marginal sea and the basin that contains it, it is asking for the precise one, and the reports of this exercise named the Tyrrhenian.

The Indian Navy uses long overseas deployments to do diplomacy as much as training. A single frigate sailing to Europe can hold short bilateral exercises with several navies in succession, each one building the routines — communications, replenishment, flying each other's helicopters off each other's decks — that make joint operations possible later. Talwar-class frigates, built in Russia and derived from the Krivak design, are the workhorses of these deployments.

Naval exercise questions are asked in three forms — the name of the exercise, the countries taking part, and the sea it was held in — so it pays to store all three together. The Mediterranean's marginal seas are worth learning as a set for exactly the reason this question exists: Tyrrhenian to the west of Italy, Adriatic to its east, Ionian to its south, Ligurian to its north-west, Aegean between Greece and Turkey. On the sourcing, treat the dates and the partner ship as the checkable core; a naval passage exercise is documented by the navies involved rather than by any independent record, so the detail available is what the services chose to release.

• INS Tabar is a Talwar-class frigate, built at St Petersburg and commissioned on 19 April 2004.
• It exercised with the Italian Navy frigate ITS Antonio Marceglia in the Tyrrhenian Sea on 4 and 5 July 2021.
• The drills covered air defence, replenishment at sea, communications and cross-deck helicopter operations by day and night.
• The same 2021 deployment included an exercise with the French frigate FNS Aquitaine in the Bay of Biscay on 15 and 16 July.
• The ship then took part in Russian Navy Day at St Petersburg and Exercise INDRA in the Baltic Sea between 22 and 29 July 2021.

• Choosing the parent basin when a marginal sea is on offer; the more specific correct answer wins.
• Attaching the wrong sea to the wrong Italian coast — Tyrrhenian west, Adriatic east, Ionian south.
• Confusing this bilateral exercise with the multilateral Malabar series, which involves different navies entirely.

As the venue of a named exercise, or as a match between exercises and the countries taking part in them.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Tyrrhenian Sea is enclosed by mainland Italy and which of the following islands?

  • (a)Crete and Rhodes
  • (b)Sicily, Sardinia and Corsica
  • (c)Malta and Cyprus
  • (d)The Balearic Islands

  Answer(b) Sicily, Sardinia and Corsica — the Tyrrhenian lies west of the Italian peninsula, while the Adriatic lies to its east and the Ionian to its south.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Exercise INDRA is conducted between the armed forces of India and

  • (a)Indonesia
  • (b)Israel
  • (c)Russia
  • (d)Italy

  Answer(c) Russia — INS Tabar took part in it in the Baltic Sea at the end of July 2021, on the same European deployment as its exercise with the Italian Navy.