Navy to add third fleet by 2014

JAKARTA: The Indonesian Navy is planning to add a third fleet within three years, so that one fleet each could be assigned to safeguard the Western, Central and Eastern regions of the country.

“We have been hoping to increase our fleet from the current two, to three between 2011 and 2014,” Navy chief of staff Admiral Soeparno told a conference here on Monday.

The Western region fleet center of command will be based in Jakarta, the central region fleet in Makassar, South Sulawesi, and the Eastern region fleet in Sorong, West Papua.

“We will take these steps based on the consideration that there are three sea corridors in the Indonesian archipelago [ALKI], in addition to existing [border-conflict] prone areas in each fleet region,” he said.

The first sea corridor passes through the South China Sea, the Karimata Strait, the Java Sea and the Sunda Strait. The second corridor crosses the Sulawesi Sea, the Makassar Strait, the Flores Sea and the Lombok Strait. The third corridor passes through the Pacific Ocean, the Maluku Strait, the Seram Sea and the Banda Sea.