There are nineteen Indian names on a wall in Alexandria.
The Chatby War Memorial holds twelve burials and records the names of nineteen Indian soldiers who died in ships sunk in the Eastern Mediterranean during the two World Wars. Most of them have no grave, because the sea took the ship. On 14 to 17 September 2026, the commanding officer and crew of an Indian warship stood in front of that wall.
INS Trishul, an Indian Navy guided missile frigate, made a port call at Alexandria, Egypt, as part of her deployment. She was escorted into Alexandria Harbour by the Egyptian Naval Ship Al Qadeer. The Ambassador of India to Egypt, His Excellency Shri Suresh K Reddy, visited the ship and spoke to the crew about the significance of the Indian Navy's presence in the region. On departure, Trishul conducted a Passage Exercise (PASSEX) with the Egyptian Navy ship ENS Bernees.
The ship
INS Trishul is a Talwar-class guided missile frigate — a modified Krivak III design, built in Russia. She was constructed at Baltiysky Zavod, launched in November 2000, and commissioned on 25 June 2003 at St Petersburg.
Her principal characteristics: displacement about 3,620 tonnes standard and 4,035 tonnes at full load, length about 124.8 metres, and a maximum speed of about 30 knots.
The class matters for a reason beyond the specification sheet. The Talwar-class frigates are the ships most associated with the BrahMos supersonic cruise missile in Indian service, and they are among the Navy's most heavily deployed platforms for overseas presence missions. A frigate is a useful size for this work: large enough to be a credible warship and to stay at sea for weeks, small enough that sending one does not denude a fleet.
Where a frigate sits in the hierarchy is a standing NDA question. Ascending by size and capability: patrol vessel → corvette → frigate → destroyer → cruiser → aircraft carrier. A frigate is a general-purpose escort and patrol combatant. A destroyer is larger, with heavier air-defence and land-attack armament. The boundary is not sharp and varies between navies, but the ordering is what gets asked.
What a PASSEX actually is
The term appears constantly in naval reporting and is worth defining precisely, because candidates often assume it means more than it does — and sometimes less.
A Passage Exercise (PASSEX) is an exercise conducted between two navies' ships when they happen to be in proximity, typically as one transits an area. It is not a planned, named, multi-week bilateral exercise of the kind that appears on an annual calendar. It is arranged in short order, lasts hours to a day, and involves whatever the two ships can usefully practise together.
With ENS Bernees, Trishul practised coordinated manoeuvring drills, communication exercises, and approaches for replenishment at sea.
Those three items are not arbitrary, and understanding why they are chosen is the substance of this story.
Coordinated manoeuvring means two warships from different navies holding station relative to each other, changing formation and course on signal. It sounds elementary. It is the hardest thing two unfamiliar ships do, because it requires each bridge team to correctly anticipate what the other will do, at closing speeds where a misjudgement is unrecoverable.
Communication exercises test whether the two ships can actually talk — shared frequencies, compatible procedures, a common vocabulary of signals, and the harder question of whether a bridge officer in one navy understands what an officer in another means by a given instruction, in a second language, under time pressure.
Approaches for replenishment at sea are the most demanding of the three. Replenishment at sea involves two ships steaming on parallel courses, tens of metres apart, for an extended period while fuel or stores transfer between them. An "approach" practises the closing phase without the transfer. It is dangerous, it is essential, and it is the single best test of whether two navies can genuinely operate together.
The word that ties all this together is interoperability — the ability of two forces to operate as one without prior integration. That is precisely what a PASSEX builds, and it is why navies conduct them at every opportunity rather than saving up for large scheduled exercises. When a real contingency arrives — a humanitarian evacuation, an anti-piracy response, a search and rescue — there is no time to develop interoperability. It must already exist.
Why an Indian warship is in the Mediterranean
Three strands explain this deployment, and they are worth separating.
The Suez route is India's trade artery. A very large share of India's trade with Europe transits the Suez Canal and the Red Sea, entering the Mediterranean at Port Said. Alexandria sits on that coast. Disruption anywhere along the Bab-el-Mandeb — Red Sea — Suez — Mediterranean chain reaches Indian ports as higher freight costs within weeks. A navy whose merchant traffic depends on a waterway has an interest in being known there.
Naval diplomacy is a distinct instrument. A port call is not a gesture. It demonstrates the ability to sustain a warship far from home — which itself signals logistics, endurance and intent — and it builds the personal familiarity between officer corps that makes future cooperation possible. Reception by an escorting Egyptian warship, a visit by the Indian Ambassador, and an exercise on departure are the three standard components of the form.
Egypt and India have a long connection. Both were founding movers of the Non-Aligned Movement, and the relationship has been rebuilt in recent years around defence cooperation and trade. Indian Air Force participation in exercises in Egypt earlier this month and a naval port call this month are strands of the same thread.
But the Chatby visit points at something older than any of these. Indian soldiers and sailors died in the Eastern Mediterranean in both World Wars, carried there in ships that did not arrive. The Indian Army fought in Egypt, Palestine and Mesopotamia in the First World War and across North Africa in the Second. Those campaigns are frequently under-taught, and a candidate who can place them — that Indian formations fought at El Alamein, that Indian troops were in Egypt and Palestine in 1914-18 — is drawing on a genuine and examinable part of military history rather than a ceremonial detail. Our NDA study material on general knowledge covers India's role in the World Wars and its place in modern defence diplomacy.
The honest proportion
A port call should be described at its true weight, and inflating it is a common error in answers.
Four days in a harbour and a few hours of exercise do not alter a balance of power. What they do is more modest and more cumulative: they keep a ship's company practised at operating among foreigners, they keep two navies' procedures aligned, they give a defence attaché something to build on, and they make the next request — for a berth, a refuelling, a transit — an easier conversation.
Navies describe this as presence, and presence is the one naval effect that cannot be surged. A carrier group can be moved in a fortnight. Being the navy that has visited Alexandria regularly for twenty years cannot be arranged at short notice. That is the whole argument for deployments of this kind, and it is the answer to give when asked why a frigate spent four days in a port rather than doing something that sounds more consequential.
🔑 Revision block
The event. INS Trishul port call at Alexandria, Egypt, 14-17 September 2026. Escorted into harbour by ENS Al Qadeer. Ambassador Shri Suresh K Reddy visited the ship. PASSEX conducted with ENS Bernees on departure.
Chatby War Memorial. 12 burials; bears the names of 19 Indian soldiers who died in ships sunk in the Eastern Mediterranean in the two World Wars.
INS Trishul. Talwar-class guided missile frigate — a modified Krivak III design, built in Russia at Baltiysky Zavod; commissioned 25 June 2003 at St Petersburg. About 3,620 tonnes standard, 4,035 tonnes full load; 124.8 m long; about 30 knots. The Talwar class is closely associated with the BrahMos missile in Indian service.
Ship hierarchy by size. Patrol vessel → corvette → frigate → destroyer → cruiser → aircraft carrier. A frigate is a general-purpose escort and patrol combatant; a destroyer is larger with heavier air-defence and land-attack armament.
PASSEX. Passage Exercise — an unscheduled, short exercise between ships of two navies that happen to be in proximity, not a named annual bilateral exercise. With ENS Bernees: coordinated manoeuvring, communication exercises, approaches for replenishment at sea.
Why those three drills. Manoeuvring — holding station and changing formation with an unfamiliar ship. Communications — shared frequencies, procedures and vocabulary across two languages. Replenishment approaches — the most demanding, two ships parallel and close for extended periods. All three build interoperability, which must exist before a contingency, not be created during one.
Why the Mediterranean matters to India. The Bab-el-Mandeb — Red Sea — Suez Canal — Mediterranean chain carries a large share of India-Europe trade; the canal opens to the Mediterranean at Port Said.
India-Egypt. Both founding movers of the Non-Aligned Movement; the relationship has been rebuilt around defence cooperation and trade.
The history. Indian troops fought in Egypt, Palestine and Mesopotamia in the First World War and across North Africa, including El Alamein, in the Second.
Presence. The one naval effect that cannot be surged — it is built by repeated deployment over years, not generated at short notice.
🎯 Practice MCQs
Q1. INS Trishul belongs to which class of ships? (a) Shivalik class (b) Talwar class (c) Kolkata class (d) Kamorta class
→ (b) — a modified Krivak III design built in Russia.
Q2. A PASSEX is best described as: (a) A large scheduled annual bilateral exercise (b) A short exercise between ships of two navies that happen to be in proximity (c) A live-firing range practice (d) A joint amphibious landing rehearsal
→ (b)
Q3. Arrange in increasing order of size: corvette, destroyer, frigate, patrol vessel. (a) Patrol vessel, corvette, frigate, destroyer (b) Corvette, patrol vessel, destroyer, frigate (c) Frigate, corvette, patrol vessel, destroyer (d) Patrol vessel, frigate, corvette, destroyer
→ (a)
Q4. The Suez Canal connects the Mediterranean Sea to the: (a) Persian Gulf (b) Red Sea (c) Arabian Sea (d) Black Sea
→ (b) — opening to the Mediterranean at Port Said.
Q5. "Replenishment at sea" refers to: (a) Desalination of seawater aboard ship (b) Transfer of fuel or stores between ships under way (c) Restocking a ship in harbour (d) Recovery of aircraft onto a carrier
→ (b)
Q6. The Chatby War Memorial, visited by INS Trishul's crew, is located at: (a) Port Said (b) Alexandria (c) Cairo (d) Suez
→ (b)
Q7. INS Trishul was commissioned in: (a) 1997 (b) 2000 (c) 2003 (d) 2008
→ (c) — at St Petersburg, Russia.
Q8. "Interoperability", in a naval context, refers to the ability of: (a) A ship to operate in all weather conditions (b) Two forces to operate together effectively without prior integration (c) A single ship to perform multiple mission types (d) Weapons of different origin to be fitted on one platform
→ (b)
Q9. India and Egypt were both closely associated with the founding of the: (a) Commonwealth (b) Non-Aligned Movement (c) Warsaw Pact (d) Organisation of Islamic Cooperation
→ (b)
Q10. Consider the following statements: 1. Naval "presence" is an effect that can be generated at short notice when a crisis arises. 2. A PASSEX typically includes coordinated manoeuvring and communication drills. Which is/are correct? (a) 1 only (b) 2 only (c) Both 1 and 2 (d) Neither 1 nor 2
→ (b) — presence is built cumulatively over years and cannot be surged.
📋 How this gets asked (PYQ pattern)
Naval deployment stories are frequent in the NDA General Knowledge paper, and they are among the easiest marks available to a candidate who prepares the right four fields.
The ship-and-class question asks which class a named ship belongs to, or where it was built. Learning the Indian Navy's principal classes as a short list — Kolkata and Visakhapatnam class destroyers, Shivalik and Talwar class frigates, Kamorta class corvettes, Scorpène and Arihant class submarines — covers most of what is asked and lets a candidate answer by elimination.
The exercise question asks what a named exercise is or which countries participate. Here the important discrimination is between named bilateral and multilateral exercises — Varuna with France, Malabar with the United States and Japan and Australia, Konkan with the United Kingdom, SIMBEX with Singapore, Indra with Russia, AUSINDEX with Australia — and a PASSEX, which is none of these and is specifically the unscheduled kind. A question naming a PASSEX is often testing whether a candidate knows that distinction.
The geography question attaches the deployment to a strait, canal or sea. Suez, Bab-el-Mandeb, Hormuz and Malacca are the four that recur, and the Red Sea-Suez-Mediterranean sequence is worth being able to draw from memory.
The terminology question is where the marks separate: interoperability, presence, replenishment at sea, port call. These carry into the SSB, where a candidate who can explain why a warship visits a foreign port is answering a genuinely different question from one who can only report that it did.
Preparing for the NDA? Naval news repays learning four fields per story — the ship's class, the exercise type, the geography, and the concept being demonstrated. Build the base with our NDA study material, follow the daily NDA current affairs, and prepare with our faculty in the upcoming Cavalier courses in Delhi.
✍️ Written by Col D.N. Sharma — Defence studies faculty at The Cavalier. Reviewed by the Cavalier Faculty Desk.