INS Udaygiri Vietnam port call brings two indigenous warships to Ho Chi Minh City

The INS Udaygiri Vietnam port call began on 22 June when the stealth frigate sailed into Nha Rong Port at Ho Chi Minh City alongside the anti-submarine warfare corvette INS Kavaratti. Both warships were designed and built in India, and their arrival opened a fresh leg of the Indian Navy Eastern Fleet operational deployment.

Rear Admiral Alok Ananda, Flag Officer Commanding Eastern Fleet, the Navy's Sunrise Fleet, led the two ships into harbour.

Ceremonial welcome at Nha Rong Port

Personnel from the Vietnam People's Navy, representatives of the Ho Chi Minh City People's Committee and the local port authorities received the ships on arrival. The reception, set out in the official account of the deployment, reflected years of steadily closer contact between the two navies across the South China Sea and the wider Indo-Pacific.

INS Udaygiri is a Project 17A stealth frigate. INS Kavaratti is a Kamorta class corvette built for anti-submarine warfare. Sending the two together places a modern surface combatant and a dedicated submarine hunter in a single Vietnamese port at the same time.

RAdm Alok Ananda leads fleet engagements ashore

RAdm Ananda laid a wreath at the Ho Chi Minh Memorial in the city, paying tribute to the Vietnamese leader.

The fleet delegation called on the leadership of Naval Region 2 and senior officials of the Ho Chi Minh City People's Committee. Both sides used the meetings to restate a shared interest in deeper maritime cooperation and in carrying the Enhanced Comprehensive Strategic Partnership forward.

The Indian mission in Hanoi recorded the calls ashore. India in Vietnam on X.

INS Udaygiri Vietnam visit follows the ECSP elevation

This was the Indian Navy's first major presence in Vietnam since the two countries raised their ties to an Enhanced Comprehensive Strategic Partnership in May 2026. The INS Udaygiri Vietnam visit puts that diplomatic step into a hull and a flag at a Vietnamese quay, which is how partnerships of this kind are usually read in the region.

The Navy set the visit within India's Act East policy and the MAHASAGAR vision, and tied it to the ASEAN India Maritime Cooperation Year 2026. Vietnam sits near the centre of that maritime outreach.

The Eastern Naval Command put the arrival on record. Indian Navy on X.

Over the coming days the crews will run professional interactions, cross-deck exchanges, sporting fixtures and community outreach with their hosts. Senior leadership talks are also on the schedule, giving commanders on both sides room to compare notes and set up the next stretch of cooperation.

Indigenous warships on a forward deployment

Both hulls carry the Aatmanirbhar Bharat stamp that India now takes care to show abroad. INS Udaygiri and INS Kavaratti were drawn up and constructed in Indian yards, and putting them in a foreign port says as much about domestic shipbuilding as it does about diplomacy. The visit comes only weeks after the Navy's tri-commissioning at Kolkata, where three more indigenous platforms entered service.

That same industrial base has been busy at home, from frigate programmes to fresh propulsion orders such as the marine gas turbine generator contract signed this month.

Maritime cooperation between India and Vietnam

India and Vietnam have built their naval relationship slowly and deliberately, through training, ship visits and a steady exchange of officers. India has trained Vietnamese naval personnel and extended defence credit for patrol craft over the past decade. The port call at Ho Chi Minh City extends that pattern, and it fits a wider run of Indian defence engagement across Southeast Asia in recent weeks.