INS Kardip

INS Kardip is a forward operating base of the Indian Navy on Kamorta Island in the Nicobar Islands, part of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. It operates under the Andaman and Nicobar Command, the tri-service joint command responsible for the archipelago.

The base stations and supports large patrol craft operating in the southern Nicobar group, covering an area distant from the principal naval base at Port Blair. Its patrol task centres on the surveillance of territorial waters against unauthorised intrusion by foreign vessels. Ship maintenance facilities are established at the station.

The Indian Navy was assigned responsibility for the defence of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands after the 1962 Sino-Indian War, and commissioned INS Jarawa at Port Blair in 1964 as the main base in the islands. By the early 1970s most unauthorised intrusions into island territorial waters were occurring in the southern Nicobars, at a considerable distance from Port Blair. INS Kardip was commissioned on Kamorta in 1973 to station and support patrol craft closer to that area, with maintenance facilities added soon afterwards.