Cmde Anil Jai Singh

From 28-30 November 2018, the premier international maritime conference and exhibition, MAST (Maritime/Air Systems and Technologies) will be held at the Exposition Centre in Greater Noida, located less than 40 km from India Gate, the centre of the national capital. This will be the first time that this event is being held in India. It is a testimony of India’s growing importance in the global and regional maritime security architecture. The event is being organised by MAST Communications UK, the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI), which is India’s leading industry association, and the Indian Maritime Foundation (IMF), the country’s premier maritime NGO with a wide and diverse range of maritime activities. The event has also been endorsed by the Indian ministry of defence (MoD).

The MAST Conference and Exhibition is an annual event and has grown in prominence and stature since it was first held in Nice (France). Since then this annual event has been held in Washington DC twice, Genoa, Stockholm, Cadiz, Malmo, Rome, Istanbul, Gdansk, Amsterdam and twice in Tokyo.

The event attracts a wide cross-section of delegates including official military delegations, senior industry executives, leading figures from the defence scientific and R&D community and academia. The average attendance at the last three MAST conferences was more than 2,300 delegates at each event.

Over the years it has built up a reputation for providing high-quality technological content through the presentation of papers at the conference where the focus is more on technology than on products, and at the exhibition where leading global Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) display and demonstrate their latest innovations and technologies. Its growing reputation is testified by the support it gets from navies and other governmental organisation from various countries including the UKTI DSO, DSTL Australia, ALTA Japan and many others.

In the summer of 2018, a special two-day workshop was organised on ‘Disruptive Technologies’ in Portsmouth UK and was widely attended by European navies and