About the Speaker

Captain Ranendra Singh Sawan was commissioned in the Indian Navy on 01 July 1996. He is a graduate of the National Defence Academy, Khadakwasla, and has specialised in Navigation and Direction (ND). He has served on four Indian Navy ships as Navigating Officer and has also been the Executive Officer of a Missile Vessel. His sea command assignments include an Interceptor Craft of the Indian Coast Guard, and an Anti- submarine Patrol Vessel. He has also served in operational appointments ashore which includes a staff tenure at the Integrated Headquarters of the Ministry of Defence (Navy). He has been a Directing Staff at the Defence Services Staff College, Wellington.

Captain Sawan has contributed papers and articles in various professional journals and was also selected as a Visiting Navy Fellow at the Sea Power Centre, Australia in 2020. He is a Ph.D. (Defence and Strategic Studies) candidate at the Naval War College, Goa, and is working on a thesis titled ‘India’s Minimum Deterrence Posture in the South Asian Context: A Study on Credibility and Quantification’. He also holds an MPhil (Defence and Strategic Studies) degree from the University of Madras.

He is currently appointed at the National Maritime Foundation, New Delhi as a Research Fellow. His areas of research interest include maritime security cooperation in the Indo- Pacific, military strategic and operational concepts applicable to the maritime domain, and nuclear deterrence.