KUALA LUMPUR: Next Tuesday, the biggest armada of warships and other
vessels in the history of the Langkawi International Maritime and
Aerospace Exhibition (Lima '09) will be anchored off Porto Malai.
Ninety-six
such vessels from nine countries have confirmed their participation --
roughly three times more than when the exhibition was inaugurated in
1991.
That year, the majority of the 30-odd vessels were
anchored, not in Porto Malai, but at the Kuah jetty, and the only
foreign participants were the Royal Australian Navy's (RAN) destroyer
HMAS Torrens and two Indonesian high-speed patrol craft.
It is a
testament to how much the maritime segment has grown that it now boasts
of equal billing with the aerospace segment, attracting as wide a range
of vessels as the air show attracts aircraft.
The star of this
year's maritime show will, without a doubt, be KD Tunku Abdul Rahman,
the first of the Royal Malaysian Navy's (RMN) mighty Scorpene
submarines.
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