7 months ago
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While the standoff with Pakistan successful May 2025 culminated successful engagement successful the aerial domain, consequent developments person shifted attraction to the maritime theatre, arsenic seen successful cardinal naval movements, capableness demonstrations and authoritative statements from some India and Pakistan, with their navies recalibrating posture and signalling readiness for imaginable escalation.
On October 2, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, citing the 1965 war, warned Pakistan of a “resounding response” that could change its “history and geography” should immoderate misadventure hap successful the Sir Creek country — Pakistan is expanding subject infrastructure successful the region, a improvement that has been ongoing since 2023. Historically, Pakistan has had a perceived subject borderline successful the area. This follows the connection successful August by the Chief of Naval Staff, Admiral Dinesh Tripathi, that the work would beryllium the archetypal to instrumentality enactment against Pakistan successful immoderate aboriginal conflict. Operation Sindoor itself was described arsenic designed for a naval guardant deterrent posture, highlighting a readiness for a ‘more progressive role’ than during the standoff successful May. Induction of the archetypal indigenously designed diving enactment vessel, INS Nistar, and India’s archetypal associated patrols with the Philippines successful the South China Sea bespeak some capacity-building and alignment with a wider Indo-Pacific strategy, wherever a Chinese beingness astatine Karachi and Gwadar remains a cardinal factor.
Pakistan has besides reinforced its maritime signalling. In May, it dispersed assets from Karachi to Gwadar to mitigate vulnerability. Since then, it has launched the Chinese-built Hangor-class submarine, PNS Mangro, and showcased the domestically developed P282 ship-launched ballistic missile. In the months after, determination person besides been overlapping NOTAMs, rocket tests and live-fire drills — astatine times conscionable 60 nautical miles isolated — sustaining a rhythm of alerts and operational friction successful the Arabian Sea.
Strategic value of naval signalling
The surge of naval enactment pursuing Operation Sindoor raises a cardinal question of whether these parallel exercises are specified regular activities oregon a calculated amusement of unit implying a displacement successful the India-Pakistan deterrence equation successful the naval domain. The reply matters due to the fact that the existent crisis, portion resolved successful the aerial domain, has near down a residue of strategical uncertainty astatine sea. India and Pakistan look to beryllium recalibrating their naval postures, preparing not conscionable for deterrence but besides for the anticipation that the adjacent signifier of confrontation could unfold successful the maritime theatre.
This displacement indispensable besides beryllium understood against the broader equilibrium of capabilities. Much similar the aerial domain, the maritime equilibrium tin nary longer beryllium assumed to reflector the asymmetries of Kargil successful 1999, oregon India’s decisive superiority of 1971. India retains numerical and geographical advantages, but its naval fleet is aging, raising modernisation concerns. Pakistan is steadily expanding capabilities, inducting Chinese-designed submarines and Babur-class corvettes from Türkiye. With precocious radar, physics warfare suites, and versatile anti-air and anti-surface weaponry, these assets are significant.
Acknowledging this shift, India’s Navy Chief had besides pointed to the “surprising growth” of Pakistan’s naval fleet. While India’s borderline whitethorn inactive endure, the spread is narrowing, complicating assumptions of uncontested dominance successful the Indian Ocean. Taken together, these developments are important for 3 reasons: escalation control, outer engagement and shifting doctrines connected some sides.
First, escalation power is acold harder astatine sea. Unlike aerial skirmishes that whitethorn beryllium calibrated and walked back, immoderate naval engagement (ship-on-ship oregon ship-on-land) would transportation a higher hazard of crossing the warfare threshold. Memories of 1971, erstwhile Indian naval operations decisively tilted the conflict, adhd other sensitivity — adjacent constricted maritime enactment is associated with existential hazard successful Pakistan’s strategical imagination. Since then, Pakistan’s halfway maritime interest has been to avert a recurrence of its vulnerability to Indian naval operations, seen successful its pursuit of anti-access/area-denial (A2/AD) capabilities and gradual articulation of a doctrine oriented toward deterrence-by-denial.
The improvement of Gwadar nether the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor model indispensable besides beryllium understood wrong this deterrence logic. Pakistan’s decision-makers person for agelong said that Gwadar’s origins laic successful Islamabad’s ain strategical calculations than successful Beijing’s. Thus, Gwadar and Karachi look much than operational oregon economical hubs — they are besides intelligence unit points. Against this backdrop, should the Indian Navy beryllium drawn into nonstop operations successful future, abstraction for coercion abbreviated of warfare would shrink drastically, with India besides having to see the beingness and stakes of the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN).
External dimension
Second, parallel exercises and rocket tests by some sides whitethorn bespeak much than isolated drills, pointing to deliberate efforts to show readiness and complicate the adversary’s readying cycle. For India, the signifier whitethorn suggest an effort to support unit and signifier the post-crisis narrative, reflecting unease with however the post-Sindoor result has been perceived. Pakistan has sought to underscore the constituent that its Navy is nary longer the susceptible unit of 1971 and is signalling preparedness to deter coercion and complicate Indian operational readying successful the maritime domain. India appears intent connected retaining the inaugural done disposable demonstrations of capableness and hazard acceptance. This parallelism suggests that some sides whitethorn awesome preparedness and besides beryllium actively invested successful shaping a aboriginal “conflict-template” astatine sea.
Third, the outer magnitude is sharpening. Chinese engagement successful the Karachi and Gwadar ports erodes India’s assumed dominance by raising the spectre of PLAN enactment to Pakistan successful crisis. Türkiye’s emerging role, adjacent if constricted to proviso oregon training, adds different furniture of uncertainty.
These shifts substance due to the fact that they alteration however coercion and deterrence work. It has been reported that Indian deployments had forced Pakistan to disperse its fleet from Karachi, demonstrating dominance and imposing intelligence costs without triggering escalation, but that playbook whitethorn nary longer work. At the aforesaid time, projections of caller procurements and high-profile inductions whitethorn person fuelled expectations of a much salient naval relation successful the future, creating a dilemma — the coercive enactment whitethorn beryllium narrowing, but the unit to usage it is increasing.
Finally, determination whitethorn besides beryllium the occupation of strategical drift. Both militaries look to beryllium operating connected precedents from past crises, adjacent arsenic caller capabilities from hypersonic missiles to drones are altering the escalatory ladder. If situation decision-making remains anchored successful outdated assumptions, the hazard of miscalculation grows. In effect, the maritime theatre is becoming the abstraction wherever this cognitive spread volition beryllium tested.
The wide view
The naval constituent of the adjacent India-Pakistan situation is improbable to stay peripheral. Both sides whitethorn not conscionable beryllium investigating platforms but besides signalling thresholds astatine sea, wherever risks of miscalculation are qualitatively antithetic from the aerial domain. Unlike aerial skirmishes, naval deployments linger, continuously, shaping perceptions of intent and resolve.
Yet, paradoxically, this precise signifier whitethorn besides transportation stabilising effects. By investigating and observing each other’s tactics, manoeuvres, and caller applications of capability, some navies are gathering communal consciousness that may, implicit time, trim the fog of war. In this sense, the Indian Navy whitethorn beryllium acquiring insights into its Pakistani counterpart successful a mode the Air Force arguably could not anterior to Operation Sindoor.
For India, the situation volition beryllium to determine whether to dainty the maritime theatre arsenic an arena for aboriginal signalling oregon clasp it backmost arsenic a reserve domain of escalation. The commissioning of stealth frigates, accent connected associated patrols successful the wider Indo-Pacific, and thrust for indigenous capableness suggest that New Delhi is preparing for some possibilities: an expanded determination relation and a crisis-specific coercive lever. The question past remains whether the Navy volition beryllium drawn into frontline operations earlier than successful the past.
Hely Desai is simply a Research Associate astatine the Council for Strategic and Defense Research, New Delhi
