Indian Navy’s growing role in securing the Indian Ocean

On average, some 60,000 cargo vessels transit through the Strait of Malacca each year, one every nine minutes

By Ajai Shukla

19th Sept 2025, The Diplomat

https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/8726844009873922462/3442868443286289434

 

Recent political developments in some Indian Ocean island nations, particularly Mauritius, are enhancing New Delhi’s leverage and prestige in the region. Last May, in accordance with a United Nations (UN) resolution that 116 nations, including India voted for, the United Kingdom (UK) made over to Mauritius the strategic Chagos archipelago.

 

However, London and Washington retain joint control over Diego Garcia, the largest island in the Chagos. This remains a US-UK military base, strategically poised at the centre of the Indian Ocean. 

 

New Delhi, which has historically opposed colonialism, is urging the UK to withdraw its “colonial administration” from Diego Garcia, restoring Mauritius’ sovereignty over the entire Indian Ocean island chain. 

                

Securing Chokepoints

 

Further north in the Indian Ocean, the Indian Navy continues to secure two choke points – the Lakshadweep and the Andaman & Nicobar islands – through which international commercial shipping is funnelled. 

 

All Pacific-bound shipping from the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Aden converges on a 200 kilometres-wide funnel called the Nine Degree Channel (named after its latitude) that India’s Lakshadweep island chain straddles. Recognising the Lakshadweep archipelago’s domination of the Indian Ocean sea lanes of communication (SLOCs), India’s military established a naval base on Lakshadweep last April. 

 

After transiting through the Lakshadweep Islands and passing Sri Lanka from the south, international cargo and hydrocarbon shipping enters the Bay of Bengal. Here sits another Indian strategic jewel – the Andaman and Nicobar Islands 1,200 kilometres from the Indian mainland. These islands dominate the international SLOCs that runs through them, past the 200-kilometre wide Six Degree Channel, before entering the Malacca Strait, the gateway to the South China Sea. Over the last two decades, India has transformed the Andamans from a military backwater into the bristling Andaman & Nicobar Command (ANC), complete with a fighter aircraft base on the so-called Car Nicobar island. In 2012, the Indian Navy inaugurated a naval air base, INS Baaz, at the very mouth of the Malacca Strait. This base, which will eventually have a 10,000-foot runway for fighter operations, takes India’s air strike power 300 kilometres closer to the Malacca Strait than from Car Nicobar. 

 

The ANC is India’s first (and so far only) tri-service command, headed in rotation by three-star generals, admirals and air marshals, who report directly to the Integrated Defence Staff in New Delhi.

 

The militarised Lakshadweep and Andaman islands together give India a double stranglehold over the Indian Ocean SLOCs. Iran’s bluster about shutting down the Strait of Hormuz rightly evokes scepticism, but sea power analysts mostly agree that the Indian Navy, with its flotilla of over 150 modern warships, would be able to shut down the Indian Ocean SLOCs whenever it chooses. That would jeopardise not just the crude oil supplies of China, Japan and the ASEAN states, but also the reverse flow of exports that are crucial to these economies. All told, some 60,000 cargo vessels move through the Strait of Malacca each year, one every nine minutes.

 

Positioning itself as the “gatekeeper to the Indian Ocean” and as the “preferred security partner” to the littoral navies, New Delhi nurtures strong security ties with neighbouring island nations such as Mauritius, Maldives, Seychelles and Sri Lanka. The Indian Navy provides them patrol vessels, surveillance aircraft, equipment and training, preparing them for monitoring their respective Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZs). The Indian Navy regularly conducts joint naval exercises, providing smaller warships and coast guard vessels for training personnel in maritime surveillance and providing humanitarian aid and disaster relief (HADR) assistance during emergencies like the COVID-19 pandemic and the Asian tsunami in 2004. 

 

While navies such as those of the US, the UK and France come and go from the South China Sea, India’s navy is the only one that operates persistently between the Malacca Strait and Qatar, the forward headquarters of the United States Central Command (USCENTCOM). For most western navies, this is the route that leads on to the contested and militarised waters of the South China Sea.

 

Need for ships, submarines and air assets

 

New Delhi has long argued that its navies’ force levels are hardly excessive, being only a fraction of rival navies such as those of China. Over the year 2025-26, the Indian Navy has commissioned only seven capital warships – a moderate boost to a fleet that has taken on the responsibility of safeguarding the sea lanes of communication (SLOCs), in an oceanic space through which transits more than half of all global trade.

 

Even this force accretion is hardly excessive. On January 15^th the Indian Navy commissioned five frontline warships, all of them designed and built in India’s primary warship building facilities -- the Navy Warship Design Bureau (NWDB) in Delhi; and Mazagon Dock Shipbuilders Limited (MDL), Mumbai.

 

These included the frigate INS Nilgiri, the lead vessel of Project 17A – a class of seven stealth frigates that are being built under Project 17A at the Naval Base, Visakhapatnam. Alongside that was INS Surat, the fourth and last destroyer built under Project 15B; and INS Vagsheer, the sixth and last Scorpene-class submarine being built under Project 76.

 

On August 26, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh commissioned two more guided missile frigates – INSUdaygiri and INS Himgiri. This was the first time in India’s warship building history that two surface combatants, constructed indigenously by two different shipyards, were commissioned on the same day. INS Udaygiri has been built in Mumbai by MDL, while INS Himgiri was built in Kolkata by Garden Reach Shipbuilders & Engineers Limited (GRSE). 

 

Additionally, during the current year, two Krivak III class frigates – INS Tushil and INS Tamal – were acquired from Russia. These are part of a contract for four frigates, of which two are to be built by Russia and the other two by an Indian shipyard.