Indian Navy stood tall in Operation Sindoor

OPERATION Sindoor has served as a compelling demonstration of India’s growing military capabilities in several key areas. The technical means to acquire intelligence of targets deep inside the opponent’s territory; to strike them with long-range missiles with pinpoint accuracy — all the while maintaining a multi-layered, impervious air defence of its own assets. This capacity for waging “non-contact warfare”, using guided weapons and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) without ground troops or air forces crossing borders, marks a paradigm shift in warfare.

In this context, maritime power has, historically, specialised in employing strategies that aim to achieve political objectives through their presence and “non-contact” force projection rather than by engaging in direct combat. Decades ago, Admiral Sergey Gorshkov (Commander-in-Chief, Soviet Navy, 1956-85) had described the perennial utility of naval power: “Demonstrative actions by the fleet, in many cases, have made it possible to achieve political ends without resorting to armed action, merely by application of pressure and threat of military operations.”

The Indian Navy’s (IN) 2015 maritime strategy offers, in detail, various options for potential force projection. These include maritime strikes with carrier-borne aircraft or long-range weapons like the ship-launched BrahMos, or the ship/submarine-launched Klub land-attack missiles. In order to apply “strategic leverage, including economic and psychological pressure”, the strategy also envisages disruption/denial of the adversary’s use of the sea for military purposes and maritime trade.

The IN, while drawing up its contingency plans for Operation Sindoor in coordination with sister services, would have taken note of Pakistan’s maritime vulnerabilities stemming from its geography, relatively limited naval capabilities and economic dependence on key coastal infrastructure.

Pakistan’s 1,000-km-long coastline, stretching mostly across the troubled province of Balochistan, hosts just a handful of ports. Of these, only Karachi, Port Qasim and Gwadar handle merchant ship traffic, while Ormara is a naval base and the rest are fishing harbours. Pakistan’s economy, already strained, relies heavily on maritime trade, mostly through Karachi and Port Qasim. Disruption of shipping traffic to and from these ports, even temporarily, can cause a significant impact on Pakistan’s economy, industry and military operations, apart from affecting public wellbeing and morale.

As far as naval strength goes, the IN is a diverse and substantial force organised into two fleets, each fielding an aircraft carrier and a cohort of missile-armed destroyers and frigates as well as fleet support vessels. India’s submarine force of nuclear and diesel-powered submarines is strategically deployed on both seaboards. The Pakistan Navy (PN) is relatively smaller and lacks many of these key assets.

While the IN aspires to play the role of a blue-water navy, with power-projection capabilities across the Indian Ocean and beyond, the PN’s focus is primarily on coastal defence and maintaining credible maritime deterrence against India through a strategy of “sea denial”. Although the past few decades have seen both navies growing in size and capabilities, the IN has managed to retain its significant edge.

In the 1971 war, India’s maritime power had played a key role in the outcome of the operations in both theatres of war. In the west, it had undertaken two attacks with ship-launched surface-to-surface missiles, inflicting attrition on the PN and heavy damage to the Karachi port, bringing its operations to a halt. In the eastern theatre, the IN’s carrier-borne aircraft had ranged far and wide over East Pakistan and inflicted heavy damage on ports, shipping and riverine traffic. The trauma of this conflict has lingered in the Pakistani psyche, and PN units did not venture forth during Operation Sindoor.

Today, a major advantage accrues to the IN from its comprehensive capability for “maritime domain awareness”. This is a dynamic framework that receives inputs from satellites, aircraft, UAVs, ships and coastal radars to compile a real-time operational picture of all activities at sea in the region. The availability of “situational awareness” on a 24x7 basis in all three dimensions enables the IN to keep track of the adversary’s moves and respond with alacrity to any suspicious activity. The PN lacks a similar facility.

“Naval compellence” has, historically, been a useful instrument of state policy to influence the behaviour of others and force an adversary to do something he does not want to do, or to stop him from doing something that he intends to do. This is achieved by the deployment of coercive sea-based forces, which may or may not involve actual violence.

During media briefings by the three armed forces, the Director General of Naval Operations announced that within hours of the Pahalgam terror attack, the IN had deployed a powerful task force composed of destroyers, frigates and submarines, led by the aircraft carrier, INS Vikrant, in the Arabian Sea, south of Karachi. Posing a serious challenge in numbers and capability to the Pakistani fleet, this force established a de facto blockade, confining PN units to their harbours. Units of the task force are understood to have conducted live missile firing drills to revalidate crew readiness and ensure operational preparedness of units.

From its location in international waters, where it could have remained poised for prolonged periods, the IN carrier group acted as a force for “compellence”. Through rapid deployment and strategic positioning of overwhelming maritime power, India confined Pakistan’s navy to harbour, disrupted its maritime operations and reinforced its dominance in the Arabian Sea.

The IN task force had ample firepower to target ships, harbours and shore facilities with missiles having a range up to 300-450 km at sea. But the Navy, true to its sobriquet of the “Silent Service”, has not said so.

Admiral Arun Prakash (retd) is former chief of naval staff.