India’s strategic interests in the Indian Ocean Region require a strong naval presence across both its Western and Eastern flanks. Ideally, this would mean operating three aircraft carriers—two actively deployed while the third undergoes maintenance or upgrades. This has long been the Indian Navy’s vision for achieving true blue-water capability.
Within naval circles, aircraft carrier command is often seen as the pinnacle of naval leadership, fuelling an ongoing rivalry between proponents of carrier-based power projection and those advocating for submarine dominance. However, financial and operational constraints have forced the Navy to scale back its ambitions, with only two carriers in service for the foreseeable future. The third carrier—the size of INS Vikrant, when commissioned, will likely serve as a replacement for the ageing INS Vikramaditya rather than expanding the fleet. While the long-term goal remains three carriers, this reality is unlikely to change for at least a decade or more.
The government’s recent decision on carrier acquisition has sparked intense debate over whether it signifies a fundamental shift in India’s naval doctrine or simply a pragmatic adjustment by focusing on more nuclear-powered submarines, or SSNs. However, the evolving strategic landscape suggests that rigid binary perspectives may no longer be sufficient to understand India’s maritime security challenges.
It is important to recognise that while a blue-water navy is technically defined as a maritime force capable of operating globally, India is not an expeditionary power like the United States or France. Unlike these nations, India does not maintain permanent deployments far from its mainland or operate bases in distant locations.
India’s naval objectives are twofold. Strategically, it focuses on power projection within the Indian Ocean Region and ensuring freedom of navigation across the broader Indo-Pacific. Tactically, its priority is to adapt to evolving security challenges, particularly as the Indo-Pacific becomes increasingly vulnerable to hybrid threats.
Budgeting battle readiness
Aircraft carriers remain a crucial and highly visible symbol of a nation’s naval strength and battle readiness. Power projection will remain essential for the Indian Navy, even if border disputes with China are resolved. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is committed to containing India’s rise, both on land and at sea. India and China will always need to manage their relationship, but they will never be fully aligned.
While China seeks to lead a unipolar Asia, India envisions a multipolar Asia with itself as a key player. However, the biggest challenge remains funding—India’s indigenous aircraft carrier is estimated to cost $5 billion, exceeding the Navy’s entire budget. But there is more. The capability of India’s carriers, which is measured in displacement, is far less than what the Chinese carriers have.
Another important point—when I say “battle ready,” it is often interpreted in a conventional sense, referring to preparations for a potential full-scale war. While that remains true, the reality becomes far more complex when viewed through the lens of the Indo-Pacific’s security dynamics. The region is already entrenched in grey-zone warfare, constantly navigating tensions and uncertainties, even without an outright conventional conflict breaking out.
Also read: India’s long-term growth is in securing its seas. When will the Navy budget reflect this?
Maritime lessons
The Russia-Ukraine war offers crucial lessons for India and other nations, highlighting both conventional and hybrid warfare scenarios. In the Black Sea, Ukraine has successfully countered Russia’s naval power through a combination of advanced drones like the Magura V5, Neptune missiles, and precise intelligence gathering. Despite Moscow’s superior naval strength, including aircraft carriers, warships, and frigates, it has been forced to redeploy its Black Sea Fleet from Sevastopol in Crimea (which it annexed in 2014) to Novorossiysk in Russia. And it is even considering a new port in Georgia’s breakaway region, Abkhazia. This shift underscores Russia’s struggle to combat modern, asymmetric threats. While Ukraine remains disadvantaged on land, its naval successes demonstrate key takeaways for future maritime warfare.
A different dynamic is unfolding in the Baltic Sea, a region historically vulnerable to hybrid attacks. This vulnerability has intensified following the Russia-Ukraine war, especially with Sweden and Finland joining NATO. Although a full-scale conflict between NATO and Russia appears unlikely, the Baltic Sea remains a hotspot for grey-zone warfare. Attacks on critical infrastructure—including the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, the Balticconnector pipeline between Finland and Estonia, and undersea communication cables—highlight the growing threat. In response, France, Germany, Norway, Sweden, and Finland, along with NATO and the European Union, have ramped up investments in Unmanned Underwater Vehicles (UUVs) to monitor and protect vital maritime infrastructure.
When these lessons are applied to the Indo-Pacific, the security challenges become even more complex. Unlike Europe, the Indo-Pacific lacks a tangible security alliance to counter hybrid threats. While regional actors balance great power rivalries and China’s unilateral moves to alter the status quo, they remain poorly equipped to tackle hybrid threats. This reality reiterates the need for India to enhance its maritime power projection—not just for strategic influence but also for securing its own deployments. Challenges such as the vulnerability of critical infrastructure, China’s destabilising activities, and the unregulated use of artificial intelligence make it clear that waiting for a full-fledged conflict to address security concerns is not an option.
For India, two key lessons emerge from these conflicts. First, being “battle-ready” extends beyond conventional warfare to include countering hybrid threats. Second, while India may aspire to a third aircraft carrier, financial constraints and evolving maritime threats suggest a more pragmatic focus on submarines—particularly nuclear-powered SSNs that can remain submerged for extended periods—and, of course, underwater drones. Just as aerial warfare has transformed with drone swarms making battlefields more transparent, underwater warfare is becoming increasingly accessible and unpredictable due to advancements in sea drones.
Unlike costly aircraft carriers, sea drones—ranging in size, capability, and function—can carry out diverse missions, from monitoring environmental changes to targeting warships and critical infrastructure. Their affordability also enables plausible deniability, as technologically adept adversaries can develop effective sea drones using commercially available components. Even the most advanced explosive-laden sea drones cost significantly less than long-range missiles, let alone SSNs.
In the pre-drone era, stealth submarines were ideal for remaining undetected while maintaining sea control. However, with technological advancements, China’s SSN programme is already integrating submarine and drone capabilities. Reports suggest Beijing has developed the Feiyi, a drone capable of launching from a submarine, transitioning between sea and air, and returning to the same vessel. This innovation signals a future where traditional distinctions between submarines and drones blur, allowing unmanned systems to be piloted with greater precision and efficiency.
For India, delaying a third aircraft carrier is not merely an option. Given budgetary limitations and the evolving hybrid warfare landscape, an additional carrier is unlikely to serve India’s maritime security needs effectively. Instead, India must prioritise SSNs, underwater drones, and advanced missile capabilities to counter the growing naval power imbalance with China. Strengthening Maritime Domain Awareness (MDA) through partnerships with key allies—such as Quad members, France, and the EU—will be essential. Enhancing data-sharing mechanisms, complementing the Information Fusion Centre for the Indian Ocean Region (IFC-IOR) with over 40 participating countries, will further bolster India’s ability to navigate the increasingly contested maritime domain.
As Prime Minister Narendra Modi heads to Paris for the AI Summit hosted by France, New Delhi and Paris must discuss cooperation on UUVs. France has already offered India technology for co-developing SSNs and advanced UUVs to counter China’s expanding sea drone capabilities. While the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO)’s plan to equip submarines with indigenous Air Independent Propulsion (AIP) systems is promising, its timeline remains uncertain. Indigenous development must go hand in hand with foreign collaboration where necessary. Rather than viewing it as a binary, India should prioritise co-development and co-production, ensuring a higher degree of indigenous content to stay afloat in this evolving domain.
Discussions about India’s maritime strategy—whether focused on sea denial versus sea control, or the debate between aircraft carriers and SSNs—often feel incomplete and directionless. As Admiral Arun Prakash rightly pointed out, such debates will remain inconclusive unless they are anchored in a clearly defined national security strategy. Without this foundation, these discussions risk becoming mere ad hoc reflections rather than meaningful and synergistic progress.
India’s strategic aspirations continue to be shaped by a pattern of reactive and ad hoc decision-making, which hinders long-term synergy. The real concern is that, when this issue is highlighted, it is often dismissed as “not India’s way” despite the evident setbacks caused by shifting priorities and lost time in pursuing an ever-elusive goal.
Swasti Rao is Consulting Editor, ThePrint and a foreign policy expert. She tweets @swasrao. Views are personal.
(Edited by Zoya Bhatti)
Why. That is the only anguished query that one can summon.
According to our socialist leaders, money should not be spent on strong naval presence, but only on freebies, subsidies, and loan waivers.