Indian Navy Stood Tall In Operation Sindoor
Admiral Arun Prakash (Ret’d) PVSM, AVSM, VrC, VSM May 20, 2025
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.
This article has been taken from the Tribune newspaper of 20 May 2025. It can be found at this source: https://www.tribuneindia.com/news/comment/indian-navy-stood-tall-in-operation-sindoor/
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