Boosting India with Maritime Domain Awareness

Context: Beyond monitoring Chinese activity in the Indian Ocean, India’s initiatives could help generate intraregional synergy

Challenges to the maritime security of India:

• Invisible enemies: in the form of a terrorist, a pirate, a criminal or a sea-robber (non-state actors.)
• Greater and Stealthier Chinese presence: Indian maritime planners have been wary of the possibility of a greater Chinese presence in the eastern littorals.
  • Recent discovery of a Chinese unmanned underwater vehicle close to a southern Indonesian island has demonstrated Chinese invisibility at seas.

India’s Initiatives: Improving Maritime Domain Awareness

• Expanding surveillance footprint:
  • Setting up radar stations: in Maldives, Myanmar, Bangladesh, Mauritius, Seychelles and Sri Lanka.
  • Monitoring Chinese activity in the eastern littoral: Through P-8I aircraft and other navy ships and deter any maritime adventurism by Beijing in the Andaman Sea and eastern chokepoints.
  • Installing an array of undersea sensors: near the Andaman Islands with the help of Japan to detect Chinese submarines.
• Neighbourhood synergies:
  • Indian Navy’s Information Fusion Centre-Indian Ocean Region (Gurugram): under it, Liaison Officers will be posted to various neighbouring nations like Bangladesh, Myanmar, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, the Maldives, Mauritius and the Seychelles.
  • Collaboration in the Western Indian Ocean:
    • A Liaison Officer posted at the Regional Maritime In­ formation Fusion Centre (RMIFC) (Under Indian Ocean Commission (IOC)) in Madagascar.
    • India recently gained the ‘observer’ status to the IOC. (through French connection)
    • Posted an of­ficer at the European Maritime Awareness in the Strait of Hormuz (EMASOH) in Abu Dhabi to assist in the monitoring of maritime activity.
• Fighting transnational crime in the littorals:
  • White shipping agreements: with 21 countries in the Indian Ocean.
  • India’s military satellite (GSAT-7A): will facilitate a real-time sharing of maritime information.
  • Security and Growth for All in the Region (SAGAR): Promoting the idea of India as a ‘security provider’ and ‘preferred partner’ in the Indo-Pacific region.

Conclusion: To bring real change, India must ensure seamless information flow, generating operational synergy with partners, and aim to expand collaborative endeavours in shared spaces.