OPINION | Beyond Hormuz: The wider case for Indian Naval presence

The sinking of the Indian-flagged MSV Faize Noore Oliya off  Hodeidah in Yemen on August 4, struck by a projectile in the  Bab-el-Mandeb approaches to the Red Sea, drew the response one would expect: swift condemnation, coordination with Yemeni authorities, relief that all 14 crew, 13 of them Indians, were rescued. It also drew rather less attention than it should have, to a question that has been building for
some time—whether India's approach to protecting its own shipping has kept pace with the prevailing threat. This is not a new question. It was posed in some detail in another piece of mine, some weeks ago, in the context of the Strait of Hormuz.

Over 85 per cent of India's crude requirement and the great majority of its LNG arrive by sea and a quarter of hydrocarbon imports transit the Gulf and pass through Hormuz. Protection of sea lines of communication therefore has long been a foundational element of India's maritime doctrine, Operation Sankalp, launched in 2019 to safeguard Indian-flagged merchant vessels in the Persian Gulf and Gulf of Oman, demonstrating that the Navy has the institutional experience to safeguard maritime trade routes when required. The argument made then was that for India, the situation called for a visible, proactive commitment; measured, non-escalatory, but unambiguous.

The Faize Noore Oliya sinking suggests that the same argument now extends further East along the same coastline rather than Hormuz alone. All shipping between the Suez Canal and the Indian Ocean funnels through the narrow waters of the Straits of Bab-el-Mandeb, between Yemen and Djibouti.  Disruption there has, since late 2023, cost the shipping industry and our country dear in diverted routes, lengthened voyages, and rising insurance premiums. India's stake in this corridor is not abstract: Indian-flagged vessels and Indian seafarers have been directly at risk and will continue to be so, unless the threat posed to shipping is adequately addressed.  

There is also a longer-term dimension worth setting alongside the immediate one. China's dependence on the Malacca Strait for the bulk of its energy trade, and its vulnerability to disruption there, has been extensively studied by strategic analysts as a structural weakness that Beijing must plan around. India's geography presents an analogous structural feature at both ends of its western trade routes, like Hormuz and Bab-el-Mandeb, and unlike Malacca, both currently sit within active conflict zones rather than hypothetical ones. It would be prudent for India's own maritime planning to treat this as seriously as China is understood to have treated its own chokepoint exposure, rather than assuming that the present disruption is a temporary, regional matter that will resolve itself before it touches India's core interests.

A further consideration that deserves mention is that the Western Indian Ocean littoral, from the Gulf of Aden down the Somali coast, has in the past two years become considerably more crowded with external naval and training partnerships, including a defence cooperation agreement between Pakistan and Somalia signed in 2025, alongside an expanding Turkish military and naval footprint in the same waters that has grown to include training, port access, and an extended Gulf of Aden deployment mandate. None of this needs to be read as aimed at India. But India's own shipping in these waters is at present largely unescorted and reliant on the general maritime security architecture maintained by others. It would not be imprudent for the Indian Navy's planning assumptions to account for a Western Indian Ocean in which access, presence, and partnerships are being actively contested and reshaped by more than one party, and to ensure India's own position in that contest is not left to accrue by default.

None of this need involve dramatic gestures or confrontational posturing, any more than it did in the Hormuz case. Maritime security operations, convoy escorts where necessary, and enhanced naval presence in clearly proclaimed safe transit corridors would be in keeping with well-established practices among responsible naval powers, from long-running counter-piracy task forces to the European Union's more recent Red
Sea protection mission. Such measures are neutral, non-escalatory, and non-offensive by nature, and are designed to ensure that commerce continues to flow safely through
international waters.

India has, at various points, extended exactly this kind of support during the anti-piracy deployments of the previous decade, and through Operation Sankalp itself. What has been missing in the current context is not will or capability but consistency: a standing presence and a preparedness to shape the security architecture of these waters rather than simply participate in whatever framework others construct.

There is a case, too, for looking closely at the pace at which the Navy is able to acquire advanced equipment this fast-evolving environment increasingly calls for—unmanned surface and aerial systems, counter-drone and counter-swarm sensors, ballistic missiles, long-endurance assets etc, that did not feature prominently in maritime security planning even a decade ago. Suicide boats and remotely piloted craft have proven effective even against well-defended warships. Unescorted merchant ships would be much easier targets. The tools available to hostile and non-state actors alike are evolving faster than the traditional the legacy acquisition cycle is built to match. A time-bound, carefully scoped fast-track procurement mechanism for this category of hybrid-threat capability, of the kind the armed forces have used in other operational circumstances, would let the Navy close specific gaps.

If India's own maritime commerce were to require protection in a theatre so closely tied to its national interests, without India itself being visibly present in providing it, that would raise uncomfortable questions about the extent to which India is prepared to shoulder responsibilities that sit alongside its aspirations to strategic autonomy and to its recognition as the principal resident power of the Indian Ocean. The perception
that others must safeguard India's trade would sit uneasily alongside either aspiration.

India need not wait for a coalition to be built around it; there is a reasonable case for India itself proposing and anchoring a standing arrangement for the protection of merchant shipping across the Western Indian Ocean, drawing on its existing naval presence, its reach with Gulf and East African states, and the operational experience it has already accumulated. That would represent not escalation but the natural extension of a role India has performed before and is well placed to lead now.

The recent announcement of a Saudi-led multinational defensive maritime coalition for securing international trade routes and global energy supply routes in the Bab-el-Mandeb Straits, the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden is evidence that other regional powers too are conscious of this imperative.

The need of the hour, as was true in the Hormuz case, is clarity of purpose and strategic signalling. A measured, visible naval presence across India's western maritime approaches, focused squarely on safeguarding Indian shipping, seafarers, and energy flows, would represent not only prudent risk management but a reaffirmation of India's maritime responsibility, at a moment when that responsibility is being tested rather more directly than before.

(The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of THE WEEK.)