Are India and Pakistan preparing for a naval face-off in a future conflict?
Islamabad, Pakistan – When Indian Minister of Defence Rajnath Singh visited the Indian Navy's aircraft carrier INS Vikrant on May 30, nearly three weeks after a ceasefire was announced with Pakistan after a four-day conflict, he had stern words for Islamabad.
Wearing an Indian Navy baseball cap, with his initial 'R' emblazoned on it, Singh declared that Pakistan was fortunate the Indian Navy had not been called upon during the recent hostilities.
'Despite remaining silent, the Indian Navy succeeded in tying down the Pakistani Army. Just imagine what will happen when someone who can keep a country's army locked in a bottle, even by remaining silent, speaks up?' Singh said, standing in front of a Russian-made MiG-29 fighter jet on the deck of the 262-metre-long (860 feet) ship.
Just two days later, on June 1, the Pakistan Navy issued a pointed response. In a message posted on X, it announced a two-day exercise, 'focusing on countering sub-conventional and asymmetric threats across all major ports and harbours of Pakistan'.
These symbolic shows of strength followed India's 'Operation Sindoor' and Pakistan's 'Operation Bunyan Marsoos', the countries' respective codenames for the four-day conflict that ended in a ceasefire on May 10.
The standoff was triggered by an April 22 attack in Pahalgam, in Indian-administered Kashmir, in which 26 civilians, almost all tourists, were killed. India blamed armed groups allegedly backed by Pakistan, a charge Islamabad denied.
On May 7, India launched missile strikes at multiple sites in Pakistan's Punjab province and Pakistan-administered Kashmir, killing at least 51 people, including 11 soldiers and several children. Over the next three days, the two countries exchanged artillery and air power, hitting each other's airbases.
The 96 hours of conflict brought 1.6 billion people to the brink of war. But while the navies largely remained passive observers, they monitored each other's movements – and were ready for action.
Satellite imagery showed that the INS Vikrant moved towards Pakistan soon after the Pahalgam attack and remained deployed for four days in the Arabian Sea before returning to its base in Karnataka.
Pakistan also mobilised its fleet, which was bolstered by the docking of a Turkish naval ship in Karachi on May 2. According to the Pakistani Navy, Turkish personnel engaged in 'a series of professional interactions' with their counterparts.
Now, even amid the current pause in military tensions, analysts say Singh's remarks and Pakistan's naval drills highlight the growing part that maritime forces could play in the next chapter of their conflict. This is a role the Indian and Pakistani navies are well-versed in.
After independence from Britain in August 1947, India inherited two-thirds of British India's naval assets.
These saw no use during the first India-Pakistan war in 1947, over the contested Himalayan region of Kashmir. India and Pakistan both administer parts of Kashmir, along with China, which governs two thin strips. India claims all of Kashmir, while Pakistan claims all the parts not controlled by China, its ally.
By the 1965 war, also over Kashmir, Pakistan had expanded its fleet with aid from the United States and United Kingdom, its Cold War allies. It had acquired Ghazi, a long-range submarine, giving it an edge over India, which lacked a submarine at the time, though it owned an aircraft carrier. Pakistan, to date, does not have an aircraft carrier.
While the land war started on September 6, the Pakistan Navy joined the conflict on the night of September 7-8. A fleet of seven warships and submarine PNS Ghazi left Karachi harbour and made their way towards the Indian naval base of Dwarka in the western state of Gujarat, roughly 350km (217 miles) away.
They were tasked with carrying out the 'bombardment of Dwarka about midnight using 50 rounds per ship', according to the Pakistan Navy's official account, targeting the base's radar and other installations.
The selection of Dwarka was significant from a historical and strategic perspective. The city is home to one of the most sacred sites for Hindus, the Somnath Temple, on which the Pakistan Navy named its operation.
Militarily, the radar installations in Dwarka were used to provide guidance to the Indian Air Force. Knocking them out would have made it harder for India to launch aerial attacks against Pakistani cities, especially Karachi. That, in turn, would have forced India to send out its warships from the nearby port of Bombay (now Mumbai) – and PNS Ghazi, the submarine, could have ambushed them.
But the Pakistani plan only partly worked. Many Indian warships were under maintenance, and so the Indian Navy did not send them out to chase the Pakistani fleet.
According to the Pakistan Navy's accounts, after firing about 350 rounds, the operation ended in 'four minutes' and all its ships returned safely.
Syed Muhammad Obaidullah, a former commodore in the Pakistan Navy, recalled the attack.
'We were able to send eight vessels, seven ships and a submarine – that surprised the Indians, as our ships targeted the radar station used to assist Indian planes,' Obaidullah told Al Jazeera.
Muhammad Shareh Qazi, a Lahore-based maritime security expert, added that the operation was a tactical surprise, but did not lead to any gains in territory or of the maritime continental shelf.
'All our ships returned safely, without resistance, but it was only an operational-level success for the PN, not a strategic one,' he said, referring to the Pakistan Navy.
Official Indian Navy records claim that most of the shells fired by Pakistani ships caused no damage and remained unexploded.
Anjali Ghosh, a professor of international relations at Jadavpur University, Kolkata, in her book India's Foreign Policy, described the attack as 'daring' but symbolic rather than strategically meaningful.The 1971 war, fought over East Pakistan's secession to become Bangladesh, saw more substantial naval engagements.
India launched two operations – Trident and Python – which dealt major blows to Pakistan's Navy, sinking several ships, including the destroyer PNS Khaibar and minesweeper PNS Muhafiz, and destroying fuel tanks at Karachi Harbour.
Uday Bhaskar, a former commodore in the Indian Navy, said the navy played a pivotal role in India's 1971 victory.
'The naval role enabled the final outcome on land,' Bhaskar, the current director of the Society for Policy Studies, an independent think tank based in New Delhi, told Al Jazeera.
Pakistan also suffered the loss of its prized submarine Ghazi, which sank while laying mines near Visakhapatnam in Andhra Pradesh, home to India's Eastern Naval Command.
The one major victory for the Pakistani Navy was its torpedoing of the Indian frigate INS Khukri using its submarine Hangor, which killed more than 170 Indian sailors.
Qazi, who is also an assistant professor at Lahore's Punjab University, said that the Indian Navy replicated the Pakistani playbook from the 1965 war in the way it surprised the Pakistan Navy.
'India caused a heavy blow to Pakistan and our naval capabilities were severely dented,' he said.
Since the 1971 war, India and Pakistan have approached different naval strategies.
Obaidullah, who retired from the Pakistan Navy in 2008, said that India has tried to build a 'blue water navy' capable of projecting power across oceans. The idea: 'To assert its dominance in [the] Indian Ocean,' he said.
Qazi, the maritime expert, agreed, saying that the Indian Navy has focused not just on building a numerical advantage in its naval assets but also on partnerships with nations such as Russia, which have helped it develop a powerful fleet.
'The Indian Navy now has the ability to conduct missions that can cover long distances, all the way down to Mauritius near southern Africa, or even some adventures in [the] Pacific Ocean as well,' he said.
As the world's fifth-largest economy, India has invested heavily in naval development.
According to the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), a London-based research institute focusing on defence and security issues, India has 29 principal surface combat vessels, including two aircraft carriers, 12 destroyers, 15 frigates and 18 submarines, of which two are nuclear-powered.
Pakistan, by contrast, has prioritised its land and air forces. Its navy has grown more slowly, mainly through cooperation with China and Turkiye. It regularly holds major naval exercises with its allies, with the last one taking place in February this year.
IISS data shows that Pakistan's navy lacks aircraft carriers and destroyers but includes 11 frigates, eight submarines and at least 21 patrol vessels.
Obaidullah explained that Pakistan's naval ambitions and objectives are very different from those of India.
'India aims to project global power. We have a defensive navy to secure our sea lines of communication and deter aggression,' the former naval officer said. With more than 95 percent of Pakistan's trade sea-based, protecting maritime routes is its top priority.
Maritime expert Qazi also said that the Pakistani Navy is focused on defending its 'littoral zones'. From a naval perspective, a 'littoral zone' is a critically important area close to coastlines, unlike the open ocean's 'blue water' expanse. It is within this space that countries engage in coastal defence.
'Pakistan has a small economy, and we do not have blue water ambitions. We do not have the capacity to build a fleet, nor [do] we need one,' Qazi said. 'Our defence paradigm is about defending our coastlines, and for that, we have our submarines, which carry cruise missiles.'
The latest conflict saw both conventional and modern warfare, including drones used to strike deep inside each other's territory. But Singh's May 30 remarks suggest a more assertive naval posture in future conflicts, say analysts.
'If Pakistan does any unholy act this time, it is possible that the opening will be done by our navy,' Singh said during his speech on May 30.
Bhaskar, the Indian commodore who retired in 2007, agreed that future conflicts could see naval escalation.
'If another military conflict escalates, the probability of navies being actively involved is high,' he said.
Bashir Ali Abbas, a New Delhi-based maritime affairs expert and former fellow at the Stimson Center, in Washington, DC, said that naval platforms inherently serve multiple roles.
Abbas said that warships and submarines can switch from patrolling missions or exercises to operational missions on short notice. But that would carry risks of its own.
'Should the Indian Navy play a substantial role in operations against Pakistan following the next crisis, then the element of escalation control practically disappears. Any ship-on-ship, or ship-on-land engagement will imply that India and Pakistan are at war,' he told Al Jazeera, adding that the risk of inadvertent nuclear escalation is also potentially highest in the nuclear domain.
Qazi, however, said that Singh's statement was ambiguous about whether the Indian Navy would engage in surveillance or aggression.
Any attack on Karachi, Pakistan's economic hub, would provoke a strong response, the Lahore-based analyst said.
'I believe India will choose to play hide and seek like it did this time,' Qazi said. But he added that there was a 'high probability' that India could attack Pakistan's naval installations on land, including its planes and radar stations. And that, he said, was an 'alarming possibility'.
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'Field Marshal Asim Munir called me to tell me they had captured one of the Daesh-K [ISKP or ISIS-K] individuals,' he said. As the icing on the cake for the bilateral relationship, Weinbaum suggested, Pakistan has thrown in 'more goodies, such as a trade deal with no tariffs, offering rare earth minerals, and crypto'. Weinbaum previously served as an analyst for Pakistan and Afghanistan in the US State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research. Rare earth minerals, critical for industries like defence, robotics and electronics, are among Pakistan's assets now being offered to foreign investors, including the US and Saudi Arabia. Pakistan has also recently formed a crypto council and held talks with US officials to attract investment and partnerships. Rumi called the Munir-Trump meeting 'historic'. 'The US wants Pakistan's help in de-risking regional volatility without offering much in return. For Munir, it's an opportunity to reassert relevance and perhaps negotiate manoeuvring space at home,' he said. Historically, Pakistan's ties with the US have been largely transactional, particularly in the security sphere. US aid and investment often followed Pakistan's alignment with US strategic goals, helping build its infrastructure and military. But the relationship has also been marked by distrust, with US administrations accusing Pakistan of double-dealing, while Pakistan claims the US has failed to respect the sacrifices it has made while siding with them. Whether this latest engagement proves to be another fleeting phase or a more durable alignment remains to be seen, say experts. Rumi, the New York-based academic, said the US has traditionally engaged Pakistan when it needed to, and retreated when it could. 'Unless this relationship is institutionalised, beyond the security lens with which it is viewed, it's another tactical romance. And like past dalliances, it could fade once strategic goals are met or regimes change,' he said. Ansar added that Pakistan again stands on the brink of a major strategic choice amid the global power shift. 'Much depends on whether it leans toward China or the US. That decision is also tied to the evolving Israel-Palestine conflict and the role of Iran,' he said. But Weinbaum, the former State Department official, described the reset in ties as temporary, as 'nothing is permanent in this administration'. 'If Pakistan does play some role in the Iran crisis, they have could have more substantial meaning to these ties. But it needs to be prepared that there is nothing settled with this administration. It can change on a dime, at any hour,' he said. The military remains Pakistan's most powerful institution, exerting enormous influence over politics and society. It has ruled directly for more than three decades, and the current government, elected in a controversial vote last year, is widely seen as secondary to the military leadership under Munir. This is consistent with historical precedent. Pakistan's first military ruler, Field Marshal Ayub Khan, had close ties with the US in the 1960s. Subsequent military rulers, including General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq in the 1980s and General Pervez Musharraf in the 2000s, also maintained strong US relations. All three were hosted by US presidents at the White House – but only after they became heads of state. Munir, now only the second Pakistani to hold the rank of field marshal after Khan, reinforces the perception that Pakistan's real power remains with the military, despite the presence of a civilian government, say experts. Still, CUNY's Rumi said it was important not to 'confuse symbolism with transformation'. 'This [Trump-Munir] meeting validates the enduring military-to-military track in US-Pakistan [ties], but it also bypasses the civilian setup, which should worry anyone rooting for democratic consolidation. If this is the 'reset,' it's one where khaki once again trumps ballot,' he cautioned, referring to the colour of the military's uniform. Ansar from PoliTact concurred, saying that the meeting reflects adversely on the civil-military balance in Pakistan, as it showed who remains the 'real power bearer' in Pakistan. 'In the long run, these dealings in the past have led to tremendous political, economic and security-related repercussions for the nation [Pakistan],' he said. 'But additionally, it has promoted a norm that critical decisions impacting the nation must be made in private without discussion, consensus or public ownership. This results in increased societal and political disillusionment regarding the future of the country.'
