Given the emerging geopolitics of the Indian Ocean Region, what is the navy’s threat assessment, in the short, medium and long term? With these in mind, what is your roadmap for capability-building?

Force-level accretion and capability development is pursued factoring extended lead times and high investment costs required by maritime forces. We also continuously assess the future threat environment and technological trends, to identify major thrust areas and required critical capabilities. This enables our planners to monitor, update and review inter-se priority, make appropriate decisions to refine capability perspective plans, and allocate necessary financial, technical and human resources to aid the procurement and development process. The major thrust areas for us are: Indigenistion for Self-Reliance, Standardisation and Modularity, Maritime Domain Awareness, Network Centric Operations, Enhanced Reach and Sustainability, Power Projection and Sea Control, Force Protection, Joint Operations, Special Forces Operations, Force Maintenance, Infrastructure, Cyber and Logistics and New and Evolving Technologies.

The modernisation plan in future includes induction of aircraft carriers, ships, nuclear powered submarines, conventional submarines, and induction of certain state-of-the-art weapons, sensors and equipment. Further, development of technical and support infrastructure for maintenance of these new inductions is also being progressed.

Similarly, we are also focussing on induction of long-range sensor