But Indian Navy also needs to build capabilities for threats in the neighbourhood

RAdm. Sudhir Pillai (retd)

The Indo-Pacific is entering a period in which the usual norms of naval warfare and operations no longer hold. China’s extending maritime reach, the proliferation of long-range precision weapons, and the rapid growth of unmanned systems that can sense, track and strike across vast distances have already begun reshaping operational realities. These developments are not abstract; they shape how the Indian Navy must think, plan and operate. Surveillance is increasingly persistent, decision cycles are increasingly compressed, and threats can now emerge from the air, the surface, the subsurface, outer space or the electromagnetic spectrum. Geography still matters, but the Indian Ocean’s natural spread and depth no longer guarantee strategic warning. In this environment, the navy’s ability to sense early, respond quickly and act as a single, coherent combat system will decide how effectively India can secure its maritime interests.

The war in Ukraine offers the clearest real-world demonstration of this shift. It shows how modern warfare, with sensors, drones, electronic warfare, automated targeting, and long-range precision weapons, operates within a tightly interlinked system. Russian forces now compress their sensor-to-shooter cycle to minutes, creating a battlespace that functions like a living surveillance-and-strike web. The lesson is stark: the decisive factor is not the performance of any single platform, but the speed, resilience and automation of the system that links sensors to weapons and decision-makers to effects.

These lessons apply directly to maritime theatres. Ukraine’s use of satellites, long-range missiles, coastal surveillance networks and explosive unmanned surface vehicles in the Black Sea reveals a new model of naval coercion. Russia, for its part, has fused drones, electromagnetic geolocation, artillery and loitering munitions into an integrated reconnaissance-strike system. Navies that continue to think in platform-versus-platform terms will fight the last war; those that adapt to this system-first logic will shape the next.

India’s naval aviation stands precisely at this point of transition. It must evolve from a collection of capable platforms into the central nervous system of an Indian maritime reconnaissance-and-strike complex—linking air, surface, subsurface, space and cyber inputs into a theatre-wide sensing, fusing and striking organism.

 AERO INDIA 2025 Admiral Dinesh K. Tripathi unveiled the indian Naval
Aviation-technological Roadmap 2047 during the Show

India’s Naval Aviation

A Capable But Thin Force: India today operates a mature and broadly effective set of naval air assets across the full spectrum of maritime missions. The Boeing P-8I remains the navy’s most potent airborne anti-submarine warfare (ASW) and intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) platform, able to stitch together a three-dimensional picture using sensors, reach and sophisticated fusion tools. The MiG-29K and, in time, the Rafale-M, with its more advanced sensors and operational reliability, provide the backbone of fleet air defence and maritime strike.

The MH-60R Seahawk has finally added long-overdue depth in air-delivered ASW and anti-surface warfare, allowing surface combatants to prosecute contacts well beyond their organic sensor limits. At the endurance end, the MQ-9B Sea Guardian—strengthened by operational experience from the leased fleet—will deepen persistent maritime ISR across the Indian Ocean Region (IOR), including key choke points, island territories and the wider seaward arcs that shape India’s maritime security.

This is a strong foundation. But it is a thin one. The numbers of each type are simply insufficient to cover the vast maritime spaces India must monitor. They are too few to sustain a continuous presence across multiple theatres, and too small a pool to absorb losses or support extended operations. In a theatre stretching from the Gulf of Aden to the Western Pacific, quality cannot substitute for quantity. The platforms are strong; the density is not.

A System of Systems: The central lesson from Ukraine is that platform excellence must sit inside a system that is coherent, fast and deeply connected