Guarding sea lanes is no longer enough, the Defence Minister says, as threats range from naval activity to cyber attacks on the infrastructure beneath and along the waves.
India’s definition of maritime security needs to grow wider, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh said on Wednesday. Protecting shipping routes alone, he argued, no longer covers the full range of risks at sea.
Speaking at the Indian Indo-Pacific Regional Dialogue (IPRD) in New Delhi, Singh called for an upgraded, holistic surveillance architecture. It would protect critical assets such as offshore energy reserves, commercial ports and undersea data cables, and be built to handle both conventional naval threats and hybrid, non-traditional challenges.
Singh said shipping lanes remain essential, but so do ports, undersea cables, offshore energy installations and other critical maritime assets. He added that the ability to understand what is happening across maritime spaces has become just as important. Threats, he noted, can come from conventional military activity, but also from piracy, trafficking, illegal fishing, cyber attacks and natural disasters. “Our understanding of maritime security must therefore evolve,” he said, in step with the changing nature of the maritime domain.
The remarks point to a shift in how India approaches maritime domain awareness, from basic sea-lane patrolling to safeguarding a broader set of maritime infrastructure. Undersea cables show why. By one widely cited estimate, more than 95% of global internet traffic and financial transactions travel through submerged fibre-optic cables, which makes securing them a national security concern. Offshore oil wells, gas terminals and deep-water ports matter for similar reasons, since they underpin economic sovereignty and keep supply lines running.
Singh also drew attention to disruptions that do not come from states, including maritime cyber attacks, illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing, smuggling routes and climate-related disasters. Tackling them, he said, requires continuous, multi-agency tracking of the maritime domain and an agile naval response.
The address fits with India’s wider efforts to strengthen its blue-water naval posture and regional security presence in the Indian Ocean Region and the broader Indo-Pacific. The Indian Navy has been expanding its surveillance network with automated coastal radar chains, satellite-based tracking, acoustic sensors and unmanned aerial vehicles. By promoting a dynamic framework, India aims to uphold rules-based freedom of navigation while protecting critical economic nodes from evolving asymmetric threats.
