India's maritime strategy for 2026: securing the sea lanes in a no-war, no-peace ocean

In May 2026 the Indian Navy released its third public maritime strategy, the Indian Navy Maritime Security Strategy 2026, replacing Ensuring Secure Seas of 2015 and following Freedom to Use the Seas of 2007. Aligned with the Indian Maritime Doctrine 2025, the strategy formally recognises conditions of no war, no peace — persistent competition below the threshold of armed conflict, including congestion, deception and grey-zone activity — alongside multi-domain operations and jointness across the armed forces. It is the doctrinal response to an ocean that has become more crowded, more contested and more central to India's security than at any time since independence.

The strategy's urgency was demonstrated in 2026 by the Strait of Hormuz crisis, through which a large share of the world's oil and liquefied natural gas normally flows. Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, addressing the Navy's Commanders' Conference in New Delhi on 29 September 2026, highlighted Operation Urja Suraksha, which supports the transit of Indian-flagged merchant vessels through the strait, and noted that India receives about 85 to 90 per cent of its crude oil and around half of its natural gas through maritime routes. The same address recorded that naval deployments now extend to the South China Sea, the Mediterranean and the Atlantic, and that recently commissioned warships contain more than 75 per cent indigenous content, with 18 warships planned for induction or commissioning during 2026 — described as the largest single-year addition in the service's history.

Institutional architecture has kept pace with doctrine. The Colombo Security Conclave was upgraded in April 2026 from a loose dialogue into a formal regional security organisation with a permanent secretariat in Colombo, with six full members — India, Sri Lanka, Maldives, Mauritius, Bangladesh and Seychelles — working across maritime safety, counter-terrorism, trafficking, cyber security and humanitarian assistance. The Information Fusion Centre–Indian Ocean Region, hosted by the Navy in Gurugram and linked with 28 partner countries, provides the information-sharing backbone, while the fifth Goa Maritime Conclave in February 2026 supported coordination against illegal fishing, human trafficking and transnational maritime crime.

India also deepened its role in wider coalitions, assuming command of Combined Task Force 154 under the Combined Maritime Forces in February 2026; during its tenure, Kochi hosted Operation Southern Readiness, involving 276 personnel from 27 countries. On 29 October 2026, Singh publicly reaffirmed India as a trusted net security provider committed to a free and stable Indo-Pacific, freedom of navigation and international maritime law. The strategy's test, as with all doctrines, is whether the deployments, partnerships and shipbuilding it describes can protect the sea lanes on which India's energy and trade depend when those lanes are contested.