There are moments in a nation’s life when its armed forces cease to be mere instruments of deterrence and become, instead, metaphors for what the nation itself seeks to be. The Indian Navy stands today at precisely such a moment, poised between legacy and leap, between import and innovation, between inherited doctrines and indigenous design. Aatmanirbhar Bharat is not merely a slogan of pride, but a philosophy of nationhood.
As a student of international politics at the London School of Economics, I was once taught that the character of a nation’s armed forces reflects not merely its strategic priorities but its civilisational temperament. Britain’s Navy, they said, built an empire; America’s, a global order; and China’s, a claim to history. India’s Navy, however, seemed for long a paradox – proud yet understated, powerful yet patient, modern yet rooted in ancient seafaring traditions. Over the years, as I have observed India’s ascent, I have come to see that our Navy embodies not just maritime capability but a philosophical evolution: from dependence to design, from silent deterrence to confident deterrence.
To understand what this means, one must first appreciate that India’s destiny has always been maritime. Long before colonial trade routes or modern geopolitics, the oceans carried Indian ideas, spices, ships and scripts from the Malabar to Malacca. The Indian Ocean was our first university and our first highway. When, therefore, we speak today of Viksit Samriddh Bharat, a self-reliant and prosperous India, we are in truth seeking to rediscover our maritime self: secure, outward-looking, yet anchored in indigenous confidence.
Combat Ready: The New Grammar of Maritime Power
Readiness, in military parlance, once meant hulls in the water and guns that fired. In our times, it also means minds that can adapt faster than adversaries, and machines that can think at the edge. Every ship, aircraft and drone becomes a node in an intelligent web of sensors and shooters. The force that wins will not be the one that sees the most, but the one that can decide the fastest.
In the maritime domain, self-reliance is not about building everything at home; it is about ensuring that every mission-critical element, including software, propulsion, encryption, or payload integration, remains within the sovereign circle of trust. It is measured in lines of code, test data, and verification rights.
For the Navy, this means embracing a distributed, digital and autonomous posture. From carrier battle groups to littoral surveillance craft, every platform must be capable of independent, data-driven operation even in communications-denied environments. The work already underway – indigenous unmanned surface vessels, ship-launched drones, AI-enabled decision systems – represents the quiet revolution transforming a legacy fleet into a living, learning organism.
Other navies have provided instructive examples. The US Navy’s Sea Hunter and Britain’s Autonomous Warrior programmes showed that autonomy is not a luxury but a necessity for survival in data-contested seas. The lesson is clear: it is not just the number of ships that defines a navy’s strength, but the number of decisions it can make. For India, autonomy ensures continuity of command when communication is jammed, resilience when logistics are stretched, and deterrence when visibility is total.
Here, combat readiness is not a static state of preparedness but a continuous process of iteration – software updated as swiftly as the sea itself changes colour. The architectures now being adopted allow mission logic to be reprogrammed domestically, ensuring sovereignty over both code and capability. Readiness thus becomes a function of autonomy – of our ability to design, test and deploy at the pace of threat.
Co-production deepens trust. When partners share code, testing pipelines and certification processes, interoperability becomes an inherent property of design. Indian officers operating alongside allied fleets can thus seamlessly integrate into coalition networks without compromising their sovereign command
Aatmanirbhar: The Discipline of Self-Reliance
Autonomy, however, cannot exist without authorship. To command the algorithm, one must first write it. This is where Aatmanirbharta, India’s doctrine of strategic self-reliance, moves from slogan to system. Aatmanirbharta, properly understood, is not an act of isolation but an act of discipline. In the maritime domain, self-reliance is not about building everything at home; it is about ensuring that every mission-critical element – software, propulsion, encryption, or payload integration – remains within the sovereign circle of trust. It is measured not merely in rupees saved or components sourced domestically, but in lines of code, test data, and verification rights that remain under Indian custody.
The Navy’s approach has been quietly revolutionary in this regard. Its indigenisation roadmap demands not just domestic assembly but domestic comprehension. The Integrated Electric Propulsion programme, the combat management systems aboard INS Vikrant, and indigenous sonars like HUMSA-NG and USHUS mark a deliberate progression from license-production to full design authority. Each success shifts the intellectual centre of gravity from vendor to nation.
For a country operating across 11,000+ kilometres of coastline and three oceanic theatres, this level of control is non-negotiable. A sealed black box labelled ‘secure’ is as dangerous as an open-source module without certification. The balance lies in a disciplined architecture – sovereign cores, modular interfaces, and auditable updates. The result is a fleet that is not only self-reliant but self-defining.
Co-Production, Co-Development: The Strategic Symbiosis
True self-reliance, paradoxically, demands partnership. The age of closed national silos is over; technology evolves too fast, and security challenges too fluidly, for any nation to master every domain alone. India’s path, therefore, lies in co-production and co-development – collaborations structured not around dependency but reciprocity.
Autonomy is not gifted; it is established, line by line of code, bolt by bolt of steel, and trust by trust across oceans. It involves independence through intelligent interdependence, reinforced by alliances. This is how India can move from being a consumer of security to a producer of stability across the Indo-Pacific
Across the Indo-Pacific, such symbiotic arrangements are already reshaping the defence landscape. The co-development of propulsion modules with France, the joint exploration of advanced autonomy architectures with American firms, and the growing network of naval innovation hubs with Japan and Australia all point to a new model of strategic cooperation: open in design, sovereign in execution.
In these partnerships, India does not merely buy hardware; it co-creates capability. Every iteration of joint design builds the muscle memory of innovation within our shipyards, laboratories and startups. Private industry, from propulsion manufacturers in Pune to AI developers in Bengaluru, now feeds into a national maritime grid. Each contract becomes a classroom; each prototype, a passport to greater independence on a more rapid timeline.
Co-production also deepens trust. When partners share code, testing pipelines and certification processes, interoperability ceases to be an afterthought and becomes an inherent property of design. Indian officers operating alongside allied fleets can thus plug seamlessly into coalition networks without compromising sovereign command – a balance that will define 21st-century warfare as surely as nuclear deterrence defined the last.
India now stands at the edge of its next great transformation. To secure the promise of a Viksit Samriddh Bharat, we must invest not just in ships and systems but also fund our laboratories as steadfastly as we fund our fleets, empower private industry as deeply as we empower public enterprise, and pursue partnerships that strengthen rather than substitute our own capability.
Autonomy, after all, is not gifted – it is built, line by line of code, bolt by bolt of steel, and trust by trust across oceans. This is the new grammar of Aatmanirbhar power: independence through intelligent interdependence, autonomy reinforced by alliance. It is how a nation of over a billion can move from being a consumer of security to a producer of stability across the Indo-Pacific. Combat-ready, cohesive, and Aatmanirbhar, India will stand as the living proof that self-reliance at sea is a critical path to sovereignty on land.
The writer as Managing Director for India is the strategic lead for all of Shield AI’s operations in India and is committed to bringing cutting-edge advanced unmanned systems and AI-pilot technology to bear for the Indian warfighter. He has more than 17 years’ experience managing large complex businesses across the defence, real estate and finance sectors. He holds a BSc in International Relations & History from the London School of Economics & Political Science, where he specialised in information-centric warfare and hard power in international relations. He also holds an ADP in Philosophy from the University of Cambridge and an MBA from Harvard Business School, where he focused on the dynamics of cross-border defence technology transactions
