Regional capacity building, stronger capabilities, joint-focused operations, real-time information-sharing, and fixing the problem of undersea cables being cut by state and non-state actors are among the steps needed “for a safer maritime environment,” Vice Admiral G Ashok Kumar (Retd) said in a special address at the Indo-Pacific Regional Dialogue (IPRD) 2025.
Setting the tone, he stressed that collaboration must be the anchor of any plan. “There is no option but to have a multinational approach in addressing maritime security threats. Collaboration is the key,” he said.
Describing IPRD 2025 as “a meet-up to make the Indian Ocean safer and stronger,” he said the forum is meant to turn “talk into action” on climate risks, secure shipping, ports and undersea cables, and the blue economy for countries working together.
Explaining why the stakes are high, the Vice Admiral noted that “80 per cent of global trade is maritime in nature,” adding that these flows “contribute quite handsomely to the GDPs of each one of our countries.” He pointed to other core blue-economy pillars—fisheries, oil and natural gas, seabed minerals, reliance on undersea cables for international communication, and ports and harbours as national gateways. “India, for instance, has more than three lakh fishing boats,” he said, underlining how livelihoods and economies depend on the sea.
He warned that as interests have grown, “the threats have evolved” beyond piracy, gun-running, smuggling, illegal human migration and IUU fishing. “We also have maritime terrorism which tries to stay one step ahead of the security forces,” he said. Threats now include missiles and drones striking merchant ships “hundreds of miles into the sea,” and undersea cables that “get cut once in a while.”
Citing the Gulf of Aden, he underlined both intent and accident at sea: cable disruptions occur frequently—“more than 60 percent of the times”—and, crucially, “it is because some merchant ships have dropped anchor and dragged the undersea cable along,” he said. Much of Asia–Europe connectivity transits the Bab-el-Mandeb, where depths are about 180 metres, compounding the risk.
He also flagged the “increasing numbers and frequencies of cyclones”—with one having hit the Andhra coast “last night”—which drive recurring HADR needs across the region, alongside continued concerns over IUU fishing. Calling the maritime domain inherently transnational, he illustrated that a piracy attack in the Gulf of Aden is not just Somalia’s or Yemen’s problem.
To coordinate at home, he pointed to India’s recent creation of the National Maritime Security Coordinator, “a post which is able to get all the agencies together.”
The Vice Admiral closed with a simple prescription and a warning: build capacity together, share information, run joint operations, and protect the seabed lifelines—because “collaboration is the key,” and without it, the seas that power our economies can quickly become our weakest link.
Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: ZEE News
