Securing the Indian Ocean: Elevating the India-Australia maritime partnership

Executive summary

• The Indian Ocean is an increasingly contested geopolitical space facing complex and multidimensional maritime security challenges. As highly capable and resident Indian Ocean states, there is growing recognition that India and Australia can play a much larger role in maintaining and shaping a stable, rules-based regional maritime order.
• However, while a visible congruence of interests and mutual concerns has drawn New Delhi and Canberra closer together, the maritime partnership lacks coordination at the regional level and remains heavily dominated by a myopic focus on military maritime security threats.
• Joint activities in the South Asia subregion of the Indian Ocean — which overlaps with Australia’s conceptualisation of the North-East Indian Ocean — hold great prospects for making the maritime partnership more tangible. Building on the robust bilateral foundation built through sustained political engagement, now is the time to elevate this partnership to better contribute to regional security.
• This report examines the strategic importance of the Indian Ocean, specifically the South Asia subregion, to both India and Australia and the key sources of maritime insecurity here. Through an assessment of existing individual national contributions to regional maritime security — specifically through maritime capacity building initiatives in key littoral and island states, namely Sri Lanka, the Maldives and Bangladesh — it identifies how coordination in respective strategies is pragmatic.
• Coordination will help India and Australia to embrace burden-sharing opportunities to maintain a favourable balance of power while meeting partner countries’ needs. At the bilateral level, the report explores how India and Australia can complement their strong naval presence activities, with initiatives that address the diverse non-traditional security challenges facing the region to better contribute to regional security.

This report explores how India and Australia can complement their strong naval presence activities, with initiatives that address the diverse non-traditional security challenges facing the region to better contribute to regional security.

Recommendations

To advance a resilient and coordinated maritime partnership, India and Australia should:

1. Expand bilateral maritime cooperation to better integrate initiatives focused on regional non-traditional security challenges.
   a. Formalise cooperation between the Indian Coast Guard and the Australian Maritime Border Command to strengthen staff-to-staff linkages and improve operational and cooperative linkages.
   b. Prioritise non-traditional security threats by making maritime security a regular agenda item at ministerial level dialogues and greater Track 1.5 and 2 interactions.
   c. Improve cooperation on maritime cybersecurity using the Australia–India Cyber and Critical Technology Partnership to support collaborative research projects which address joint solutions to safeguarding critical maritime infrastructure from cyber-attacks.
2. Build regional capacity through bilateral coordination of existing maritime capacity building strategies in partner South Asian countries.
   a. Coordinate delivery of maritime safety and security equipment to avoid duplication and improve efficiency.
   b. Coordinate existing capacity building initiatives to improve maritime domain awareness (MDA) capabilities of regional states.
   c. Launch co-hosted naval training programs and improve linkages with regional coast guards through Australian participation in existing exercises.
   d. Build institutional capacity and knowledge networks in South Asian countries to address environmental security threats, including establishing regional centres of excellence.

Introduction

Home to one-third of the world’s population and carrying two-thirds of global oil shipments and a third of bulk cargo,¹ security in the Indian Ocean is crucial for maintaining stability of the world order. Beyond serving as a conduit for international trade, the Indian Ocean is also home to vital marine resources and accounts for 15% of all reported global marine catches.²

By virtue of geography, both India and Australia are vitally dependent on the Indian Ocean. Maintaining free and open access to the Indian Ocean’s sea lanes of communication and natural resources is therefore crucial for protecting Indian and Australian national security and economic interests. Both also acknowledge the importance of working with like-minded partners to achieve this.³

Old chromolithograph map of the Indian Ocean. Source: Getty

Despite identifying a shared maritime geography and announcing a “Joint Declaration on a Shared Vision for Maritime Cooperation in the Indo-Pacific,”⁴ progress on deepening bilateral cooperation between India and Australia lacks regional coordination and a sustained focus on non-traditional security challenges. Both countries are looking to do more in the South Asia subregion of the Indian Ocean to deepen security relations and enhance the capacity of littoral countries and island states; however, their efforts remain parallel rather than coordinated. Working together would amplify their individual efforts, avoid duplication and elevate the partnership at the regional level.

Despite identifying a shared maritime geography and announcing a “Joint Declaration on a Shared Vision for Maritime Cooperation in the Indo-Pacific,” progress on deepening bilateral cooperation between India and Australia lacks regional coordination and a sustained focus on non-traditional security challenges.

This report seeks to address the question of why and how India and Australia can elevate their bilateral maritime partnership through five sections:

1. Indian and Australian interests in the South Asia subregion of the Indian Ocean
2. The key sources of maritime insecurity in this region
3. India and Australia’s individual contributions to regional maritime security
4. The development of the bilateral maritime security partnership between India and Australia and why this cooperation needs to be extended to South Asia.
5. Policy recommendations: How India and Australia can better contribute to regional maritime security in South Asia through bilateral initiatives and cooperation focused on coordinating capacity building.

1. Indian and Australian interests in the South Asia subregion of the Indian Ocean

For India, located at the centre of the Indian Ocean and surrounded by it on three sides, the ocean serves as a lifeline. Around 90% of India’s trade by volume, including nearly all its oil imports, transits through it.⁵ India is also dependent on the Indian Ocean for fisheries, resources and tourism. Securing its vast coastline of 7500 km and over 1300 islands also represents significant security challenges. The 2008 terrorist attack in Mumbai — which was facilitated using Indian Ocean maritime routes — highlights the importance of ocean surveillance to India’s territorial homeland security.

Australia, too, has direct interests in ensuring security in the Indian Ocean. Around half of its sea freight export departs from ports along the western coastline, which includes almost all its iron ore shipments.⁶ In 2024, 62% of Australia’s international trade (by volume) passed through Western Australian ports.⁷ Among the Indian Ocean littoral countries, it has the longest coastline and correspondingly the largest Search and Rescue Zone (SAR) and Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ).⁸ The Indian Ocean’s strategic importance is reflected in the positioning of Australia’s military assets. Approximately half of Australia’s naval fleet is located on the Indian Ocean coast, including the six Collins-class submarines that currently comprise its fleet, based at HMAS Stirling, south of Perth.⁹

Despite its importance, historically, Australia has paid relatively less attention to the Indian Ocean in its strategic planning due to more pressing concerns in Southeast Asia and its immediate South Pacific neighbourhood. However, in more recent foreign and defence documents, greater emphasis has been placed on the Indian Ocean, especially after Canberra adopted the ‘Indo-Pacific’ as a geographic construct in which the Indian and Pacific Oceans are viewed as one contiguous theatre. The North-East Indian Ocean (NEIO)¹⁰ through maritime Southeast Asia and the Pacific, have been identified as Australia’s “primary area of military interest” in the 2023 Australian National Defence Strategic Review (DSR)¹¹ and as its “immediate region” in the 2024 National Defence Strategy (NDS).¹² Within the NEIO, the NDS states that defence engagement with Sri Lanka, the Maldives and Bangladesh, in addition to India (as a “top-tier security partner”), will be prioritised. The DSR specifically calls for the expansion of Australia’s Defence Cooperation Program — the Department of Defence’s key outreach program, which seeks to build capacity of international partners to common security challenges — to the NEIO.

NEIO overlaps with India’s immediate maritime neighbourhood, as part of the South Asia subregion¹³ of the Indian Ocean, specifically covering the maritime area surrounding Sri Lanka, the Maldives and Bangladesh. India is uniquely positioned in the sub-region, sharing maritime borders with Sri Lanka and the Maldives and a maritime boundary with Bangladesh.¹⁴ Since the early 2000s, New Delhi has made steady investments in building its own naval and maritime capabilities to emerge as one of the strongest naval powers among its neighbours and the dominant resident regional maritime security provider, alongside the continued presence of the United States as the pre-eminent extra-regional naval power.

New Delhi has made steady investments in building its own naval and maritime capabilities to emerge as one of strongest naval power among its neighbours and the dominant resident regional maritime security provider, alongside the continued presence of the United States as the pre-eminent extra regional naval power.

It has strengthened bilateral security relations with its neighbours and aspires to be their “preferred security partner.”¹⁵ India’s leadership role has been well recognised by both regional and extra-regional actors, especially because of the Indian Navy’s proactive role as ‘first responder’ to natural and human-made disasters. Prominent examples include India’s prompt naval deployments to the 2004 tsunami in the Maldives (Operation Castor) and Sri Lanka (Operation Rainbow) and the 2007 cyclone in Bangladesh (Operation Sahayata). Most recently, India extended assistance to Sri Lanka (Operation Sagar Bandhu) in response to the December 2025 Cyclone Ditwah.

The security environment within this subregion is undergoing a period of rapid change as China’s expanding presence has resulted in the intensification of its strategic competition with India. Meanwhile, threats from non-traditional security actors have proliferated and evolved, including challenges such as piracy and armed robbery, Illegal, Unreported and Unregulated (IUU) fishing, contraband smuggling, irregular human migration and maritime cyber-attacks. Littoral states are additionally vulnerable to a significant number of environmental security threats — driven by climate change and human activity — all of which have important geo-strategic consequences. As these threats become more diffuse and multidimensional, India and Australia’s role in shaping a stable, rules-based maritime order will only increase.

2. Key sources of maritime insecurity in South Asia

There are two main sources of maritime insecurity in South Asia. The first is the intensification of strategic competition. The second stems from the multifaceted non-traditional security threats to maritime governance, compounded by environmental security challenges.

Intensification of strategic competition

Increasing competition in maritime South Asia is playing out against the backdrop of the simultaneous rise of India and China, both with regional leadership ambitions. Increasing Chinese military presence is part of Beijing’s “two oceans” approach to maritime security.¹⁶ The approach expands the People’s Liberation Army Navy’s (PLAN) presence beyond its Pacific neighbourhood into distant waters — including the Indian Ocean — to protect its growing economic and energy security interests. Although China has no direct access to the Indian Ocean, Beijing has been steadily expanding its naval footprint.¹⁷ According to some estimates, PLAN already has over 100 warships and submarines¹⁸ capable of conducting Indian Ocean operations, which is only expected to increase as part of Beijing’s naval modernisation and expansion plans. Currently, China’s only overseas base, located in Djibouti on the western shores of the Indian Ocean, enhances PLAN’s power projection capabilities across the entire ocean.¹⁹ Other activities suggestive of Chinese intention to maintain persistent military presence include frequent deployment of dual-use survey ships to collect data in India’s EEZs and its surrounding waters.²⁰ While Beijing insists that such data is for commercial and research purposes, it has clear military value, especially to submarine operations by collecting bathymetric and seabed data necessary for route planning and safe navigation of underwater military assets.²¹

Simultaneously, China is strengthening security ties — beyond its “all weather” strategic partnership (a term used to describe the long standing, enduring ties) with Pakistan²² — to include other smaller South Asian countries in the NEIO, particularly Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. After Pakistan, Bangladesh is the second-most significant recipient of Chinese military equipment worldwide.²³ Between 2010 and 2020, China accounted for 73.6% of Bangladesh’s foreign military acquisitions, which included submarines, jet trainers and other major equipment.²⁴ Chinese state-owned defence contractor, Poly Technologies, built the Bangladesh Navy’s only submarine base, located in Cox’s Bazar, at an estimated cost of US$1.2 billion.²⁵ In Sri Lanka, Beijing pursues “softer methods of defence diplomacy” which include port visits, joint exercises, exchanges, training, and supply of non-lethal equipment and communications systems.²⁶ Traditionally, Chinese security engagements with the Maldives have been low, but this is changing with recent agreements signed between Malé and Beijing. In an unprecedented move, in 2024, during a visit by a Chinese delegation headed by the Deputy Director of the Office for International Military Cooperation, both sides signed an “agreement on China’s provision of military assistance.”²⁷ Details of the agreement remain limited, except that it commits Beijing to provide the assistance gratis, i.e. at no cost.

These initiatives have raised concerns that Beijing is looking to displace India’s position as a key security provider of choice in its neighbouring countries. Complementing these engagements, Beijing has also built economic influence in these countries through pursuing large-scale investments, including maritime infrastructure projects, under the rubric of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).²⁸

India is particularly sensitive to China’s presence, a country with which India has had multiple border conflicts, including most recently in 2020.²⁹ Beijing’s increased presence in India’s maritime neighbourhood has raised New Delhi’s fears of strategic encroachment along both its continental and maritime borders. India is also concerned that China is using its increasing influence in its neighbouring South Asian countries to gain military access to their ports.³⁰ An example of this is when a Chinese-flagged survey vessel, Yuan Wang 5 — suspected of carrying out surveillance on Indian ports — docked in Hambantota International Port in Sri Lanka in 2022.³¹ Notably, Chinese state-owned China Merchants Group controls the port on a 99-year lease and has a majority controlling equity stake.³² Beijing’s involvement in deep-sea port development projects at Matarbari and Payra in Bangladesh further aggravates fears of eroding India’s naval dominance in the region.³³

Concerned about the implications of China’s rise for the regional order, the maritime democracies of India, Australia, Japan and the United States have come closer together as part of the Quad. Increasing Chinese military presence significantly impinges on India and its Quad partners’ ability to exercise sea control in a crisis or conflict.³⁴ For Australia specifically, increasing Chinese presence would strain its already limited military resources in the region, forcing the Royal Australian Navy (RAN) and Australian Defence Force (ADF) to refocus their posture and assets to the west.³⁵ The resulting intensification of the Quad-China competition is metamorphosing the Indian Ocean’s ‘zone of peace’ status,³⁶ aggravating the maritime insecurity of smaller states over concerns of the militarisation of maritime South Asia and being forced into conflict between larger nations.

Challenges to maritime governance from non-traditional security threats

Beyond military threats, this subregion faces a plethora of persistent non-traditional security threats, including piracy and armed robbery, IUU fishing, organised crime at sea — such as irregular human migration — and maritime incidents (Figure 1).

Emerging hybrid threats from new technologies like maritime cyber-attacks have further complicated these challenges. Across the Indian Ocean, cyber-attacks are increasingly targeting shipping vessel navigation systems particularly through jamming and spoofing the global navigation satellite system and Automatic Identification System (AIS) receivers.³⁷ This has direct spillover on the shipping industry where private companies have to deal with higher costs for security, rerouting and insurance as well as ensuring safety of seafarers and vessels.³⁸ Research survey by Thetius, a maritime technology research firm, estimates that between 2021-2023, cyber breaches have cost maritime industry organisations on average US$550,000.³⁹ Beyond implications for maritime trade, cyber-attacks could also result in data breaches, which can be exploited for illicit activities.

The intensity of both persistent and emerging non-traditional security threats is directly related to under-resourced maritime governance by resident states, especially smaller littoral and island states. While international law places the onus of maritime governance on states, many countries are yet to achieve sophisticated levels of MDA — understood as the ability to monitor and track activity in oceans and seas — as well as comprehensive indictment capabilities, defined as the use of force or coercion to interrupt or stop illicit maritime activity, to counter evolving threats at sea. Limited resources coupled with responsibility over vast maritime zones, place them at a significant disadvantage in executing maritime governance functions. For example, the Sri Lankan Navy, responsible for responding to maritime contingencies in its SAR region (roughly 28 times its landmass),⁴⁰ has limited blue water capabilities,⁴¹ i.e. ability to sustain long-range operations beyond territorial waters to manage incidents occurring across the open oceans.

Similarly, since resolving its maritime disputes with Myanmar and India, Bangladesh has gained much wider maritime territory and significantly expanded its EEZ. Although Dhaka has been trying to expand maritime enforcement capabilities through procurement of more assets and personnel as part of the Forces Goal 2030 program⁴² — Bangladesh Armed Forces’ strategic modernisation program, initiated in 2009 and revised in 2017 — budgetary constraints and a deficient legal framework remain significant challenges to effective maritime governance.⁴³ With an extensive and congested inland waterway, combined with poor enforcement of safety regulations and frequent severe weather, Bangladesh is home to one of the highest rates of marine accidents globally.⁴⁴ Currently, its Coast Guard lacks sufficient resources and personnel strength to fulfil its vast responsibilities.⁴⁵

Comprised of roughly 1,190 islands, the Maldives is one of the most geographically dispersed countries globally, with more than 99% of its area covered by sea.⁴⁶ As a small archipelagic developing state without a navy, Malé is heavily reliant on foreign assistance and cooperation with neighbouring countries to meet its maritime security needs.⁴⁷

HMAS Rankin leads Indian Navy Ships Shivalik and Kadmaat and HMAS Warramunga during AUSINDEX 21.Source: Australian Department of Defence

Lastly, environmental security threats serve as threat multipliers significantly impacting overall maritime security. Climate change and marine pollution are already resulting in an overall decline in fish stocks in Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and the Maldives, contributing to rising IUU fishing. As coastal countries, fisheries are a key source of income and employment, and its sustainability is essential to meet these countries' national nutrition requirements. Bangladesh’s fish biodiversity is already significantly declining due to climate change.⁴⁸ According to survey reports conducted in 2018, Sri Lanka’s fish stocks have already dropped by about 80% of historical baselines established from fisheries stock surveys carried out between 1978 and 1980, largely due to marine plastic pollution, overfishing and illegal fishing.⁴⁹ World Bank estimates suggest that Sri Lanka’s EEZs could experience a 16-44% drop in maximum fish catch potential by 2050 due to climate change under a high emission scenario, resulting in export value losses of up to US$118 million annually.⁵⁰ For the Maldives, the projected impact is nearly existential, with a decrease of almost 100% in fish catch potential by the end of the century under a high-emission scenario, translating to almost 99% revenue reduction from fisheries if no adaptation action is taken.⁵¹

3. Indian and Australian contributions to regional maritime security in South Asia

Small island states and developing littoral economies in South Asia face acute challenges in executing maritime governance functions due to constraints imposed by competing developmental priorities, procurement gaps and limited funding. Consequently, higher capacity states like India and Australia have both prioritised capacity building as a key area of engagement with these countries to build influence. To ensure the security of their national interests in the face of an increasingly aggressive China, Australia and India are also expanding their active military presence in the region. While India has a long history of such engagement and presence, Australia is a relatively new actor.

India

Driven largely by concerns of Chinese forays, since the early 2000’s, the Indian Navy has slowly been reinforcing its military capabilities to project power and ensure security in maritime South Asia. Much of India’s naval modernisation has been along its eastern shores, which include a major base for India’s Eastern Fleet, headquartered in Visakhapatnam. It has also built extensive military assets, including a naval air base, in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. These are clear signs of its pursuit of the consolidation of maritime hard power.⁵²

India’s approach to the protection of vital sea lanes and crucial trade chokepoints also involves pursuing coordination with regional maritime agencies. The Indian Navy has built robust operational ties with Sri Lanka, the Maldives and Bangladesh through regular port visits⁵³ and institutionalised exercises (see Table 1). India has also assisted in undertaking EEZ surveillance and hydrography surveys for Sri Lanka and the Maldives to monitor their maritime zones and prepare nautical charts.⁵⁴

India is also actively involved in the training of naval and coast guard personnel from these countries through regular embarkation of foreign cadets on its cadet training ships⁵⁵ and staff exchanges at different levels of seniority.⁵⁶ According to former commander of the Sri Lankan Navy, Admiral Jayanath Colombage, nearly 80% of the Sri Lankan Navy personnel in 2013 had received some of their training in India.⁵⁷ The majority of training slots, under India’s Indian Technical and Economic Cooperation (ITEC) — New Delhi’s global civilian and defence training program — are allotted to countries in its neighbourhood.⁵⁸ Between 2022-2024, India provided 11500+ ITEC slots including both civil and defence trainings, out of which countries in the neighbourhood have used 6250+ slots.⁵⁹

In its role as a security provider, New Delhi has prioritised building collaborative security relationships with neighbouring maritime countries, exemplified through the announcement of Security and Growth for All in the Region (SAGAR). Launched in 2015, SAGAR entails building closer security and economic ties with its maritime neighbours. As part of this, it has also provided military equipment to enhance maritime enforcement capabilities of Sri Lanka and the Maldives and delivers specific technical and maintenance support for the assets listed in Table 2.

India has also been providing assistance to neighbouring countries by providing coastal-surveillance radar systems to the Maldives and Sri Lanka for developing their MDA capabilities. First provided to Sri Lanka, Seychelles and Mauritius as part of efforts to build a coastal surveillance radar network in 2015,⁶⁰ the Maldives was added to the network in 2019.⁶¹ India also has an MoU with Bangladesh (signed in 2019) to set up a network of surveillance radars, although implementation on this front has been slow.⁶² Since New Delhi established the Information Fusion Centre — Indian Ocean Region (IFC-IOR) — a multinational centre built with the aim to promote collaboration for maritime safety and security — in 2018, it has emerged as the principal hub for enabling information exchange in the region, establishing 76 linkages in 28 countries.⁶³ Currently, it hosts liaison officers from 15 partner countries, which include Sri Lanka, the Maldives, Bangladesh and Australia. To pursue economic cooperation, India has been providing development assistance and making investments in these countries, including maritime connectivity projects.⁶⁴ These projects seek to improve regional connectivity and strengthen India’s trade ties with its neighbouring countries, while simultaneously countering China’s influence through BRI. However, such projects have been constrained by India’s relatively limited financial resources and bureaucratic inefficiencies.⁶⁵

Through these initiatives, India has established for itself a credible reputation as a regional security provider. However, faced with the pressure of rising Chinese influence, as well as growing non-traditional security threats, New Delhi is increasingly recognising the need for partnerships to ensure security in the Indian Ocean. To shoulder the responsibility for regional security, it has actively signalled its willingness to engage with like-minded partners. During the announcement of SAGAR, Prime Minister Modi said, “those who live in this region have the primary responsibility for peace, stability and prosperity in the Indian Ocean…we recognise that there are other nations around the world, with strong interests and stakes in the region,” inviting cooperation with partners like Australia.⁶⁶

Faced with the pressure of rising Chinese influence, as well as growing non-traditional security threats, New Delhi is increasingly recognising the need for partnerships to ensure security in the Indian Ocean.

The intensification of India-China competition has, however, adversely impacted India’s regional security role. The SAGAR initiative was heavily focused on ‘security’ over ‘growth’, evidenced by the lack of practical initiatives on blue economy and environmental sustainability, reducing them to little more than declarations of noble interest. India’s dominant position in the region has also aggravated negative sentiments in smaller neighbouring countries, domestically fuelling what they perceive as hegemonic behaviour.⁶⁷ This was evident from the Maldives' decision not to renew a hydrographic survey agreement with India in 2024, citing concerns about India’s access to sensitive data.⁶⁸

Acknowledging this, in 2025 India revamped its SAGAR vision to MAHASAGAR — standing for Mutual and Holistic Advancement for Security and Growth Across Regions — extending focus beyond mutual security to include economic growth, sustainable development and deepened trade and technology ties.⁶⁹ While still in its nascent stages, such an approach potentially allows India to better acknowledge environmental and economic challenges faced by regional states under MAHASAGAR and add it to its existing maritime capacity-building approach.

Australia

Despite its strategic equities in the NEIO, Australia’s defence and security engagements in maritime South Asia, beyond India, are quite thin. This is in stark contrast to its well-established network and presence in maritime Southeast Asia.⁷⁰ Historically, Australia depended on military predominance of partners Britain and then the United States to preserve its security interests in the Indian Ocean. This resulted in the lack of an active RAN presence in the region. Currently, with just 50 commissioned vessels and around 16,000 personnel,⁷¹ limited capacity and competing strategic priorities across the vast Indo-Pacific continue to strain the RAN’s ability to sustain a persistent presence.

Australia does not have any dedicated bilateral naval exercises with either Bangladesh, Sri Lanka or the Maldives. Existing naval interactions with Sri Lanka are mostly limited to basic interoperability drills such as passing exercises (PASSEX)⁷² and infrequent port visits⁷³ primarily as part of the ADF’s multilateral Indo-Pacific Endeavour (IPE) engagements, which began in 2017. With the Maldives National Defence Force, IPE has focused primarily on capacity-building workshops and cultural “faith-based” engagements, rather than building interoperability.⁷⁴ The RAN’s last visit to Bangladesh was in 2014 — the first in “many decades” — indicating the infrequent nature of Canberra’s naval engagements with a resident Indian Ocean state.⁷⁵

Nevertheless, Australia plays an important role in regional security. It is in Australia’s interest to expand regional partnerships to protect its own maritime borders from criminal activity, especially human smuggling. MDA and capacity building stand out as “priority capability areas” shaping Australia’s defence partnerships in the NEIO.⁷⁶ This sits with Australia’s larger approach to strengthening developing countries’ sovereign capabilities, rather than creating dependencies.⁷⁷ Notably, it also signals Australia’s ambition of taking on a more important regional security role by reinforcing its identity as a middle power and trusted partner, especially when strategic competition with China is intensifying.

Notably, it also signals Australia’s ambition of taking on a more important regional security role by reinforcing its identity as a middle power and trusted partner, especially when strategic competition with China is intensifying.

In 2022, the Australian Government announced a A$36.5 million investment over five years across the NEIO, to improve regional cooperation on maritime shipping, disaster resilience and information sharing.⁷⁸ Previously, the Australian Maritime Safety Agency completed a three-and-a-half-year Search and Rescue Capability Partnership Program to improve SAR capabilities in the Maldives, Mauritius and Sri Lanka.⁷⁹

Recently, Australia has been investing in building bilateral security relationships with these countries through focused capacity-building initiatives. In April 2024, the Australian Government donated a high-performance Stabicraft patrol vessel and announced plans to provide advanced surveillance drones and maritime monitoring equipment to Sri Lanka.⁸⁰ Previously, Australia had donated equipment such as King Air 350 Maritime Surveillance Aircraft,⁸¹ marine radios, echo sounders, and a vessel monitoring and radio tracking system to help Sri Lanka combat illegal fishing.⁸²

Australia supports Bangladesh’s maritime capabilities through training and technical assistance and is looking to strengthen the civil maritime security relationship through cooperation between their coast guards.⁸³ The Bangladeshi Coast Guard has already received several operational items from Australia and is now set to receive technical assistance, including aerial drones, to boost the coast guard’s surveillance capabilities.⁸⁴

Australia is looking to enhance security engagements with the Maldives through regularising high-level engagements with the Defence Policy Talks, initiated in 2024.⁸⁵ The 2024 talks focused on capacity building and skill development within the Maldives’ defence sector.⁸⁶ Subsequently, in June 2025, Australia gifted the Maldives an Australian-built Guardian-class Patrol Boat, a rare instance of providing such civilian maritime security assets outside the Pacific.⁸⁷ In addition, Australia also gifted Malé hydrographic equipment to help support its sovereign capability to map ocean floors.⁸⁸

Limited defence and security engagements with these smaller South Asian countries are largely reflective of the fluctuating priority given to the Indian Ocean by successive Australian governments. Growing engagements with Sri Lanka, the Maldives and Bangladesh, as part of renewed focus on the NEIO, are a welcome development. However, for Australia to establish its status as a regional actor, more engagement is necessary to safeguard maritime security in the region. This will also address the existing imbalance in Australia’s broader ‘Indo-Pacific’ strategy, which remains disproportionately focused on the Pacific.

4. Prospects for India-Australia cooperation on maritime security in South Asia

India and Australia have built a strong foundation and deepened defence and security ties with each other, but the relative lack of a joint strategy focused on working together in third partner countries limits the impact of this partnership to contribute to broader Indo-Pacific security. India’s vision and efforts in South Asia are aligned with Australia’s stated intentions and burgeoning presence, providing an opening for both countries to work together in this sub-region within the larger Indo-Pacific.

India and Australia are already individually investing in maritime capacity building in smaller South Asian littoral and island countries, but the nature and intensity of threats they face is such that no one country can unilaterally devote enough resources to keep pace with the smaller countries’ capacity and capability development requirements. Coordinating capacity building holds great potential and dividends for India and Australia. Both stand to gain from improving the efficiency of resources already invested by coordinating activities and leveraging each other’s comparative strengths: India’s well-established security presence and leadership, with Australia’s growing engagement, existing technical expertise and development-oriented focus.

RAN Commodore Heath Robertson, Indian Navy Vice Admiral Sanjay Vatsayan, Indian Defence Minister Shri Rajnath Singh and Australian Assistant Minister for Defence Peter Khalil in Sydney.Source: Australian Department of Defence

A partnership approach also ensures that Australian initiatives are not seen as threatening New Delhi’s engagements in its immediate neighbourhood, where there have historically been sensitivities around the presence of foreign actors.⁸⁹ India’s imperative need is to pursue maritime security cooperation in a manner that reassures, rather than exacerbates its neighbours’ anxieties. This can be achieved by collaborative projects that address their immediate security concerns. A partnership with Australia — which is viewed as a ‘third option’ for smaller states in the region outside the India-China rivalry — provides some reassurance to receiving countries that their actions are not perceived as side-taking within the larger great power competition and alleviates fears of over-dependence on India. South Asian countries have shown greater receptivity to collaborative projects, as exemplified in the India-Japan-Bangladesh connectivity projects, which seek to develop an industrial value chain connecting Northeast India to the Bay of Bengal via Bangladesh.⁹⁰ Pursued by Japan, as the leading country serving the pillar of “connectivity” for the Indo-Pacific Oceans Initiative (IPOI), the project seeks to improve connectivity in the Bay of Bengal region as part of larger connectivity projects in the Indo-Pacific.⁹¹

Driven by security concerns regarding Chinese activities in the Indian Ocean, India and Australia have made significant advances in building navy-to-navy interoperability. This is reflected in the increasing frequency and scope of bilateral exercises and agreements, and participation in multilateral exercises such as Exercise Malabar with Quad partners. Since its inception in 2015, AUSINDEX — a bilateral exercise held every two years in both Indian and Australian waters by their respective navies — has progressively grown in scope and complexity (see Table 3). It now regularly focuses on anti-submarine warfare, which falls in the highest rung of naval cooperation, as submarines are among the most sensitive assets of the navy.⁹² Under the recently agreed submarine-rescue arrangement, both countries have established protocols for reciprocal assistance in submarine rescue operations, enhancing operational coordination in undersea search and rescue.⁹³

Agreements such as the Mutual Logistics Support Arrangement and the Defence Science and Technology Implementing Arrangement, signed in 2020, hold great potential for enhancing defence industry cooperation and undertaking more complex military engagements.⁹⁴ However, operationalisation of these frameworks has, so far, fallen short of expectations due to existing disparity between technological capabilities of the two countries.⁹⁵

Institutionalised high level strategic dialogue mechanisms such as the Foreign and Defence Ministers’ (2+2) Strategic Dialogue, Australia-India Defence Ministers’ Dialogue and Australia-India Maritime Dialogue between senior officials have been important avenues to advance maritime cooperation. At the inaugural Defence Ministers’ Dialogue held in Australia in October 2025, both sides announced a ‘Joint Maritime Security Collaboration Roadmap’ although no public version has been released yet.⁹⁶

The maritime focus of the relationship has been strengthened through practical initiatives aimed at developing joint capacity in MDA — identified as a key area for practical cooperation — through research projects aimed at enhancing undersea surveillance capabilities.⁹⁷ In successive dialogues — including Australian Defence Minister Richard Marles’ visit to New Delhi in June 2025⁹⁸ followed by Indian Defence Minister Rajanth Singh’s visit to Australia in October⁹⁹ — both sides have repeatedly reiterated commitment to facilitate greater defence information sharing. However, this remains constrained by lack of a secure communications agreement that enables near-real time intelligence sharing over secure channels. Intelligence sharing beyond ‘white shipping’ (non-classified information on commercial vessels) — enabled through such an agreement — is crucial to effectively monitor the oceans and enables the timely detection of ongoing illicit activities, and sharing of sensitive information on ‘grey’ and ‘dark’ shipping (vessels whose identities are deceptively manipulated).

While both Australia and India have a stated focus on enhancing maritime security in the Indian Ocean, the lack of institutionalisation and coordination of these dialogues risks reducing the engagements to diplomatic forums rather than platforms for practical action.

In recent years, alignment in their multilateral engagements has noticeably increased. India and Australia are working with France and Indonesia, respectively, on maritime security issues at the trilateral level through regular dialogues. While both Australia and India have a stated focus on enhancing maritime security in the Indian Ocean, the lack of institutionalisation and coordination of these dialogues risks reducing the engagements to diplomatic forums rather than platforms for practical action.¹⁰⁰ For other multilateral platforms, such as the Indian Ocean Rim Association (IORA) — where India and Australia are co-leads of the Maritime Safety and Security Working Group — practical action is constrained by a lack of interest and resources from other member countries.¹⁰¹

Canberra’s support for India’s IPOI has strengthened bilateral cooperation on non-traditional security threats. Launched by India at the East Asia Summit in 2019, IPOI is a non-treaty-based, voluntary arrangement which seeks to build a community of stakeholders by creating partnerships with like-minded partners.¹⁰² It includes seven pillars, where countries were invited to take the lead for a pillar and others joined voluntarily. Australia has taken the lead on the maritime ecology pillar and has provided funding for projects focusing on reducing marine pollution, particularly plastic waste.¹⁰³ As part of the Australia-India Indo-Pacific Oceans Initiative Partnership (AIIPOIP) — a practical initiative under the ‘Joint Declaration on a Shared Vision for Maritime Cooperation in the Indo-Pacific’ to advance the goals of IPOI — Australia launched a Marine and Coastal Resilience Hub where scientists jointly research impacts of climate change and plastic pollution on marine and coastal environments in India and Australia.¹⁰⁴ As it currently stands, AIIPOIP reflects concern for regional environmental security challenges, but remains limited to bilateral grants programs rather than sustained, regionally focused initiatives.

For this partnership to become the cornerstone of regional maritime security, more needs to be done at the bilateral level to elevate the India-Australia relationship beyond its current navy-to-navy focus. Operational coordination on building naval interoperability, while effective in responding to increasing Chinese presence, needs to be complemented with greater engagements across maritime agencies to holistically contribute to maritime safety and security in the region. This ensures that the partnership is less about containment, and more about making positive contributions to regional security, providing much needed reassurance to smaller South Asian countries concerned with over-securitisation in their surrounding waters.

From a policy perspective, this involves expanding the current focus of bilateral maritime cooperation to better respond to regional non-traditional security challenges, while also improving coordination of existing individual maritime capacity building strategies in South Asia. The proposed areas of cooperation in the following section are achievable without overextending resources and reflect identified strategic priorities for both countries. It is the logical next step in the growing India-Australia comprehensive strategic partnership.

Policy recommendations

Bilateral initiatives

Recommendation 1: Expand bilateral maritime cooperation to better integrate initiatives focused on regional non-traditional security challenges.

Specifically, India and Australia should:

a. Formalise cooperation between the Indian Coast Guard and the Australian Maritime Border Command to strengthen staff to staff linkages and improve operational and cooperative linkages

Strong staff linkages between the Indian Navy and the RAN have greatly contributed to stronger navy-to-navy ties, however, staff interactions across other maritime law enforcement agencies remain low. Reciprocal coast guard ship visits and exercises have been few and far between, especially when compared with the increasing frequency of navy ship visits and exercises. Such coast guard personnel and ship visits are crucial to develop what Indian Ocean expert, David Brewster, has identified as a “business as usual” maritime cooperation relationship.¹⁰⁵ Bilateral interactions between the Indian Coast Guard Director General and its counterpart, the Maritime Border Command — a multi-agency task force housed within the Australian Border Force — have mostly taken place on an ad-hoc basis on the sidelines of larger multilateral settings, and should be regularised.¹⁰⁶ Subsequently, such cooperation can be codified into official documents to improve interoperability on areas such as SAR, Humanitarian and Disaster Relief (HADR) and pollution response, all of which are identified as priority areas of cooperation in the Australia-India Maritime Dialogue.¹⁰⁷ Such cooperation will further supplement ongoing efforts at building coast guard cooperation at the multilateral level through the Quad.¹⁰⁸

b. Increase dialogue on non-traditional security threats as a policy priority

Cooperation on non-traditional security threats should be prioritised by making maritime security a regular item in existing high-level ministerial dialogues which would help elevate maritime issues as a bilateral policy priority. Additionally, ministerial-level engagement should be complemented with more regular Track 1.5 and 2 dialogues on non-traditional maritime security challenges, which involve representation from academia, local community and maritime industry, to discuss best-practice approaches and facilitate knowledge sharing.

Ministerial-level engagement should be complemented with more regular Track 1.5 and 2 dialogues on non-traditional maritime security challenges ... to discuss best-practice approaches and facilitate knowledge sharing.

c. Improve cooperation on maritime cybersecurity

Specifically, cooperation to address hybrid maritime security threats, such as maritime cyber-attacks, holds great potential. Under the existing Australia-India Cyber and Critical Technology Partnership grants program — which supports collaborative research projects to boost “responsible development and use of emerging technologies” between the two countries¹⁰⁹ — maritime cyber security should be identified as a priority sector. Projects under this grant can explore joint solutions to safeguard critical maritime infrastructure like ports from cyber-attacks.

Cooperation focused on regional capacity building

Recommendation 2: Build regional capacity through bilateral coordination of existing maritime capacity building strategies in partner South Asian countries.

India and Australia should:

a. Coordinate delivery of existing maritime safety and security equipment to avoid duplication

Australia’s expansion of the Pacific Patrol Boat Program¹¹⁰ — a cornerstone of the Australian Department of Defence’s Pacific Maritime Security Program, which provides Pacific island nations with means of patrolling their own EEZs — to the Maldives and Sri Lanka, opens an opportunity to coordinate with existing Indian patrol boat programs in these countries.

Rather than ad-hoc transfer of equipment, India and Australia should consider jointly launching a dedicated Indian Ocean Patrol Boat Program for Bangladesh. Under such a model, Australia, with its advanced manufacturing capacity, provides the initial equipment while India undertakes upgrades, refurbishment and refitting to ensure the vessels can conduct regular patrols. Existing equipment transfers by India and Australia to the Maldives and Sri Lanka can also be inducted into the program.

Domestically, for Australia, such an endeavour has the benefit of stimulating its maritime sector by generating employment opportunities in the shipbuilding industry.¹¹¹ For India, which is looking to become a global hub for ship-repair as part of its Maritime Vision 2047,¹¹² it will significantly boost its regional and global credentials. Recipient countries also benefit from such coordination as it addresses the interoperability challenges, they face from receiving different classes of patrol boats from donors, often resulting in a patchwork of donated items.¹¹³

b. Coordinate existing capacity-building initiatives to improve MDA capabilities of regional states

MDA is a multi-layered task involving the monitoring, analysis and forecasting of oceanic activities to detect and track potential threats. While both India and Australia have well-developed MDA systems, including national maritime information fusion centres (IFC), smaller South Asian countries face significant challenges in developing and upgrading their MDA capabilities. Sri Lanka and the Maldives only established IFCs in 2022 and 2024, respectively,¹¹⁴ while Bangladesh has yet to establish one.

Australia can leverage its strengths, such as expertise in MDA systems, to support Bangladesh in building infrastructure for efficient data integration and real-time analysis, while Indian expertise, through IFC-IOR, can be used for training in intelligence gathering and analysis.

India and Australia can also explore avenues on how to improve the effectiveness of existing IFCs in the Maldives and Sri Lanka by integrating advanced technologies. This can be pursued under the Quad’s Indo-Pacific Partnership for Maritime Domain Awareness (IPMDA). IPMDA seeks to provide innovative technologies, such as commercial satellite radio frequency data collection, to regional partners to improve real-time information awareness on activities occurring in their maritime zones. Australia has already taken the lead in expanding IPMDA to the Pacific island countries by providing satellite radio frequency data and training to the Pacific Islands Forum Fisheries Agency.¹¹⁵ At the July 2025 Quad Foreign Ministers' Meeting, the ministers announced their intention to expand IPMDA to the Indian Ocean region.¹¹⁶ India and Australia should take the lead on this, beginning with providing the Maldives and Sri Lanka with a satellite-based monitoring system and training to enhance their capacity and maintain operational readiness against increasingly sophisticated threats.

c. Co-host naval training programs and coast guard exercises with partner South Asian countries.

With their expertise and extensive experience in maritime operations, Indian and Australian navies and coast guards should jointly develop training modules and co-host training programs — on areas such as oil-spill response, countering AIS spoofing¹¹⁷ — tailored to partner countries’ specific needs. This can also involve conducting maritime security desktop exercises with all levels of operational officers to improve their understanding and capabilities in combating varied maritime security incidents.

To improve procedural familiarity and encourage dialogue, New Delhi should consider inviting Canberra to join the Dosti exercise. Launched in 1991, as a bilateral exercise between the Maldives and India, it was expanded in 2012 to include Sri Lanka, and remains one of the oldest, continuous maritime coast guard exercise in the Indian Ocean region (see Table 1). Bangladesh has participated as an observer in multiple iterations of the exercise, including in 2021 and in 2024. This would help strengthen collective regional resilience, allow Australia to expand its operational presence and prepare for coordinated operations in Indian Ocean contingencies.

Additionally, joint meetings of the coast guard heads from Sri Lanka, the Maldives, Bangladesh, India and Australia should be held along the sidelines of the Heads of Asian Coast Guard Agencies Meeting (HACGAM), where all these countries are already members.

d. Build institutional capacity and knowledge networks in South Asian countries to address environmental security threats

Under AIIPOIP, India and Australia should explore avenues for expanding regional cooperation on environmental security threats in the South Asia subregion. This can take the shape of establishing regional centres of excellence — specialised institutions which serve as hubs for advanced research, training and policy support — on marine science in partner countries (e.g. Bangladesh or the Maldives) modelled on the Marine and Coastal Resilience Hub, to complement existing initiatives and build long-term institutional capacity. Currently, there is no such fully operational Indian Ocean marine research-focused centre, and existing proposals for an IORA Center of Excellence on Ocean Sciences and Environment in Sri Lanka have shown slow progress.¹¹⁸

Such an institute would serve as a knowledge and best practices sharing network as well. Specific activities could include sponsoring scientific and policy research on marine environmental issues through cross-country academic and think-tank collaborations, hosting conferences and workshops, acting as an overall knowledge repository. This would provide stakeholders with an avenue to engage in dialogue to address environmental security threats. It would also complement the existing grant-based model of the AIIPOIP by expanding it to include third countries, thereby boosting the regional architecture of maritime environmental governance.

Appendix: Glossary of acronyms and abbreviations

The production of this report was supported by the Centre for Australia-India Relations.