ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a brief overview of the general transformation of maritime warfare and competition in a maturing precision-strike regime. It examines the potential characteristics of a future naval confrontation involving India and Pakistan, India and China, or India and a Sino-Pakistani maritime entente. It then expresses that the Indian Navy's current carrier-centric force design may be ill-equipped to respond to future operational challenges. The chapter explores the alternative manners by which India can both refine and strengthen its naval force structure, and outlines candidate ideas for future iterations in the evolution of India's maritime military strategy. The proliferation of precision-guided systems has resulted in the growth of increasingly formidable land-based reconnaissance strike complexes, structured around dense constellations of Anti-Access and Area-Denial (A2/AD) systems. The state of India's submarine fleet is cause for grave concern, as is the glaring vulnerability of some of India's capital ships to air or missile attack.
