Abstract
The Indian Ocean Region (IOR) is a strategically significant region that sees competition for influential sea lanes of communications (SLOCs), critical maritime infrastructure, and offshore resources.
Australia and India, two of the IOR’s major naval powers, have demonstrated considerable strategic convergence, but their cooperation must go beyond tactical and conventional naval aspects to encompass critical infrastructure in order to promote an open, secure, and resilient IOR.
The two countries should progress to becoming the architects of a maritime security framework in the region by focusing on Maritime Domain Awareness (MDA) and its extension, Underwater Domain Awareness (UDA), in the cyber, seabed, and space domains. They should also encourage regional governance while advancing strategic competition to counter emerging risks to critical infrastructure.
This article argues that Australia and India should formulate a comprehensive strategic vision with a long-term-resilience maritime framework based on existing bilateral and minilateral frameworks such as the Quad and Indian Ocean Rim Association (IORA) to promote strategic competition that enhances cooperation in the region.
Keywords: Indian Ocean Region, Australia, India, Maritime Domain Awareness, Underwater Domain Awareness, Critical Maritime Infrastructure, Undersea Cables, Maritime Security.
Introduction
The Indian Ocean Region (IOR) extends from the east coast of Africa to the west coast of Australia and encompasses the Persian Gulf and coastal and island states that are deeply connected through maritime trade routes, critical infrastructure, and energy resources, as well as geopolitical interests (Baruah, 2022; Brewster, 2014).
The Indian Ocean carries about half of the world’s trade, including about a third of bulk cargo and two-thirds of the global oil trade. The 2.7 billion people who live in IOR coastal states, countries, and island nations are linked by shared opportunities for prosperity (Indian Ocean Rim Association IORA, 2024).
India and Australia have long worked to strengthen strategic ties, emphasising on maritime security, freedom of navigation, and disaster response capabilities. Maritime security in the IOR has traditionally focused on SLOCs, countering piracy, and responding to humanitarian threats through ad hoc bilateral actions and cooperation initiatives such as the Quad and Malabar naval exercises.
However, strategic competition between the United States and China has fuelled great power rivalry in the IOR, including a struggle for influence over critical infrastructure and maritime resources.
Control over critical infrastructure such as undersea or submarine cables and energy infrastructure is a powerful tool for projecting geopolitical and economic power. Recent disruptions of undersea cable networks in the Baltic Sea, Red Sea, and Taiwan Strait have heightened strategic concerns about the security of critical infrastructure against both deliberate and accidental interference (Canon, 2026).
The strategic importance of the IOR has consequently expanded beyond being just a conduit for international shipping. The region has several globally significant maritime chokepoints, including the Strait of Hormuz and Bab-el Mandeb in the Middle East, and the Lombok Strait and Strait of Malacca in the waters around the Indonesian archipelago, through which manufactured goods and energy supplies pass between Europe, Africa, and West Asia, and Australia and the broader Indo-Pacific. Any disruption in these maritime corridors has immediate consequences for global supply chains, energy security, and international security (Mahendru & Wani, 2026; Baruah, 2026).
Figure 1. Strategic Chokepoints in the Indian Ocean Region. Reprinted from Ensuring Secure Seas: Indian Maritime Security Strategy (p. 18), by Integrated Headquarters, Ministry of Defence (Navy), 2015, Directorate of Strategy, Concepts and Transformation.
The IOR is witnessing rising strategic competition over the ownership and governance of submarine cables, which are critical for data exchange, including for financial and business operations.
China has made significant investments in developing and owning undersea cable networks through firms such as Huawei and HMN Technologies. India, Australia, and other Quad partners (the U.S. and Japan) have been increasingly concerned about the growing Chinese economic and geopolitical influence in the region.
To promote an open, secure, and resilient Indo-Pacific, these countries have taken several strategic actions, including launching the Quad Partnership for Cable Connectivity Resilience in 2024, and promoting investments in building, securing, and maintaining resilient submarine cable networks.
Among the key players investing in manufacturing and laying submarine cables are Telstra, Huawei, Singtel, AT&T, and Tata, and hyperscalers such as Meta, Google and Amazon (Govella, 2025). Australia accounts for a higher number of submarine cable routes (34), compared to India (17), whereas Singapore hosts and operates about 26 routes (TeleGeography, 2026). India lags in repair capacity—there is no Indian-owned or Indian-flagged repair vessel, which leaves operators dependent on a small pool of foreign consortia based in Singapore and Dubai, with average repair timelines of three to five months whenever a fault occurs within India’s Exclusive Economic Zone (Sen, 2026).
The rising domestic demand for data will demand greater investments in the maintenance and security of submarine cable connections. India and Australia can promote strategic stability in the IOR including protecting undersea cables by advancing cooperation over Maritime Domain Awareness (MDA) and its associated aspects such as Underwater Domain Awareness (UDA).
India has extensive strategic influence and naval capabilities to promote maritime security in the IOR. It has supplied patrol vessels, coastal radar chains, and training support to states such as Mauritius, Seychelles, and the Maldives, positioning itself as a first responder and net security provider rather than being merely one partner among several. Australia has strategically significant facilities such as the Royal Australian Navy’s submarine and surface ship bases in Perth that contribute to regional maritime security through surveillance, hydrography, and defence innovation.
The growing strategic and economic engagement between Australia and India is demonstrated by strategic initiatives such as the Comprehensive Strategic Partnership (CSP) and the Mutual Logistics Support Agreement (MLSA) of 2020, the ministerial dialogues on strategic and defence relations and, most recently, the Joint Declaration on Australia-India Defence and Strategic Cooperation signed in July 2026 by Prime Ministers Narendra Modi and Anthony Albanese.
The joint declaration recognises the contributions of India-Australia strategic partnerships, including the India-Australia Maritime Security collaboration roadmap, to regional maritime security, including promoting domain awareness. It also emphasises the strategic and economic importance of advancing alternative and resilient critical infrastructure and connectivity to respond to the emerging great power competition in the IOR.
Rising domestic demand and data use, and a larger number of data centres will require India to acquire more submarine cable lanes to meet the needs of its digital economy. Australia too needs to advance strategic competition around undersea cables and other critical infrastructure in the IOR. Critical infrastructure is the new strategic frontier that Australia and India can use to promote an open, resilient, and secure IOR.
Strategic Significance of Critical Infrastructure in the IOR
SLOCs, commercial, and defence fleets, and coastal defences have traditionally been the key components of naval power and influence. Historians and maritime strategists such as Alfred Thayer Mahan asserted that sea power determines the rise and influence of nations, and naval prowess helps project geopolitical and military power on the world stage (Mahan, 1980). Mahan’s theories have been used to formulate the naval doctrines of many countries, including India. The statesman and diplomat K. M. Panikkar argued that India must formulate a sea-borne policy to advance its regional influence.
The early maritime strategies of India and Australia focused on naval diplomatic arrangements to promote trade and security. However, the emerging great power competition and rise of niche technologies have spotlighted the need to promote and protect critical infrastructure, including undersea cables and other commercial and defence networks.
It has been argued that the competition between great powers has moved from the surface to underwater (Mishra, 2017). Mishra’s framing is useful but incomplete—it explains why the seabed has become strategically salient without specifying which actors are best placed to police it, a gap this paper addresses directly.
Mishra also argues that the traditional approach to maritime security, which involves telescopic surveillance and defence of coastlines, is inadequate to address the region’s strategic imperatives. Other analysts too have argued that intensified strategic competition in the IOR demands focus on non-traditional maritime security issues such as critical infrastructure (Chatterjee, 2014).
Critical maritime infrastructure (CMI) broadly refers to commercial and defence support networks that facilitate transportation and information exchange, as well as defence readiness, among other functions. Unlike SLOCs, commercial and defence vessels, and coastal defences that have traditionally been considered the pillars of naval power, CMI consists of ports, underwater pipelines and cables, and offshore energy resources and logistics facilities.
CMI is strategically important because it promotes international trade, facilitates financial transactions and national security, and enhances regional defence readiness and effectiveness. Because most CMI components serve both commercial and government purposes, their governance and management present several strategic considerations. Some elements of CMI have become critical to sustaining the digital economy and regional and international trade, making it necessary to protect them from deliberate and accidental damage and ensure their resilience and effective operation.
Undersea cables are among the most strategically significant of CMI components. Undersea cable networks comprise fibre-optic cables, repeaters, and landing points through which onshore systems connect to the network. Starosielski (2015) describes undersea cables as the physical embodiment of the Internet.
These cables are the backbone of the modern digital economy, facilitating almost all international financial transactions and digital communication. However, the networks are vulnerable to sabotage, natural damage, and unauthorised tapping, which can significantly disrupt international trade and regional and national security. The governance, ownership, and protection of undersea cables is thus a key strategic consideration in maritime competition.
Emerging Geopolitical Considerations
The strategic significance of undersea cable networks and other CMI components has prompted great powers to advance their influence and competition in the IOR.
China has demonstrated increasing strategic and economic interest in the region (Lim, 2020). As part of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) it has made major investments in critical infrastructure in the IOR, including in ports and harbours in Djibouti, Gwadar in Pakistan, Hambantota in Sri Lanka, and Kyaukphyu in Myanmar’s Rakhine state.
These investments present significant security concerns for India and Australia. India is heavily dependent on SLOCs, particularly on its western coast, and must prioritise protecting critical maritime infrastructure in this region. The concentration of international submarine cable landing points along India’s western coast, with almost 95% of landing stations clustered around Mumbai, makes the country vulnerable to a single localised disruption in connectivity.
Given the increasing threats to undersea cable networks in the IOR, it is critical for India to advance its strategic competition around submarine-cable networks to protect its national security and economic development. The Mutual and Holistic Advancement for Security Across Regions (MAHASAGAR), the new maritime security strategy outlined by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2025, commits India to a more assertive role as a first responder and net security provider across the IOR, integrating MDA and strategic partnerships into a single framework. Yet, the strategy addresses critical infrastructure only in general terms; unlike the protective zones administered by the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA), it does not set out a dedicated submarine cable protection mandate, a key gap that India should prioritise closing.
The Indian strategy promotes collaboration with regional and extra-regional states, including Australia and the U.S., to ensure critical maritime infrastructure security and regional stability, and to advance strategic partnerships. As a maritime trading nation, Australia is concerned with protecting critical infrastructure while advancing strategic competition in the IOR (Bashfield, 2024). Its strategic considerations align with those of India, and the two nations can build strategic partnerships for regional stability, specifically through joint maritime security operations with an emphasis on CMI.
Potential for Partnership
The increasing strategic imperatives around CMI present several implications for strategic competition in the IOR (Buerger and Liebetrau, 2023). Some of these considerations have been addressed by the biennial AUSINDEX bilateral naval exercises and the CSP and MLSA agreements. But the two countries must pursue stronger strategic partnerships to ensure critical infrastructure resilience through enhanced information exchange, MDA, and UDA, cross-leveraging India’s geographic reach and naval presence and Australia’s regulatory and technological depth.
MDA, which encompasses technologies such as satellite surveillance, coastal radar monitoring, and Automatic Identification System (AIS), underlines the importance of situational awareness in the IOR. The Information Fusion Centre-Indian Ocean Region (IFC-IOR) set up in Gurugram in 2018, promotes regional maritime security through information exchange and collaboration. Australia’s demonstrated leadership in surveillance and space technologies, including satellites, offers significant opportunities for collaboration with India. Australia already posts an International Liaison Officer to the IFC-IOR alongside more than a dozen other partner countries, which gives the two countries an existing institutional channel that could be extended from surface shipping data to cable-fault and seabed-anomaly reporting.
UDA, which encompasses situational awareness regarding submerged activities and technologies, including underwater sensors and autonomous weapons, presents another key area of strategic competition and cooperation. Fixed seabed sensor arrays, towed sonar systems, and autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) capable of patrolling cable corridors for signs of tampering are central to this domain. Other relevant technologies include artificial intelligence (AI) and digital twinning.
Some of the existing bilateral strategic initiatives that could be leveraged to promote competition around CMI include the Australian Infrastructure Financing Facility for the Pacific (AIFFP), the Australia-India Cyber and Critical Technology Partnership (AICCTP) of the Australian government’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT), the Australia-India Strategic Research Fund, and the Quad’s Partnership for Cable Connectivity Resilience launched in May 2023.
Besides technology, governance measures including legal, regulatory, and financing aspects, must also be considered to protect CMI from interference and sabotage. Australia can provide a significant lead in promoting governance mechanisms around undersea cable networks in the IOR, and India has taken some early regulatory steps including the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India’s (TRAI’s) 2023 recommendations on licensing for submarine cable landing, and the Right of Way (RoW) framework under the Telecommunications Act, 2023. While these fall short of a dedicated cable-protection law comparable to Australia’s ACMA-administered zones, similar measures could be considered for other CMI components.
The European Union’s Cable Security Action Plan and NATO’s Critical Undersea Infrastructure Coordination Cell also present viable options for promoting similar initiatives in the IOR.
Need for a Maritime Resilience Framework
Given the exposure of critical infrastructure to competition, cyber security, and grey zone strategies, India and Australia could work together to formulate a regional framework that includes infrastructure protection, technological innovation, and regulation and good governance. The first area in which Australia and India could cooperate is institutional resilience.
Australia has one of the world’s most comprehensive regulatory frameworks (Bhatt, 2023). Considering the large number of submarine cable landing points especially along its western seaboard, India must develop protective zones similar to the ones administered by ACMA, the Australian cable administration authority. The protection zones should be created in India’s Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZs) in accordance with the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). Australia could also help India in creating legal frameworks to protect national assets such as pipelines and offshore energy installations.
Second, the two countries should consider accelerating the development of underwater surveillance, autonomous systems, and technologies for the maintenance and monitoring of cables as an addition to the AICCTP and the R&D programs. For India, this could include converting existing assets—the Indian Navy’s two deep-water diving support vessels, commissioned in 2022 for submarine rescue, have technical characteristics that make them plausible candidates for cable-repair conversion, an option Australia could support through technology transfer and training. Building Maintenance, Repair, and Overhaul (MRO) facilities and centres, as well as spares strategies, would contribute to a higher degree of strategic autonomy while reducing downtime in response to specific maintenance and repair requirements.
The third area of cooperation could be mobilising regional organisations to promote rules and norms for critical infrastructure. Both countries are part of the Quad’s Participation for Cable Connectivity and Resilience, IORA, and the Indian Ocean Naval Symposium (IONS), and they could work to ensure that cables are prioritised in these regional bodies, to establish information exchange and harmonisation mechanisms for the IOR and littoral and island states.
Conclusion and Recommendations
The strategic environment in the IOR, home to almost 50% of the world’s Internet users, is undergoing a paradigm shift. Maritime security is witnessing a transition from great power geopolitical rivalry and competition through SLOCs to competition over critical infrastructure such as cables and offshore energy resources.
Protection of CMI is a matter of utmost priority for the global economy, regional stability, and national security. Australia and India are intensely interested in the stability of the IOR, a vital trading route and a key driver of economic growth. This paper argues that the two countries are strategically positioned to become the regional custodians of this emerging security paradigm.
India’s location in the IOR, the world’s largest population, its rising digital economy, and its regional strength complement Australia’s capabilities in regulation and technology, as well as its strategic position as a security provider in the Pacific and the IOR. Both countries are members of various international, regional, and bilateral forums in which they can collaborate. They must recognise CMI as a strategic imperative requiring a multidomain response that leverages their opportunities and strengths to promote a resilient and liberal international order.
The following five areas would be critical in advancing Australia-India cooperation in the field of CMI.
First, institutionalising Australia-India dialogues on CMI at Track 1, 1.5, and 2 levels with the participation of stakeholders from the fields of defence, telecom, ports, and critical minerals, as well as regulators, academia, and think tanks, will promote regional stability.
Second, enhancing maritime and underwater domain awareness and building coastal security surveillance and intelligence capacity will promote stability in the IOR. Bilateral collaboration with friendly littoral states on Coast Guard capabilities, joint maritime exercises, and R&D will promote capacity-building. India and Australia must invest in technologies such as autonomous systems, underwater sensors, and similar innovations for the exploration and harnessing of oceanic resources.
Third, building undersea cable resilience, awareness, and security requires diversifying cable routes and enhancing domestic capabilities in areas such as cable-laying and maintenance ships. India must start by closing its cable-repair vessel gap and developing regulatory regimes and protective policies such as protective zones for the IOR.
Fourth, engaging in regional and bilateral forums such as the Quad, IORA, and IONS, as well as initiatives such as the AICCTP in promoting trusted partnerships and investments in the IOR, and developing norms and rules in protecting CMI from coercion, grey-zone strategies, and rogue state behaviours, will promote maritime resilience.
Fifth, encouraging private sector engagement in building domestic capabilities in protecting CMI will complement the efforts of initiatives such as AICCTP, given that private sector organisations own and operate critical infrastructure. Private sector engagement would also promote higher investment in the IOR’s maritime transport and critical infrastructure, unlocking significant economic opportunities for businesses in both countries.
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