A sluggish however unmistakable shift is taking form throughout the Arabian Gulf’s maritime sphere. Navies in Oman, the UAE, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia are working extra carefully with India—by coaching programmes, hydrographic help, frequent port calls and more and more open information-sharing. In distinction, their engagement with Pakistan, as soon as a well-known safety accomplice, has steadily narrowed.
What is going on will not be a diplomatic flourish. It’s a sensible recalibration formed by functionality, reliability and the sort of army cooperation these states now require.
Operational Frameworks
Over the previous couple of years, Gulf navies have moved in the direction of extra structured, recurring interplay with the Indian Navy.
In October 2024, India’s First Coaching Squadron sailed into Manama and Dubai on parallel port calls. The engagements had been typical of a sample that has matured quietly—ship visits, cross-deck coaching, seamanship familiarisation and sustained interplay between sea trainees and Indian Navy instructors. These deployments uncovered recruits to sensible coaching at sea whereas additionally cementing wider political and maritime hyperlinks.
Pakistan’s sample seems very completely different right this moment. Workouts comparable to Naseem-Al-Bahr with Oman nonetheless happen. Participation within the Mixed Maritime Forces continues. However the bilateral coaching exchanges with Oman, UAE and Kuwait that had been as soon as routine have tapered off.
What stays is episodic and restricted in comparison with India’s busy, year-round schedule.
Capability Constructing and Increasing Footprint
India has turned naval coaching right into a core pillar of its defence diplomacy within the Gulf.
A transparent instance got here in 2024, when seventy-six cadets from the King Fahad Naval Academy in Saudi Arabia skilled at Kochi beneath the Southern Naval Command. Over 4 weeks, the group went by simulator modules, primary seamanship drills and time at sea. Saudi naval management overtly acknowledged how helpful it was for younger officers to expertise life onboard Indian ships.
At any given second, India trains near 300 overseas naval personnel at its academies, faculties and onboard warships.
The cooperation has deepened on different fronts as properly: In 2025, India and Saudi Arabia held their first Navy-to-Navy Employees Talks. Bilateral train Al-Mohed Al-Hindi already has two editions behind it, in 2021 and 2023. In August 2025, INS Tamal and Surat berthed in Jeddah, adopted by passage workout routines and in depth crew interactions.
India and UAE superior their agenda through the thirteenth Joint Defence Cooperation Committee assembly in July 2025, the place tailor-made coaching programs had been formally agreed upon.
The ninth spherical of Navy-to-Navy Employees Talks between India and UAE broadened maritime information-sharing preparations.
Pakistan, in the meantime, hosts AMAN each two years, drawing over fifty international locations. However that gathering, massive as it’s, doesn’t substitute the common, deep-dive coaching that India now presents throughout Gulf navies. Defence exports inform the same story. Pakistan’s gross sales to Gulf patrons are modest. India, however, has begun supplying a sluggish however regular stream of indigenous parts and programs.
Strategic Calculations
Gulf capitals don’t make these decisions within the summary. They see clear variations in functionality.
India fields two operational plane carriers—INS Vikrant and INS Vikramaditya. It has a fleet of recent destroyers, frigates and submarines that may maintain lengthy deployments. By way of mission-based deployment, the Indian Navy is current virtually repeatedly within the Gulf of Aden, Persian Gulf and Gulf of Oman. Throughout Operation Sankalp in January 2024, India had greater than ten warships working within the area to guard business transport.
That is tied to a broader doctrine. India’s SAGAR imaginative and prescient, set out in 2015, locations cooperative safety and maritime stability on the centre of Indian coverage. It isn’t merely aspirational. In April 2025, the Indian Ocean Ship Sagar joined collaborative missions with Indian Ocean island states—an instance of how this imaginative and prescient has been operationalised.
Pakistan’s naval profile seems extra constrained. With out carriers or massive destroyers, the Pakistan Navy’s attain barely extends past safety of Karachi and Gwadar. Its capability to contribute to Gulf-wide safety duties—comparable to anti-piracy patrols, tanker safety or broad surveillance—is proscribed.
Financial pressure has compounded these limitations. Gulf states, beforehand extra beneficiant with monetary assist, have grown reluctant to bankroll Pakistan’s defence sector. The fallout from Pakistan’s parliamentary determination on Yemen additionally left an enduring impression in a number of Gulf capitals.
The regular development of India–Gulf naval cooperation is rooted in operational want, not simply diplomacy. By way of coaching programmes, shared area consciousness, hydrographic assist and common port calls, India has positioned the Indian Navy as a reliable maritime accomplice for Gulf states.
Pakistan’s restricted blue-water functionality, episodic engagement and financial constraints have narrowed its relevance to Gulf naval planning. The result’s a recalibration that’s neither flashy nor confrontational, however unmistakable in its route.
India’s maritime standing within the Gulf is rising—and doing so on the energy of constant presence, sensible cooperation and a navy able to assembly the area’s safety calls for.