India is using sustained naval engagement with Myanmar to strengthen its maritime position in the increasingly contested Bay of Bengal
The Indo-Pacific debate has tended to concentrate on its more visible fault lines — the South China Sea, the Strait of Hormuz, and the chokepoints that generate headlines. The Bay of Bengal, by contrast, is where a quieter and, in many ways, more structurally significant competition has been unfolding — over naval access, infrastructure, and the institutional relationships that determine who exercises influence along its rim. Chief of Naval Staff Admiral Dinesh K. Tripathi’s visit to Myanmar from 2–5 May 2026 is one telling piece of that contest — best understood not as a bilateral milestone but as a marker of how India is attempting to consolidate its eastern maritime posture before the stakes become more difficult to manage.
India's exposure to this space is structural. The Andaman and Nicobar archipelago hosts its only tri-service command, functioning as a forward platform for maritime domain awareness across the eastern Indian Ocean. The coastlines of Bangladesh and Myanmar form a contested zone of connectivity ambitions, insurgent geography, and competing external investments. India's ability to shape access patterns and build interoperability with littoral partners depends on maintaining an institutionalised naval posture across the Bay's western and northern rim — and it is this posture that Admiral Tripathi's visit was designed to reinforce.
The agenda of the visit focused on strengthening navy-to-navy cooperation, bolstering the existing defence partnership, and augmenting operational engagements through high-level discussions with General Ye Win Oo, Commander-in-Chief of the Myanmar Armed Forces; General U Htun Aung, Defence Minister; and Admiral Htein Win, Commander-in-Chief of the Myanmar Navy. These are not abstract commitments. They describe an existing architecture of engagement — the India-Myanmar Naval Exercise (IMNEX), the Indo-Myanmar Coordinated Patrol (IMCOR), joint hydrographic surveys, staff talks, and regular training exchanges — sustained through years of political turbulence. Myanmar has participated in all major India-hosted multilateral naval events, including MILAN, the International Fleet Review, the Goa Maritime Conclave, the Indian Ocean Naval Symposium, Security and Growth for All in the Region (SAGAR), and the Admiral's Cup. Dinesh K. Tripathi’s engagements extended beyond flag-level discussions to visits to the Central Naval Command, the Naval Training Command, and No. 1 Fleet — marking the first visit by an Indian Navy chief to Myanmar in over six years. The inclusion of the training establishment is telling: officers trained within Indian doctrinal frameworks carry institutional imprints that outlast any single political moment. Naval relationships accumulate depth not through declarations but through the patient construction of professional familiarity.
The coastlines of Bangladesh and Myanmar form a contested zone of connectivity ambitions, insurgent geography, and competing external investments.
The hydrographic dimension deserves attention, as it is often overlooked in assessments of naval diplomacy. Joint surveys serve multiple purposes: they produce navigational data of commercial value, but also generate intelligence on seabed topography, water column characteristics, and acoustic conditions directly relevant to submarine operations and anti-submarine warfare. In a maritime space where subsurface competition is intensifying — China has been expanding its survey activity in the Indian Ocean, with research vessel operations near the Bay of Bengal assessed as relevant to future PLA Navy submarine and anti-submarine operations, while Chinese survey ships have focused on the Ninetyeast Ridge, where the data collected is understood to be significant for enhancing Chinese submarine survivability in the Indian Ocean — shared hydrographic knowledge constitutes a meaningful form of maritime advantage. According to reports from early 2024, India had conducted approximately 100 foreign hydrographic surveys across the Indian Ocean region, including in Myanmar, and is deliberately expanding this footprint. This positions India as the preferred regional provider of hydrographic services at a time when China is actively offering itself as an alternative, making survey relationships with littoral partners an arena of influence that extends well beyond navigational charting.
The structural driver behind India's engagement is the transformation of Myanmar's coastline into a zone of strategic contestation. The Kyaukphyu deep-sea port project in Rakhine State, a centrepiece of the China-Myanmar Economic Corridor under the Belt and Road Initiative, is designed to provide China with direct access to the Indian Ocean, bypassing the Strait of Malacca through pipelines and road and rail links to Yunnan province. The port's shareholding structure gives China's CITIC Group a 70 percent stake under a 50-year lease, and military analysts have flagged its potential dual-use value for the PLA Navy. Separately, reported interest in developing facilities on the Coco Islands — under Myanmar's jurisdiction and positioned to monitor the Ten Degree Channel — adds a surveillance dimension. These are elements of a broader regional order problem: who shapes the access conditions and security norms of the Bay of Bengal?
India's response has been to invest in forms of engagement that are difficult to reverse — the slow accumulation of shared professional culture through training exchanges and joint exercises — while avoiding posturing that could push littoral partners towards Beijing.
India's response has been to invest in forms of engagement that are difficult to reverse — the slow accumulation of shared professional culture through training exchanges and joint exercises — while avoiding posturing that could push littoral partners towards Beijing. Myanmar has consistently pursued multi-vector defence relationships. The 2020 transfer of INS Sindhuvir, a refurbished Kilo-class submarine refitted by Hindustan Shipyard Limited, to the Myanmar Navy was the first such transfer in Indian Navy history. Myanmar commissioned a Chinese Type 035B Ming-class submarine exactly one year later, in December 2021. This indicates that Naypyidaw is not choosing sides; rather, it is managing dependencies. India's task is to remain sufficiently embedded in Myanmar's professional and operational culture for the relationship to retain substantive value even when the hardware competition remains inconclusive.
The timing of the visit is itself a part of the signal. Elections held in three phases between 28 December 2025 and 25 January 2026, widely condemned as a managed exercise in legitimating authoritarian continuity, resulted in the elevation of Min Aung Hlaing from senior general to president, inaugurated on 10 April 2026. The Indian Navy's engagement at this precise moment is a form of recognition — not normative endorsement, but acknowledgement that the new governmental architecture in Naypyidaw is the interlocutor India must work with to maintain its presence on the Bay's western rim. Western governments have largely stepped back from military engagement with Myanmar since 2021. India has not. That divergence reflects a different reading of where the strategic costs of absence fall.
The Indian Navy's engagement at this precise moment is a form of recognition — not normative endorsement, but acknowledgement that the new governmental architecture in Naypyidaw is the interlocutor India must work with to maintain its presence on the Bay's western rim.
There are genuine tensions worth naming. The 2021 military coup and subsequent civil war have taken a toll on New Delhi’s connectivity ambitions. The Arakan Army’s capture of Paletwa in January 2024 directly disrupted the overland route critical to completing the Kaladan Multi-Modal Transit Transport Project. By the end of 2024, the AA had seized over 80 percent of Rakhine State, leaving only Sittwe, Kyaukphyu, and Manaung Island under military control, thereby stalling the connectivity ambitions that underpin much of the economic rationale behind India’s eastern engagement. The humanitarian consequences of the conflict sit uncomfortably alongside the warmth of naval diplomacy, and these tensions are not unique to Myanmar: India faces analogous dilemmas across the Indo-Pacific littoral where democratic governance is absent or contested.
What Admiral Tripathi's visit therefore illustrates is the distance between the Bay of Bengal as a strategic aspiration and as a managed reality. The aspiration is a stable, rules-based maritime order in which India plays a leading role and naval interoperability reduces the risk of unilateral action by outside powers. The reality is a rimland of fractured states, competing infrastructure investments, multialigning militaries, and a Chinese maritime presence that grows more capable each year. India’s response — sustained engagement, institutional investment, and strategic patience in the face of political discomfort—is a considered one. Whether it is sufficient to shape the Bay of Bengal's emerging order in India's favour will be answered not by any single visit, but by the accumulated weight of decisions taken across the region over the coming decade.
Sreeparna Banerjee is an Associate Fellow with the Strategic Studies Programme
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Sreeparna Banerjee is an Associate Fellow in the Strategic Studies Programme. Her work focuses on the geopolitical and strategic affairs concerning two Southeast Asian countries, namely ...
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