A US torpedo punches holes in India’s net security provider claim and maritime ambitions

“The event realises the Hon’ble Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi's MAHASAGAR vision (Mutual and Holistic Advancement for Security and Growth Across Regions), announced in 2025”.

This is how a Press Information Bureau statement described the International Fleet Review 2026, and two other big ticket maritime security events – Exercise MILAN 2026, and the Indian Ocean Naval Symposium 2026 – all held together between February 18 and 26 at Visakhapatnam, the headquarters of India’s eastern naval command. 

As many as 74 countries were represented, though not all sent warships. India’s INS Vikrant led the show. Iran sent Iris Dena, an indigenously built Mowj class destroyer equipped with missiles and anti-submarine torpedoes. 

The United States, which was initially supposed to send a destroyer of the Arleigh-Burke class guided missile destroyer named USS Pinckney (DDG-91), sent a P-8 maritime patrol aircraft instead. The US is reported to have withdrawn the warship for “emergent requirements”. Though the Maritime Executive, a Florida-based industry publication, had a different take, saying it would have been “embarrassing” for the Indian hosts to have had Pinckney moored alongside Iris Dena, should war have broken out with Iran during the period of the fleet review. 

The PIB spoke effusively about MAHASAGAR as an extension of “India’s SAGAR (Security and Growth for All in the Region) philosophy from the Indian Ocean across regions, emphasising sustainability, resilience, and collective responsibility of the maritime commons”. It had called the event “a major operational manifestation of this vision, demonstrating India’s commitment to being a ‘Preferred Security Partner’ for all friends and partners.”

All that and the theme of the show, “Unity Through Oceans”, now lie at the bottom of the sea, along with the debris of the Iris Dena, and the bodies of scores of its personnel. 

‘Long-standing links’ that evaporated quickly

The ship was torpedoed by a US submarine on its return journey home in the early hours of March 4, in Sri Lanka's Exclusive Economic Zone 40 nautical miles south of Galle, but outside its territorial waters. Iris Dena is reported to have left Visakhapatnam on February 26 after the closing ceremonies. It was most likely being surveilled by the US military right through its journey to and from Indian shores, the return cut short by what US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth announced as a torpedo fired by a US submarine, sinking the ship 40 nautical miles south of Sri Lanka. The Sri Lankan Navy rescuers recovered 80 bodies from the high seas, and picked up 32 survivors. They are admitted in a hospital in Karapitya in Galle. More than 100 other men who were on the ship are reported to be missing. 

Earlier, welcoming the Iris Dena, the Indian Navy’s Eastern Command said in a tweet that “her arrival at #Visakhapatnam to participate in #IFR2026_India and #MILAN2026, reflecting long-standing cultural links between the two nations”. But these long-standing cultural links seem to have evaporated rather quickly. India’s loud silence on the bombing of the Iris Dena in its neighbourhood, is matched only by its silence over the Israeli-US killing of the Iranian head of state Ayatollah Ali Khamenei along with dozens of other Iranian officials on February 28. 

The episode, which has brought the war to the doorstep of the region, has rattled Sri Lanka and blown a hole through India’s claims as the net security provider in the Indian Ocean region. And the Indian Navy will be haunted by the incident that has made a mockery of its exercises and its status as host of a prestigious international event. 

Sri Lanka now faces yet another hot potato. Another Iranian ship is in its EEZ, close to its territorial waters off Panadura, a coastal town south of Colombo. The government confirmed this in Parliament this morning, and said all efforts were being made to resolve the situation peacefully.

Less than a year ago, in April 2025, India and Sri Lanka signed a memorandum of understanding on defence co-operation, but that agreement, which was already facing domestic headwinds, may be worth little now. Not just Sri Lanka, from Seychelles to Mauritius, from Maldives to Bangladesh, the entire IOR littoral where India claims it reduces the reliance of these countries on an extra-territorial power (read China) through the mechanism of the Colombo Security Dialogue, has seen what happened.

Confusingly, Sri Lankan media are reporting that Sri Lanka was “requested” by the US Indo-Pacific Command to mount rescue operations for survivors. There are also reports that the ship had requested to make a port of call at Colombo and it was attacked while the request was being considered by the Sri Lankan government in the light of the ongoing US-Israel war against Iran. The strike on Iris Dena came two weeks after a visit by the commander of the US Pacific Fleet,  Admiral Steve Koehler, to Sri Lanka to discuss strengthening military co-operation.

Several questions arise: Did Delhi have information ahead about the US plan to hit Iris Dena, or in real time? Worse, was a US submarine lurking in nearby waters without India being able to detect it? Should India have assisted Sri Lanka in the rescue operations? 

The intelligence alphabet soup

The questions are relevant due to the recent proliferation of intelligence gathering and surveillance activities in the Indian Ocean region by the Indian Navy and Coast Guard, in the name of SAGAR, MAHASAGAR, MAITRI, QUAD and other such alphabet soup. 

In Gurugram, the Indian Navy has built a high-tech maritime surveillance outfit called the Information Fusion Centre-Indian Ocean Region, modelled on an identically named centre in Singapore. It is meant to enhance India 's maritime domain awareness (MDA) in this part of the IOR. The International Maritime Organisation defines MDA as “gathering, fusing, and analysing data from satellites, radar, and human intelligence to detect threats, combat illegal activity (like Illegal, Unreported and Unregulated fishing), and support rapid, informed decision-making”. MDA has been a big focus of QUAD over the last four years. 

India’s Coast Guard-run National Maritime Search and Rescue Co-ordinating Authority is closely involved with and reportedly has access to all information that comes through Colombo's Maritime Rescue Co-ordination Centre (MRCC) in real-time. Under a 2022 agreement, India had beefed up Sri Lanka's MRCC with a $6 million grant and the services of Bharat Electronics Limited, which also powers India's MRCCs. 

MRCCs are part of an international network under the UN's International Maritime Organisation. Their purpose is to mount a swift response to vessels in distress, carry out rescue operations, which countries are internationally obliged to do in their respective “search and rescue areas”. In India, the Coast Guard operates the MRCCs, while in Sri Lanka, it's the Navy.

The infusion of funds and technology to the Colombo MRCC, and its chain of sub-centres at Galle, Hambantota, and several other points around the island’s coastline, was aimed at enhancing maritime security co-operation between the two countries, enabling communication between them for a swift response to emergencies.

External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar inaugurated the Colombo MRCC in June 2024, with then President Ranil Wickremesinghe, six months after a stand off between the two countries over a Chinese “research” ship in Sri Lankan waters. 

Despite the plethora of mechanisms, Delhi was caught short by the attack against its own guest by the navy of a country with which it has several defence agreements and whose president it has crawled to please over the last year. The India-US defence partnership was renewed last year for 10 years and is littered with more alphabet agreements ( GSOMIA, LEMOA, COMCASA, and BECA, enabling secure information exchange, logistics support, encrypted communications, and geospatial data sharing). It is difficult to say which is worse – that India was in the dark, or that it knew and was unable to assert itself to prevent it.

The MRCC co-operation with Sri Lanka was not envisaged for war time rescue operations, but neither was it anticipated that the US Navy would extend its war against Iran to international waters in the Indian Ocean.

Delhi could have attempted other ways to salvage at least a small modicum of the power and prestige it has sought to project in the Indian Ocean over the past decade. The site of the attack on Iris Dena is too far to send a Coast Guard or Navy vessel to assist Sri Lankan rescue teams, but it was not impossible to send or even offer to send the Indian Coast Guard's aircraft to pitch in.

India has shrugged off the US-Israeli killing of the Iranian leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, but it can ignore the arrival of the war in west Asia so close to its shore only at its own peril.   

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