Island security

Strategic geography of the islands

The Andaman and Nicobar chain runs 700 km north-south like a breakwater across the eastern Indian Ocean. From Indira Point — India's southernmost tip, on Great Nicobar — the Six Degree and Ten Degree Channels control access to the Malacca Strait, the chokepoint for trade between the Indian and Pacific Oceans. In any eastern contingency, these islands are India's forward aircraft carrier: unsinkable, and positioned on the adversary's sea lanes.

Lakshadweep, off Kerala, sits on the Arabian Sea's east-west shipping arteries. Its 36 islands, 4,200 sq km of lagoon and vast EEZ are rich in fisheries and potential undersea resources. Historically quieter, the archipelago has drawn security attention for smuggling, the movement of radicalised individuals, and its proximity to the sea lanes that carry India's energy imports.

• A&N Islands: 700 km chain commanding the Malacca approaches.
• Indira Point is India's southernmost tip, near the Six Degree Channel.
• Lakshadweep guards Arabian Sea lanes and a vast EEZ.
• Islands are unsinkable forward platforms — if developed.

The Andaman and Nicobar Command and military posture

The Andaman and Nicobar Command (ANC), created in 2001 after the Kargil Review Committee's recommendations, is India's only integrated tri-services geographical command, with Army, Navy, Air Force and Coast Guard components under a Commander-in-Chief. Its roles: defending the islands, dominating the approaches to the Malacca Strait, surveillance of the eastern Indian Ocean, and humanitarian assistance across the region.

Capabilities have grown steadily: naval air stations at Port Blair (INS Utkrosh) and Campbell Bay (INS Baaz, India's southernmost airfield), P-8I and Dornier patrol aircraft deployments, coastal radar and missile coverage, and exercises with partners. The islands' potential as a logistics and surveillance hub for the wider Indo-Pacific — including for friendly navies under logistics agreements — is increasingly discussed, though infrastructure and force levels remain below the geography's promise.

• ANC (2001): the only tri-services command; CINCAN at Port Blair.
• INS Baaz at Campbell Bay is India's southernmost airfield.
• P-8I and Dornier patrols watch the eastern Indian Ocean.
• Logistics agreements could make the islands a partner-navy hub.

Non-traditional threats: poaching, smuggling, migration

The islands' everyday security problems are non-traditional. Poaching: Myanmarese and Thai boats illegally fish in the island EEZ and, more dangerously, land to collect sea cucumber, poach deer and trade with locals — hundreds of foreign poachers are apprehended and jailed in Port Blair. Smuggling: the islands sit on routes for drugs, arms and contraband moving between the Golden Triangle and the Indian Ocean. Illegal migration: boat people from Myanmar and Bangladesh have landed on remote islands, including Rohingya boats.

The uninhabited-island problem is distinctive: hundreds of islands with no presence are potential hideouts, landing points and staging areas. The 2004 tsunami showed both the vulnerability (entire posts devastated) and the islands' role as a regional HADR hub. Surveillance of the far-flung archipelago depends on radar, patrol craft, and the islanders themselves — the police, forest staff and fishing community.

• Foreign poachers fish and land on remote islands; hundreds jailed.
• Islands lie on Golden Triangle-to-Indian Ocean smuggling routes.
• Rohingya and other boats have landed on remote shores.
• Uninhabited islands are potential staging areas.

Development, tribes and the Great Nicobar project

Island security is inseparable from development and ecology. The Great Nicobar Island development project — a transhipment port at Galathea Bay, an international airport, a township and a power plant — is framed as capturing transhipment traffic that now goes to Colombo and Singapore, and as strategic presence near the Malacca Strait. Critics raise concerns: ecological damage to a biosphere reserve, seismic risk (the 2004 epicentre was nearby), and the impact on the Shompen and Nicobarese tribes.

Tribal protection is a constitutional and ethical imperative: the Sentinelese of North Sentinel Island remain in voluntary isolation under law (contact is prohibited; the 2018 killing of an American intruder showed the enforcement challenge), and the Jarawa are protected by buffer-zone rules that the Andaman Trunk Road controversially crosses. The security-development-ecology balance — building strategic infrastructure without destroying what makes the islands worth defending — is the archipelago's central policy challenge.

• Great Nicobar project: transhipment port, airport, township near Malacca.
• Concerns: ecology, seismic risk, Shompen and Nicobarese rights.
• North Sentinel's Sentinelese are legally protected in isolation.
• Andaman Trunk Road through Jarawa territory remains contested.

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