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Chandigarh: As the war rages on in the Persian Gulf between Iran and the US–Israel combine, naval planners around the world are being daily reminded that a handful of mines can shut down vital sea lanes – precisely the threat the Indian Navy (IN) is currently ill-equipped to handle.

Naval mines have long been regarded by strategists as among the most efficient sea-denial weapons ever devised. Requiring relatively modest technology, they can be deployed covertly by ships, submarines, small boats and even improvised platforms, yet cripple both military and commercial traffic, like oil tankers, in inverse proportion to their size and cost.

Even a handful of smart or influence mines laid near harbour entrances or busy shipping channels can severely disrupt port operations, delay fleet movements and impose enormous economic costs. Modern mines equipped with acoustic, magnetic or pressure sensors can lie dormant for months before activating, making their detection and clearance slow, dangerous and highly specialised. It is precisely for this reason that most major navies maintain dedicated Mine Countermeasure Vessels (MCMVs) designed specifically to locate and neutralise such threats.

A modern MCMV is a specialised 700–1,000-tonne platform, typically 60–75 metres long with a shallow draft for operations close to shore. Built with non-magnetic composite or fibreglass hulls to avoid triggering influence mines, it carries high-resolution sonar, remotely operated or unmanned mine-disposal systems, and precision navigation equipment for detecting, classifying and neutralising mines.

For India, which imports nearly 90% of its oil and energy needs and relies on sea lanes running through the Gulf and the wider Indian Ocean Region, the ability to detect and clear naval mines should be a core naval capability. Yet, astonishingly for a self-declared maritime power so dependent on seaborne trade, it presently operates not even a single dedicated MCMV.

This bleak situation arose after the April 2019 retirement of INS Kozhikode, the last of the INs 12 Soviet-designed and built Pondicherry/Natya-class MCMVs, after over three decades of service. Its decommissioning left the Navy bereft of all dedicated mine-clearing capability – an extraordinary lapse for a maritime nation with a long coastline, major commercial ports and a growing dependence on seaborne trade.

But the disappearance of the IN’s mine countermeasure capability is not the result of technological difficulty or lack of foresight; it is the consequence of years of procurement paralysis within the Ministry of Defence (MoD), seemingly inured to operational realities. For reasons attributable less to strategy than to bureaucratic inertia and procurement mismanagement, this critical capability has, so far, simply been allowed to lapse without replacement.

Repeated attempts since the early 2000s to restore it have collapsed amid contract disputes, blacklisting episodes, shifting procurement categories and endless wrangling over costs. Each aborted effort, and there have been several, has followed the same dispiriting pattern: global MCMV tenders announced with fanfare, technical evaluations dragged out, commercial negotiations stalled, contracts scrapped, and the process restarted under revised terms, only to falter yet again.

“The outcome is not merely delay, but the steady erosion of an entire operational function that most major navies treat as foundational to maritime security,” said a senior industrial official involved in these abortive procurement attempts. It exposes a strategic vulnerability that India’s adversaries can well exploit with devastating effect, he added, declining to be named.

Other IN veterans associated with past attempts to procure MCMVs said these specialised platforms were not substitutes for frontline warships, but essential enablers of their freedom of action by employing their low-magnetic-signature hulls, specialised sonars, remotely operated vehicles, divers, and controlled detonation systems to detect and neutralise mines. They said that without them, even the most powerful fleet risked being ‘bottlenecked” close to shore.

“For an economy so reliant on uninterrupted maritime trade and energy flows, the absence of even one dedicated MCMV constitutes a serious strategic blind spot ”said a two-star IN veteran. Stopgap measures like deploying divers, limited modular systems, or adapting other platforms for mine countermeasure missions cannot replicate the effectiveness or safety margins of purpose-built platforms like MCMVs, he added, declining to be identified for commenting on such an operationally sensitive procurement. 

In the late 1990s, the IN had identified a requirement for 12 modern MCMVs. An initial Rs 2,300 crore proposal in 2010–11 to acquire eight vessels – two to be imported from South Korea’s Kangnam Corporation and six licence-built at the state-owned Goa Shipyard Limited (GSL) – was terminated in 2015 amid allegations of irregularities. The programme was subsequently revived as a larger Rs 32,000-crore plan to construct 12  800-tonne MCMVs at GSL with Kangnam providing design and technology support, but this too was scrapped by the MoD in late 2017 after prolonged disagreements over pricing and technology transfer.

In the meantime, the IN resorted to interim measures, or jugaad, from 2012 onwards, importing 24 Mine Counter Measure Clip-On Influence Sweeps (MCMCLOIS) from Thales Australia for fitment onto smaller naval craft – a limited stopgap arrangement that provided basic mine-sweeping capability, but fell well short of the specialised detection and neutralisation functions performed by purpose-built MCMVs.

It was only in July 2025 that the MoD’s Defence Acquisition Council or DAC finally accorded Acceptance of Necessity (AoN) for the procurement of 12 indigenous MCMVs, estimated at Rs 44,000 crore, marking yet another attempt to revive a long-stalled programme. Yet, beyond the predictable burst of media hype – often implying that the vessels had effectively been ordered – this MCMV approval has produced little tangible progress.

 In reality, an AoN merely clears the first procedural hurdle in a notoriously protracted acquisition cycle that involves another 10–11 laborious stages – from framing the platform’s qualitative requirements and issuing a tender to technical evaluations, commercial negotiations and final approval – often stretching over several years before a contract is finally concluded.

Meanwhile, in the absence of MCMVs, the IN has largely been forced to rely on improvised measures such as MCMCLOIS’s, remotely operated vehicles for limited mine disposal tasks, and diver-led explosive ordnance disposal teams for harbour clearance. More broadly, however, other navies sometimes resort to additional stopgap options – albeit poor substitutes for  MCMVs that include unmanned surface and underwater vehicles equipped with mine-hunting sonar, modular mine-warfare packages fitted onto larger ships, and helicopter-towed sweep systems.

While these alternatives offer some flexibility and stand-off capability, they lack the specialised sensors, low-signature hulls and endurance of MCMVs that provide sustained and systematic mine-hunting operations.

“What makes the absence of MCMVs in the Indian Navy even more puzzling is that they are neither prestige platforms nor budget-breaking acquisitions compared to fighters, submarines or destroyers, but relatively modest in cost while delivering disproportionately high operational value,” said a senior industry official. “Yet precisely because they lack glamour, they are often crowded out in budgetary prioritisation and bureaucratic attention,” he added, requesting anonymity. 

© The Wire