by Adithya M Nair
The 2026 Iran War, which began on February 28, 2026, with coordinated US-Israeli strikes on Iranian military and leadership targets, offers critical strategic insights for India. Tehran, in retaliation, launched hundreds of ballistic missiles and thousands of drones against Israeli territory, US military installations across the Middle East, and civilian and military infrastructure in Gulf Arab states.
Most critical for global stability, Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz, through which approximately 20% of global petroleum and liquefied natural gas flows, effectively weaponizing one of the world's most vital maritime chokepoints.
For India, this conflict is a demonstration of strategic vulnerabilities that directly impact its national interests. Beyond immediate economic impacts, the war offers invaluable lessons about modern military capabilities, the changing character of naval warfare, the centrality of energy security, and the importance of strategic geography in an era of great power competition.
Controlling Maritime Chokepoints
Iran’s ability to close the strait of Hormuz has given it immense strategic leverage. The strait's closure has elevated global oil prices, providing economic leverage despite sanctions, forced shipping reroutes that add weeks and significant costs to maritime trade, disrupted Gulf Arab economies dependent on oil exports and has become a central issue in ceasefire negotiations, effectively providing Iran with a veto over peace terms.
Therefore by leveraging geography, Iran was able to take the global economy hostage, thereby giving it an unprecedented advantage during negotiations.
India sits astride several critical maritime chokepoints in the Indian Ocean Region (IOR), including the Strait of Malacca, the Eight Degree Channel, and the Nine Degree Channel. India must develop both the military capabilities and legal-strategic frameworks to assert effective dominance over these passages.
This includes enhanced submarine presence, Maritime domain awareness systems and anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) capabilities in key straits and the diplomatic groundwork to assert mare-clausum principles where India's security interests are paramount. The ability to close or contest access to key maritime routes (targeting adversary countries) in a crisis would provide India with strategic leverage disproportionate to its conventional military capabilities.
Drone Warfare Capability
One of the most significant revelations of the 2026 Iran war has been the effectiveness of mass drone attacks. Iran launched thousands of low-cost drones alongside hundreds of ballistic missiles, forcing Israeli and US forces to expend expensive interceptor missiles worth millions of dollars to counter threats costing a fraction of that amount.
The Iranian approach demonstrates several key principles. First, quantity has a quality of its own. Second, low cost attritable platforms force adversaries into unsustainable cost exchange ratios. Third, swarm attacks can create windows of vulnerability against technologically superior adversaries. Fourth, drones can serve multiple roles at the same time, reconnaissance, harassment, precision strikes, and as decoys for more valuable assets.
India must urgently establish large scale drone manufacturing facilities or “drone farms”, capable of producing thousands of military UAVs across different capability tiers. India should target a production capacity of at least 10000+ drones per year. A large quantity of “good enough” drones could outdo a small amount of “good quality” drones.
Rebalancing Air Power Investments
The 2026 Iran War has reinforced a trend visible in the Ukraine conflict and other recent operations: the relative cost-effectiveness and survivability of manned fighter aircraft is increasingly being challenged. Iranian air defences, even after degradation by initial US-Israeli strikes, continue to pose sufficient risk.
India's Rafale acquisition cost approximately $240 million per aircraft including weapons and support. In contrast, the Russian Kronshtadt Orion-E offers a multi-role strike platform for approximately $5 million, while the Geran-2 (Shahed-136) Kamikaze drone provides deep-strike capability for as little as $30,000 to $50,000 per unit. For the price of one Rafale, India could acquire 8-24 capable UCAVs depending on sophistication level, dramatically increasing attack capabilities.
With that being said, the Rafales have their own capabilities, but the role of traditional aerial systems are evolving rapidly. India should restructure its airpower doctrine toward a hybrid model by retaining high-end manned platforms like the Dassault Rafale and Tejas for air superiority, deterrence, and complex missions, while rapidly scaling cost-effective unmanned systems.
Rethinking Naval Power Projection
The Iran War has demonstrated the increasing vulnerability of surface naval assets, including high-value platforms like aircraft carriers, to saturation attacks from missiles and drones. Iran's anti-ship ballistic missiles (ASBMs) and shore-based anti-ship cruise missiles (ASCMs), combined with swarms of naval drones, have forced US carrier strike groups to operate further from Iranian shores than operationally optimal.
Aircraft carriers represent massive concentrations of capability and vulnerability. India's existing carrier, INS Vikramaditya, and the indigenous INS Vikrant represent investments exceeding $5 billion combined. Yet these platforms face threats from an increasingly lethal environment where Chinese DF-21D and DF-26 'carrier-killer' missiles can strike moving targets at ranges up to 4,000 km, forcing carriers to operate hundreds of kilometers away from optimal zones. Additionally the induction of AIP-equipped Hangor-class submarines by Pakistan and the threat of mass drone saturation attacks create a scenario where a single “lucky” hit could impose disproportionate risk on high-value naval assets.
In the Indian Ocean context, submarines offer a more efficient and cost-effective way to deny enemy access and project power compared to traditional surface assets. India should prioritise expanding its submarine fleet to from the current 16 boats to a minimum of 20 conventional attack submarines (SSKs) and 5 nuclear-powered attack submarines (SSNs) by 2040.
This does not require abandoning aircraft carriers, which remain valuable for power projection, air cover, and deterrence. However, rather than disproportionately investing in additional carrier platforms, India should maintain a modest but capable carrier force while directing greater resources toward undersea capabilities.
Sea Mines And Mines Countermeasures
Iran's historical emphasis on mine warfare and the strategic significance of the Strait of Hormuz underscore the relevance of this often-overlooked capability. Sea mines represent one of the most cost-effective weapons systems available, with modern influence mines costing $25,000-$150,000 per unit while threatening vessels worth hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars. The mere threat of mine fields can deny access to critical waters, force shipping reroutes, and impose heavy costs on adversaries.
India’s mine warfare capabilities remain significantly underdeveloped relative to its strategic requirements in the Indian Ocean. The Indian Navy currently operates very few dedicated mine countermeasure vessels (MCMVs), following the retirement of older platforms such as the Pondicherry-class minesweeper, leaving a critical gap in the ability to secure key ports and sea lanes during conflict.
While the government recently approved a ₹44,000-crore project to build 12 indigenous MCMVs, these are only in the early procurement stages. The first vessel is not expected to be delivered until at least 2030–2032. Given the scale of India’s coastline and its dependence on maritime trade, this shortfall poses a serious operational risk.
India should therefore prioritise a comprehensive mine warfare strategy that balances both offensive and defensive capabilities. Key technologies such as Autonomous Underwater Vehicle will be central to this effort, enabling faster and safer detection and neutralisation of mines without exposing crews to high risk.
Energy Security
The closure of the Strait of Hormuz has laid bare India's dangerous dependence on Middle Eastern oil transiting through vulnerable chokepoints. The Hormuz closure has disrupted these flows and demonstrated that India's energy security is hostage to geopolitical events beyond its control.
India must urgently pursue energy independence and diversification. Some measures include: accelerating renewable energy transitions like solar power and nuclear power, expanding strategic petroleum reserves and maximizing output from existing fields and accelerating offshore exploration.
Central Asia holds approximately 40 billion barrels of proven oil reserves and 230 trillion cubic feet of natural gas reserves. Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan collectively produce over 2 million barrels per day of oil and possess enormous gas reserves that could help diversify India's energy imports. Moreover, Central Asian energy could reach India via pipeline without traversing vulnerable maritime chokepoints, providing a degree of supply security unavailable through seaborne imports.
Therefore getting access to Central Asian resources must be a priority for India’s foreign policy. However, achieving this objective requires overcoming structural geopolitical barriers, particularly the lack of direct connectivity through Pakistan and instability in Afghanistan, which have historically limited the realisation of pipeline-based energy integration.
Electronic Warfare
One of the least visible yet most decisive dimensions of the 2026 Iran war was the extensive use of electronic warfare (EW). Iran effectively used ground-based jammers and spoofers to interfere with GNSS signals across the Strait of Hormuz and surrounding waters. Ships reported false positions (appearing inland or at airports), forcing reduced speeds, daylight-only movements, and route changes. This created confusion, raised collision risks, and imposed economic costs without kinetic engagement.
India's reliance on foreign GNSS (primarily US GPS) remains a vulnerability, as seen in past conflicts like Kargil 1999 where signal degradation occurred. NavIC was designed precisely for this , providing regional coverage (India + 1,500 km) with dual-use military-grade accuracy. But unfortunately at present, barely 3 of 11 NAVIC satellites are fulfilling their core purpose. Even among these 3 satellites, one could fail anytime, as it has well exceeded its expected life. By comparison, China's BeiDou constellation has over 30 operational satellites with global coverage, while Russia's GLONASS maintains 24.
India must strengthen and expand its indigenous GNSS capabilities and must ensure that all military platforms are compatible with them and NavIC must evolve from a regional system to a global navigation constellation.
India must develop encrypted, anti-jam, military-grade navigation signals and progressively expand NavIC into a globally capable constellation that can operate independently of foreign systems. In parallel, India should strengthen its electronic warfare capabilities, both defensive and offensive, by integrating them with cyber and space operations to ensure resilience against signal denial, while retaining the ability to degrade or disrupt adversary systems in a conflict environment.
The 2026 Iran War serves as a clarifying moment for Indian strategic planning. It has demonstrated that a militarily inferior nation can gain strategic advantage over two nuclear powers, by exploiting geography and cost efficient weaponry. The main lesson India can learn from the conflict is that modern conflicts are increasingly defined by the ability to disrupt critical systems, energy flows, logistics, communications, and financial networks, rather than by territorial conquest alone.
For India, this means rethinking how it prepares for war: placing greater emphasis on scalable, attritable systems such as drones and missiles, strengthening sea denial capabilities in the Indian Ocean, investing seriously in electronic and cyber warfare, and building resilience into critical infrastructure and supply chains.
Ultimately, the conflict shows that strategic advantage today does not come from sheer military strength alone, but from the ability to exploit vulnerabilities, manage escalation, and sustain pressure across multiple domains without incurring unsustainable costs.
Adithya M Nair is a seasoned analyst and commentator on foreign policy and defence affairs, with an eye for incisive insights into the shifting dynamics of global security
