Indian and Pakistani Naval Vessels Collide in Arabian Sea, Raising Fears of Unintended Escalation

Islamabad, Pakistan — More than 16 months after India and Pakistan engaged in a four-day air war involving missile and drone exchanges, the nuclear-armed South Asian neighbours faced their most serious military close-call since, this time in the Arabian Sea.

An encounter on Tuesday involving Indian and Pakistani naval vessels resulted in a collision and sparked immediate, reciprocal diplomatic protests. Pakistan's government summoned India’s top diplomat in Islamabad on Wednesday, mirroring actions taken by New Delhi hours earlier when it summoned Pakistan’s charge d’affaires to lodge its own formal protest.

This incident marks the first direct military encounter between the two nations since their conflict in May 2025, which brought them closer to a full-scale war than they had been in decades due to Indian air strikes and subsequent Pakistani retaliation.

Official details surrounding the event remain heavily disputed. Neither government has published video footage, track data, or an independent assessment, and both statements place the blame squarely on the other party's vessel. Security analysts note that the episode highlights the dangerous potential for unintended maritime incidents to spiral into broader crises, especially given the current lack of robust military and diplomatic de-escalation mechanisms between India and Pakistan.

Two Conflicting Accounts

According to an official statement released by Pakistan’s Foreign Office on Wednesday evening, the Pakistan Navy has been conducting its biennial SEASPARK-26 exercise inside its exclusive economic zone (EEZ) since September 1. A country's EEZ extends 200 nautical miles (370km) from its coastline, with territorial waters spanning 12 nautical miles (22km) and the remainder serving as international waters where foreign vessels maintain freedom of navigation without economic exploitation rights.

Pakistan asserted that an Indian vessel, identified as the guided-missile destroyer INS Kolkata, repeatedly attempted to enter the exercise zone starting September 7. On September 15, the Kolkata allegedly made a dangerous course alteration that led to a collision with a Pakistani vessel, identified in local media reports as the offshore patrol vessel PNS Hunain.

“Pakistan strongly rejects this belligerent Indian action,” the Pakistani Foreign Office declared, characterizing it as a breach of a 1991 bilateral pact obligating warships to maintain a minimum distance of three nautical miles (5.5km) from one another in international waters.

Conversely, India’s Ministry of External Affairs maintained that its warship was performing routine surveillance in international waters when a Pakistani vessel approached at high velocity and executed unsafe manoeuvres. Notably, neither government explicitly named the vessels in their official on-record communications, and India has neither confirmed nor denied the INS Kolkata identification.

The last recorded collision between the two navies occurred in June 2011, when the Pakistani frigate PNS Babur brushed against the Indian frigate INS Godavari in the Gulf of Aden while both escorted a merchant vessel freed from Somali pirates. Mutual blame was exchanged then as well, though that diplomatic spat subsided within weeks.

Analyzing the Risks

Retired Vice Admiral Ahmad Saeed of the Pakistan Navy remarked that the dynamic—two vessels operating in close proximity without explicit intent to collide—bears resemblance to Cold War-era bumping incidents involving Soviet and US vessels in the Black Sea. However, he cautioned that India and Pakistan are poorly equipped to handle similar situations.

“There’s no bilateral Incidents at Sea agreement, the kind the US and USSR signed in 1972, and no navy-to-navy hotline,” Saeed told Al Jazeera. “Article 10 sets a distance, but it gives no manoeuvring rules and no procedure for investigating an incident afterwards. That gap is exactly why each side can just accuse the other.”

Article 10 of the 1991 confidence-building agreement mandates that warships remain at least three nautical miles apart in international waters. Saeed warned that the principal danger lies in potential subsequent actions, such as fire-control radar lock-ons, helicopter overflights, or an eventual escalation leading to actual casualties.

Conversely, Muhammad Shareh Qazi, a Lahore-based security and maritime analyst, referenced the same 1991 agreement—which requires 30 days of written notice prior to military exercises—alongside international collision regulations applicable to both signatories of the UN maritime convention.

“If this collision really had the potential to escalate militarily, you’d have noticed by now,” Qazi stated. “There’s a tool for that, called chaff, fired just above the bow or stern purely to signal you could escalate if needed. Nothing like that happened here.”

He added that both navies possess internal accountability mechanisms, noting that any captain acting without authorization would face a court-martial process independent of diplomatic fallout. Regarding fishermen frequently detained near the undemarcated Sir Creek boundary further south, Qazi suggested that while the link to deep-sea encounters is indirect, clearer boundary demarcation could eventually reduce ambiguities regarding expected maritime interactions.

Saeed maintained a more cautious outlook regarding the potential containment of the incident. “This hasn’t stayed quiet. Both governments went public with protests within a day of each other,” he observed, emphasizing that heightened public sentiment following the previous year's conflict makes the current situation riskier than the 2011 encounter.

Similar close-range confrontations have increasingly characterized relations between China and the Philippines in the South China Sea. During a notable flare-up on July 24, Philippine authorities reported that a Chinese vessel approached within seven metres of a Philippine fisheries boat near Scarborough shoal, with Chinese coast guard vessels deploying water cannons.

Ultimately, whether this week's collision mirrors those prolonged tensions or dissipates like the 2011 incident depends heavily on subsequent diplomatic developments, according to Qazi. “If, in the next 24 to 48 hours, an official statement suggests there was a genuine cause to manufacture an incident for the purpose of escalation, then yes, there may be a real possibility of this happening again,” he concluded.