India Indonesia Defence Ties Gain Momentum as Modi Lands in Jakarta

India Indonesia defence ties have gathered fresh momentum with Prime Minister Narendra Modi arriving in Indonesia on Monday for a three day official visit. It marks his first bilateral trip to the Southeast Asian nation since the two countries raised their relationship to a Comprehensive Strategic Partnership in May 2018.

The visit lands at a point where cooperation between the two maritime neighbours has been widening across defence, maritime security, trade and regional connectivity. The Ministry of External Affairs describes defence as one of the central pillars of the relationship.

How the India Indonesia defence ties took shape

The formal defence relationship goes back to 1951. A Defence Cooperation Agreement followed in 2001 and was renewed in 2006. The larger jump came during Modi's 2018 visit to Indonesia, when both sides signed a Memorandum of Understanding on Defence Cooperation. Since then the engagement has spread across all three services, taking in bilateral and multilateral exercises, coordinated maritime patrols, defence dialogues, training exchanges and links between the two defence industries.

Much of that activity now runs on a fixed calendar.

Regular engagements include the India Indonesia Coordinated Patrol, known as IND INDO CORPAT, the bilateral Army exercise Garuda Shakti and the bilateral naval exercise Samudra Shakti. The two navies also meet in the multilateral drills Komodo and MILAN. Sitting alongside these are cooperation between the Indian Coast Guard and Indonesia's maritime security agency Bakamla, hydrographic work, subject matter expert exchanges and participation in ASEAN led mechanisms such as the ADMM Plus.

High level visits pick up pace

The Ministry of External Affairs points to a further layer of contact through Services Staff Talks, Joint Defence Cooperation Committee meetings, defence industry seminars and multinational exercises such as Super Garuda Shield and Elang Shakti. Much of this recent momentum, IDW has tracked through a run of India Indonesia defence engagements over the past two years.

Ministerial and service level exchanges have grown busier. Indonesian Defence Minister Sjafrie Sjamsoeddin travelled to New Delhi in November 2025 for the third India Indonesia Defence Ministers' Dialogue, co-chaired with Defence Minister Rajnath Singh.

Naval and tri service leaders have kept up their own visits.

Chief of the Naval Staff Admiral Dinesh K Tripathi was in Indonesia from December 15 to 18, 2024, holding talks with the country's defence and military leadership. Earlier that year, in October 2024, Chief of Defence Staff General Anil Chauhan visited to carry the cooperation forward under the Comprehensive Strategic Partnership. Jakarta had also hosted the first India Indonesia Defence Industry Exhibition cum Seminar in April 2024, a marker of the growing interest in industrial tie ups that IDW covered in its reporting on Gen Anil Chauhan's Jakarta visit.

India Indonesia defence ties at sea

Maritime cooperation has stayed at the centre of the relationship. Earlier this year the indigenously built offshore patrol vessel INS Sunayna made a goodwill call at Jakarta from April 22 to 24. The ship was sailing as part of the Indian Ocean Ship SAGAR Mission, short for Security and Growth for All in the Region, and carried personnel drawn from 16 partner nations.

That call followed a steady run of Indian naval deployments to Indonesia through 2025. INS Kadmatt visited Surabaya and Makassar. INS Sandhayak called at Jakarta. The guided missile destroyer INS Mumbai also made port in the Indonesian capital, part of a pattern IDW noted in its coverage of INS Sunayna's IOS SAGAR deployment.

What the two sides are building

The Indian Navy and its Indonesian counterpart have used these port calls and joint drills to widen training contact and build interoperability at sea, adding to years of coordinated patrols in shared waters. The Ministry of External Affairs links the rising count of defence dialogues, naval deployments, joint exercises and industry work to a steadily deepening defence relationship between the two countries across the Indo Pacific.

A relationship anchored in the maritime domain

For both New Delhi and Jakarta the sea has become the natural meeting ground, from coordinated patrols to port calls by frontline warships. The current visit adds one more entry to a defence calendar that has filled out sharply since the partnership was signed in 2018.