Pakistan Gets Chinese Stealth Submarine, Escalates Arms Race in Bay of Bengal

Half a century after a bruising naval defeat, Pakistan is signalling it can again challenge India on its eastern flank

· PNS Hangor commissioned: Pakistan has inducted PNS Hangor, the first of eight Hangor-class attack submarines, with four being built in China and four to be constructed in Pakistan.

· Strategic message: The submarine is intended to signal Pakistan’s capability to operate beyond the Arabian Sea, including in the Bay of Bengal, a region where it has had little naval presence since the 1971 India-Pakistan War.

· Advanced capability: The Hangor class features Air-Independent Propulsion (AIP) technology, allowing longer underwater endurance, improved stealth, and greater survivability than Pakistan’s ageing Agosta-class submarines.

· Fleet comparison: Pakistan currently operates five diesel-electric attack submarines and three midget submarines, while India has about 19 active submarines, including three nuclear ballistic missile submarines.

· China-Pakistan defence ties: The programme highlights expanding naval cooperation between China and Pakistan, including joint exercises, co-production, and broader Chinese military support.

· Strategic concerns: Analysts suggest the submarines could increase Pakistan’s deterrence capability and, if coordinated with Chinese naval assets, add pressure on India’s eastern and western maritime fronts.

· India’s response: India retains significant advantages in geography, surveillance, logistics, and anti-submarine warfare capabilities, though experts note the new submarines will require enhanced tracking efforts.

· Broader context: The development comes amid continued India-Pakistan tensions following their military confrontation in May 2025, with both countries accelerating defence modernisation.

· Analysts’ view: Experts believe the immediate military balance remains largely unchanged, but the induction of the Hangor class could increase strategic uncertainty in the Indian Ocean region.

[ABS News Service/29.06.2026]

The last time Pakistan’s navy operated a submarine in the Bay of Bengal, India sank it. That was 1971. Fifty-five years on, Islamabad is signalling its intent to go back.

The vessel delivering that message, PNS Hangor, arrived in Karachi on June 11, the first of a class of eight attack submarines – four built in China, with the remainder to be constructed in Pakistan to develop its shipbuilding capacity.

PNS Hangor is named after an earlier Daphne-class submarine that sank the Indian frigate INS Khukri in the Arabian Sea in December 1971, a rare moment of Pakistani naval success in an otherwise one-sided conflict.

Commodore Omer Farooq, who acted as escort commander for the new vessel’s high-profile transit voyage from China, declared it a “game changer” capable of operating not just in Pakistan’s home waters, but eastwards, deep into what India considers its own maritime backyard.

Unsurprisingly, the announcement has raised more than just eyebrows in New Delhi.

Pakistan has not maintained a meaningful naval presence east of India since its forces were routed there more than half a century ago.

Since the 1971 war, in which India’s navy blockaded what was then East Pakistan, severed supply lines and accelerated the surrender of Pakistani forces that led to the creation of Bangladesh, Islamabad’s naval ambitions have been effectively confined to the northern Arabian Sea.

For it to now signal an intention to operate in the Bay of Bengal – home to India’s Eastern and Nicobar naval commands – is “strategically significant less for its immediate military effect than for its audacious geopolitical symbolism”, according to independent maritime security analyst Swaran Singh.

The Hangor class comes equipped with air-independent propulsion (AIP) technology, enabling the submarines to remain submerged for extended periods – making them stealthier and harder to track than the ageing Agosta vessels they replace.

Unlike conventional diesel-electric submarines, which must regularly surface or snorkel to recharge batteries, AIP-equipped vessels can operate silently at depth for weeks at a time, dramatically increasing their survivability and strike potential in contested waters.

Pakistan currently operates a core fleet of five diesel-electric attack submarines and three midget submarines primarily used for special operations. India’s fleet stands at around 19 active submarines, consisting of roughly 16 conventional diesel-electric vessels and three nuclear ballistic missile submarines.

A parity play?

Abdul Moiz Khan, a research officer at the Centre for International Strategic Studies in Islamabad, said the Hangor class offered Pakistan “parity” with the growing and much larger Indian fleet through precision rather than numbers.

“Instead of a quantitative arms race with India, it [Pakistan] aims to maintain a qualitative parity to maintain balance of power and mutually assured destruction,” he said.

If India were ever to blockade or strike Pakistani naval assets in the Arabian Sea, Khan said the Hangor class would give Pakistan a credible retaliatory reach extending to India’s eastern seaboard.

But the capability question cannot be separated from its strategic context. Singh points to timing: PNS Hangor’s arrival coincides with the deepening of a China-Pakistan naval partnership that now encompasses joint drills and co-production agreements, as well as China’s expanding Indian Ocean presence.

The two navies have conducted regular exercises in the Arabian Sea in recent years and the Hangor programme itself reflects a broader pattern of Chinese arms transfers to Pakistan that includes JF-17 fighter jets, frigates and missile systems.

China permanently stations up to eight warships in the Indian Ocean, operates a military base in Djibouti and has access to ports at Gwadar in Pakistan and Hambantota in Sri Lanka. Its submarines and intelligence vessels have become a routine fixture in waters India once considered its preserve.

The prospect of Pakistani submarines operating in those same waters, potentially networked with Chinese platforms, raised what Singh described as the spectre of “coordinated strategic pressure on both India’s eastern and western seaboards.”

Sultan Mahmood Hali, a retired Pakistan Air Force group captain, read the Hangor’s arrival in similar terms: less a single tactical development than a strategic signal.

“Maritime power is not only about ships and submarines,” he said. “It is about shaping perceptions, influencing alignments and signalling resolve.”

The message was one of deterrence, he argued – and it was a message intended to be heard loud and clear in Delhi.

It comes against a backdrop of renewed India-Pakistan hostility. The two countries fought an intense four-day military conflict in May last year, the most serious escalation between the nuclear-armed rivals in decades, which ended in a ceasefire.

Relations are still deeply strained and both sides have since accelerated their military modernisation programmes.

‘Balance of uncertainty’

India’s defence establishment is likely listening to Pakistan’s latest move with mixed emotions.

On the one hand, Pakistani deployments in the Bay of Bengal would have to contend with formidable practical obstacles. Islamabad has no friendly port east of India, no logistical network in the region and no operational experience sustaining a presence so far from home.

India, by contrast, commands overwhelming advantages in geography, surveillance infrastructure and force projection in those waters.

“These waters are still India’s strong ground,” said Bengaluru-based defence analyst Girish Linganna. “The real test is whether India keeps it that way calmly, without being rattled by symbolism.”

Still, Linganna acknowledged that stealthy Hangor-class submarines would be “quieter and harder to find, so India must work harder to track them”.

India has invested heavily in anti-submarine warfare in recent years, including P-8I maritime patrol aircraft, underwater sensor networks and its own submarine construction programme. But analysts say the pace of that modernisation is being tested by simultaneous pressure from China in the north and, increasingly, Pakistan at sea.

Singh said the “greater challenge” for India was not a Pakistani submarine itself, but the “gradual emergence of a China-enabled undersea ecosystem around India’s periphery” that could chip away at the maritime advantages Delhi has taken for granted since 1971.

The balance of power has not changed yet – though perhaps it does not need to.

“What changes is not the balance of power but the balance of uncertainty,” Singh said.