Islamabad (TIP): The name Hangor evokes history. In 1971, Pakistani submarine PNS Hangor sank India’s INS Khukri during the India-Pakistan war. That was the first instance where an Indian Navy warship sank in wartime since Independence and one of the Pakistan Navy’s most celebrated naval strikes. However, the sinking of INS Khukri did little to alter the 1971 war’s outcome. Pakistan suffered a crushing defeat, as Indian forces on land, air and sea crushed the Pakistanis and helped secure Bangladesh’s liberation.
Fifty-five years after the 1971 bloody nose, which wiped out the PakiSet featured imagestani presence in the Bay of Bengal, another Pakistani Hangor is making headlines. Pakistan’s first Hangor-class submarine, after being commissioned in China in April, arrived in Karachi last week. And, senior Pakistani naval officers are already talking about a role far beyond Pakistan’s naval front yard, the Arabian Sea.
According to a senior Pakistan Navy officer, the submarine could give Islamabad the ability to maintain a presence in the Bay of Bengal, a region far from home, where Pakistan’s naval footprint has been negligible since the 1971 war, when Islamabad lost half its territory.
The revelation of this Pakistani ambition by the senior Pakistan Navy officer comes amid improving civilian and military ties between Pakistan and Bangladesh and a wider naval competition unfolding across Indian Ocean states, including India.
Since Pakistani forces, including its Navy, were defeated by the Indian military in 1971, the Pakistani naval presence was largely restricted to the northern Arabian Sea.
The Bay of Bengal, by contrast, has traditionally been an area where India enjoys significant geographical and strategic advantages. Home to India’s Eastern Naval Command in Vishakhapattnam and close to the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, the Bay of Bengal has become increasingly important for goods and energy trade between India and Bangladesh.
The water body, whose littoral states are India, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Sri Lanka, has also assumed geopolitical importance amid a rise of competing naval powers in the Indo-Pacific.
That is why the remark made by the senior Pakistani Navy officer earlier this month in Sri Lanka is significant.
According to Colombo-based news outlet The Morning, Commodore Omer Farooq, commander of the flotilla escorting the new submarine home, said the induction of the Hangor-class would give Pakistan the reach to maintain a presence in the Bay of Bengal.
Farooq described the submarine as a “game changer” and noted that Pakistan planned to induct eight submarines of the class, reported The Morning on June 7.
Farooq had stopped in Sri Lanka on his way to Pakistan from China. The comments were made at an event onboard Pakistani frigate PNS Taimur at the Colombo Port.
Before PNS Hangor’s arrival, the Pakistan Navy operated five submarines. The new Chinese-built Hangor-class submarines are intended to replace ageing Agosta submarines.
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