Review of Joint Doctrine for Amphibious Operations Indian Armed Forces

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With over 11,000 kms of coastline and over 1300 islands, India’s onshore and offshore security assumes importance thus developing amphibious capabilities is an essential  for the Indian Armed Forces, the Doctrine for which is reviewed by Shravani N

Overview

The Joint Doctrine for Amphibious Operations is a 92-page publication issued by Headquarters Integrated Defence Staff, Ministry of Defence, in August 2025, signed off by General Anil Chauhan, Chief of Defence Staff. The doctrine explicitly revises the 2008 edition, and the Foreword states this was necessitated by changes in the geo-strategic environment, an evolving Higher Defence Organisation and capability enhancement of the Indian Armed Forces. The stated purpose of the document is to serve as a guiding reference for the ongoing process of Jointness and Integration, providing stakeholders and commanders at all levels with a common set of terms and guidelines for planning and executing amphibious operations. The document is organised into four chapters — India's Maritime Environment, Overview of Amphibious Operations, Command, Control and Planning, and Conduct of Amphibious Operations — followed by a two-part glossary of terms and acronyms, a list of references and a record of amendments.

India's Maritime Environment

The opening chapter grounds the doctrine in a long account of India's maritime history, beginning with the Indus Valley Civilisation's trade links to Mesopotamia and the dry dock excavated at Lothal, Gujarat, and continuing through the Mauryan and Gupta empires, the Chola, Chera and Pandya dynasties, the Maratha Navy under Shivaji and Kanhoji Angre, and the Royal Indian Navy's operations during the Second World War, including the reoccupation of Berbera, which the document describes as the first combined operation carried out by the Indian Army and the Royal Indian Navy. The chapter credits Operation Junagarh (1947), Goa (1961) and Operation Beaver (1971) as post-independence episodes that shaped Indian amphibious experience.

The chapter then turns to the geo-strategic weight of the Indian Ocean Region- its size (nearly 685.6 lakh square kilometres), the three main entry points into the region (the Strait of Malacca and neighbouring Indonesian straits, the Bab-el-Mandeb/Suez route, and the Cape of Good Hope), and the claim that nearly 80 percent of world trade movement passes through it. It lists 36 littoral countries and several regional groupings (IOR-ARC, IONS, GCC, SAARC, ASEAN and others), and names the United States, Japan, China and Russia as extra-regional powers with interests in the region tied to resource access, overseas territories and support to allies. The chapter closes by linking these factors to India's own strategic interests — economic growth through its maritime zones, a coastline exceeding 7,500 km, over 1,200 islands, and an Exclusive Economic Zone of about 22 lakh square km — and argues that this combination of geography and interest is what necessitates a "balanced amphibious capability."

Overview of Amphibious Operations

Chapter 2 is the doctrine's conceptual core. It defines an amphibious operation as one in which naval units, supported by air power, embark a land force, transport it by sea, and sustain it ashore, and it states plainly that such operations are among the most complex forms of joint military activity. The document is notably candid about the operating environment: it observes that battlefield transparency and the availability of beyond-visual-range precision weapons make the movement of a large amphibious force difficult to hide and vulnerable, and that sea control of the Amphibious Objective Area together with a Favourable Air Situation must be sustained for the duration of an operation, failing which large-scale operations may not be practical.

The chapter sets out the classical typology of amphibious operations — assault, demonstration, raid and withdrawal — along with a residual category covering follow-on support, reinforcement, Non-Combatant Evacuation Operations, Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief, peacekeeping and military-to-military engagement. It then details the "balanced" capabilities required across the Navy (sea control, naval gunfire support, mine countermeasures, stand-off and over-the-horizon launch capability), Air Force (control of the air, counter surface force operations, unmanned aerial system employment) and Land Force (infantry, mechanised infantry, Special Forces and Marine Commandos when placed under command, amphibious vehicles).

A substantial section is devoted to what the doctrine calls "Emerging Conceptual Aspects." It explicitly discusses Operational Manoeuvre from The Sea (OMFTS) and Ship to Objective Manoeuvre (STOM), noting that a broad survey found only 17 percent of the world's beaches are negotiable by landing ships, which is offered as the rationale for heliborne induction and vertical envelopment. The chapter also flags the threat posed by Man Portable Air Defence Systems (MANPADS) to heliborne operations, and lists a set of future-oriented capabilities the Armed Forces are urged to develop: Manned-Unmanned Teaming, Future Tactical Unmanned Aerial Systems, Air Launched Effects, unmanned hybrid amphibians, counter-drone systems, Unmanned Underwater Vehicles, and modern precision weapon systems including Anti-Ship Cruise Missiles and hypersonic weapons.

Command, Control and Planning

Chapter 3 lays out a formal chain of command running from the Cabinet Committee on Security (for strategically significant operations, based on recommendations from the Chiefs of Staff Committee) down through an Operational Directive, an Initiating Directive and a Planning Directive. For large operations, the doctrine allows for both an Overall Force Commander (OFC) and a Joint Task Force Commander (JTFC); for smaller operations, a single dual-hatted JTFC may suffice. The three component commanders — Commander Amphibious Task Force (CATF) from the Navy, Landing Force Commander (LFC) from the Army, and Air Force Commander (AFC) — operate on an equal footing during planning, but the doctrine specifies a shifting command relationship during execution: CATF holds command during embarkation, movement and assault, while command of forces ashore passes to the LFC once a beach head is established, with CATF retaining command of support forces.

The chapter describes the Common Operational Planning Process (COPP), which the document states has replaced the earlier Joint Operation Planning Process, and walks through its steps — review of directives, Joint Intelligence Preparation of the Operational Environment, development and wargaming of own and enemy courses of action, and the eventual issue of operational orders. It also tabulates a set of "Basic Decisions" (such as selection of landing sites, D-Day and H-Hour, and the sea echelon plan) alongside the commander responsible for each, giving the chapter unusual procedural specificity for a doctrine document.

Conduct of Amphibious Operations

The final chapter structures the classical amphibious operation around the acronym PERMA — Planning, Embarkation, Rehearsal, Movement to the AOA, and Assault — while noting that commanders may abridge or modify this sequence as the operational scenario demands. It covers embarkation and mounting considerations, including the dispersal of forces to reduce vulnerability at ports, which the document identifies as likely priority targets for an adversary. The section on movement to the Amphibious Objective Area (AOA) catalogues the threats an Amphibious Task Force may face — air, sub-surface, surface and "unconventional" threats such as explosive-laden unmanned boats and maritime militia.

On the assault itself, the doctrine distinguishes hard beaching, stand-off beaching and over-the-horizon beaching, stating that hard beaching would seldom be feasible in a hostile environment and that over-the-horizon beaching is likely to become the norm rather than the exception. It sets out a sequence for landing forces — assault infantry first, followed by armour and first-priority vehicles, then follow-on forces and artillery — and discusses combat support functions including beach organisation, medical support (Medical Aid Posts, hospital ships, casualty evacuation), and logistics augmentation through Ships Taken Up from Trade (STUFT) and sea-based logistics platforms such as pontoons and self-propelled causeways. It also addresses communications, Network Centric Operations, Electronic Warfare and cyberspace operations as enabling functions.

The chapter closes with sections on training and rehearsals — recommending a sequence from paper exercises and wargaming through "dry-shod" simulator training to "wet-shod" and full-scale exercises, and floating the idea of establishing an Amphibious Warfare Training School — and a short closing statement on Jointness and Integration, which ties the whole doctrine back to ongoing restructuring of the Armed Forces for Multi Domain Operations.

Conclusion

Read as a whole, the doctrine reads less like an aspirational statement of intent and more like a working procedural manual: it is most detailed exactly where an operator would need it to be — command relationships, planning sequences, and the phase-by-phase conduct of an assault — while treating history and geostrategic context as scene-setting for that operational core. Its own text repeatedly frames modern threats (precision weapons, battlefield transparency, MANPADS, drone and sub-surface threats) as reasons to move away from classical hard beaching toward stand-off and over-the-horizon methods, which gives the document an internally consistent logic: doctrine, command structure and training recommendations are all pointed toward the same conclusion about how amphibious operations will have to be fought going forward.

Shravani N is an Intern with Security Risks Asia