Around midnight on October 16, 2021, one of the Pakistan navy’s anti-submarine warfare aircraft picked up a fading silhouette of an unknown surface contact. The aircraft, as reported by the Pakistani military’s ISPR, was on a routine reconnaissance mission that night. The contact was closed and watched on various sensors fitted aboard the aircraft. Active, passive and visual searches indicated the contact was an Indian Kalvari class submarine. In naval parlance such a visual detection of a submarine, beyond any doubt, is called a ‘certain submarine contact’ or in short a ‘certsub’. This is the third of its kind, the first being on November 14, 2016 when Pakistan navy’s long range maritime patrol aircraft detected India’s 209 class (German-built) submarine. The detection had been denied by India.   On March 4, 2019, during the Pulwama crisis, India’s Kalvari class submarine was detected by Pakistan navy’s P-3C Orion aircraft away from Karachi near Makran Coast. The silhouette, periscope and other movements confirmed it to be the Indian submarine. Though India denied the ‘detection claims of Pakistan’ through media but later the submarine commander was fired as the hapless submarine entered Mumbai after an arduous travel back home at an incredibly slow … Continue reading Indian submarines’ unrequited quest for presence in the Arabian Sea