What Indonesia's navy tells us about the world's quiet superpower

Indonesia wants to become one of the world's major economic powers. That ambition is usually discussed through growth rates, manufacturing targets, and the country's enormous commodity reserves.

But there is another part of the story that deserves more attention: the navy.

Indonesia is an archipelago of more than 17,000 islands. It sits across some of the most important sea lanes in the world. It is huge, but split by the sea into many, many parts. And because it is physically different from other nations, it needs to think and plan differently.

So when Indonesia thinks about its navy, it is not thinking about sailing around the world to project power and menace adversaries. It is thinking about dozens of different roles. Protection. Enforcement. Disaster response. And something more fundamental: the ability to enforce the rules it says it believes in.

"Rules mean nothing if we cannot enforce them"

Start with President Prabowo Subianto, because his language gives us a useful way into the issue.

"Freedom of navigation is a sacred right that we must respect under all circumstances," Prabowo told French media outlet Atlantico. That sounds like a conventional statement of support for the international maritime order. But he followed it with the line that actually matters for Indonesia's defence policy.

"Rules mean nothing if we cannot enforce them. Hence, as you know, Indonesia is in the process of upgrading the capabilities of our navy, air force and army, not for aggression but to ensure we have the means to maintain a rules-based order."

A couple of things worth noting. First, notice the order in which a former army commander listed the three services. The navy came first. Second, there is a tension in that quote that Prabowo did not try to hide. Indonesia opposes Might is Right. But it recognises that Right needs Might.

The economic case for a stronger fleet

For the Indonesian economy to flourish, it needs the sea. The sea is what connects Indonesia with itself, as well as with the outside world.

Indonesia is a trading nation. But it does not want to be an exploited nation, as it once was, sending raw materials away for other countries to process and add value to them. So a few years back the country introduced a policy to protect one of its most valuable assets: nickel.

Somewhere between a quarter and a third of the world's nickel comes from Indonesia. It is a key ingredient in high-performance batteries, the kind you find in electric cars. Demand is not going anywhere.

What Indonesia's downstreaming policy means is that instead of exporting raw nickel ore, the country is forcing more processing, refining, and manufacturing to happen inside its own borders. The results have been significant. In just six years, Indonesia went from exporting a few billion dollars' worth of raw ore a year to ten times that amount in processed goods.

But all of that trade depends on ships being able to move freely to and from the country. And it depends on Indonesia being able to deter anyone who might want to pressure it over its policies, or claim chunks of its territory.

More than just deterrence

Protection and deterrence is only one function of the Indonesian navy. There are several others.

Illegal fishing costs the economy close to a billion dollars a year by some estimates. The navy has to monitor and police those waters. Indonesia is also one of the most disaster-prone nations on earth. Volcanoes, earthquakes, tsunamis, cyclones. Its geography makes responding to them exceptionally difficult. The navy plays a major part in any emergency response. During the Hajj season, it even operates as a logistics service, moving pilgrims between islands.

These tasks, officially termed Military Operations Other than War, are written into law as a formal part of the navy's role. The navy does not just need ships that can fight. It needs ships that can do a great many things.

The fleet being built to do it

Indonesia's navy is generally considered a green-water force. That sits somewhere between a coastal patrol navy and a blue-water navy capable of operating indefinitely far out to sea. A green-water navy is not designed to defeat a major power's fleet in open ocean. It is designed to operate effectively in nearby seas, around islands, in straits, and across the maritime approaches that matter most to national security.

For Indonesia, that makes sense. The country does not need to match China or the United States ship for ship. It needs to make sure that foreign vessels, illegal operators, and potential adversaries cannot move through Indonesian waters as though Jakarta is not watching.

To do that, it is building, buying, and designing in ways that reflect both its priorities and its geography.

The most striking vessel in the fleet is the KRI Golok stealth trimaran. It looks, and there is no more accurate way to put this, like something from a James Bond film. It has a shallow draft of around a metre and is driven by water jets rather than propellers, which means it can go where traditional craft cannot. It is fast, built from composite materials that allow it to slice through water, and should be resistant to corrosion. The weapons are not immediately visible, because they are concealed within the structure to preserve the stealth profile.

Light, fast ships remain the core of the fleet, built at public and increasingly private shipyards. Cutting reliance on foreign suppliers has become a priority, particularly after Norway blocked a missile sale to neighbouring Malaysia earlier this year. Indonesia does not want to find itself in that position.

There is also the KCR-60M, a 60-metre fast attack craft built domestically. Fast, affordable, and suited to patrol and enforcement work in crowded coastal waters. The fleet includes Bung Karno-class corvettes, built in Batam. Again, the larger point is not the individual ship but the effort to connect defence procurement with Indonesian industrial capacity.

Indonesia is also doubling to four the number of frigates it is building based on designs from British defence firm Babcock. A frigate is slightly smaller and less heavily armed than a destroyer, but these are still substantial vessels, around 140 metres long. Stand one vertically and it is roughly the height of a 40-story building.

Alongside those, Indonesia has acquired a pair of Italian-built PPA-class frigates. The first, KRI Brawijaya, arrived in 2025 after a six-week voyage and was soon followed by a sister ship.

Then there are the submarines, a small fleet of them. And, very soon, an aircraft carrier.

That last one is worth dwelling on. Only ten countries in the world currently operate fixed-wing-capable carriers, which puts Indonesia in significant company. The ship in question is the former Italian flagship Giuseppe Garibaldi, donated by Rome, which had found the $5 million annual running costs difficult to justify. Jakarta is not planning to use it in the classical sense to project power around the world. Instead it is envisioned primarily as a mobile emergency platform, capable of transporting supplies and helicopters to remote regions at scale.

Why these waters matter

Look at a map of Indonesia and the strategic geography becomes immediately clear.

The Malacca Strait sits to the north. It is probably the busiest maritime choke point in the world, on the shortest route between India and China, carrying perhaps a quarter of global seaborne trade. The Makassar Strait, between Borneo and Sulawesi, is a major north-south corridor through the archipelago. The Lombok Strait further south offers an alternative deep-water passage between the Indian and Pacific Oceans.

Then there is the South China Sea, the most contested maritime region in the world. Indonesians refer to the portion they claim as the North Natuna Sea. It is a sensitive area, and the Americans and Europeans send warships through regularly on so-called freedom of navigation operations.

Indonesia has never had a formal objection to those passages. But other nations' warships around your waters are a reminder that it helps to have some of your own nearby. Remember what Prabowo said. Rules mean nothing if you cannot enforce them.

For Indonesia, enforcement is not only about security. It is about sovereignty over the economic model the country is trying to build.

A different approach

Indonesia is not going to have the largest navy in Asia. It is not trying to match China's fleet or the United States Navy.

Its goal is more specific: to make Indonesian waters more visible, more enforceable, and more difficult for outsiders to treat as empty space.

That is why these ships matter. The fast attack craft, the trimarans, the frigates, the submarines, the domestically built corvettes, and the shipyards producing them are all part of the same argument. Indonesia wants to be a major economic power. It wants more of the value from its resources to stay at home. And it knows that in an archipelago, economic sovereignty has a maritime dimension.

Prabowo's line is a useful summary of the whole strategy.

Rules only matter if they can be enforced. Indonesia is now building the navy it believes can do that.

World Reframed episode 42

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World Reframed is produced in London by Global South World, part of the Impactum Group. Its editors are Duncan Hooper and Ismail Akwei.

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