Lieutenant Commander Felix Dimas Satirawan joins IFC-IOR as first Indonesian liaison officer. (Photo: X/IFC-IOR)
New Delhi: Indonesia has, for the first time, stationed a liaison officer at Gurugram-based Information Fusion Centre–Indian Ocean Region (IFC-IOR), the Indian Navy-run maritime surveillance hub, days before the prime minister, Narendra Modi, touched down in Jakarta on the opening leg of a three-nation tour of the Indo-Pacific.
The Indonesian officer took up the post on July 1, 2026, the IFC-IOR announced in a post on X. It makes Jakarta the 17th country to place a liaison officer physically inside the Gurugram facility – a list that already includes Australia, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Kenya, the Maldives, Mauritius, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Thailand, the United Kingdom and the United States.
“First International Liaison Officer representing Indonesia inducted at IFC-IOR. Lieutenant Commander Felix Dimas Satirawan joins the Centre as the first Indonesian ILO, marking another important milestone in IFC-IOR’s expanding international liaison framework,” the IFC-IOR said.
The defence attaché at Indonesian embassy in New Delhi Brig Gen Marines Burhanudin attended the induction ceremony. “The induction further strengthens maritime cooperation, information sharing and operational understanding between India and Indonesia.”
Read also: Indian Navy upgrades its maritime security hub IFC-IOR in strategic Indian Ocean initiative
A further eleven countries are linked to the centre electronically without a resident officer, taking the total network to 28 nations.
Sri Lankan Navy officer lieutenant commander (C) K M A S R Wickramanayake also joined the IFC-IOR as the new Sri Lankan ILO.
Modi lands in Jakarta
The timing is not incidental. Modi landed in Jakarta on Monday at the invitation of the president of Indonesia, Prabowo Subianto, on the first leg of a tour that will also take him to Melbourne and Auckland over the following days.
It is Modi’s fourth visit to Indonesia and his first bilateral trip since the two countries elevated relations to a Comprehensive Strategic Partnership in 2018, a framework Prabowo helped cement further with his presence as chief guest at India’s Republic Day parade in January 2025.
A deeper seat at the maritime table
Set up by the Navy in December 2018, the IFC-IOR was built to bring order to one of the world’s busiest and most contested maritime spaces. It pulls together real-time data from coastal radar chains, satellite feeds and partner navies to build a single, shared picture of shipping traffic across the Indian Ocean, and uses that picture to flag anomalies ranging from piracy and smuggling to human trafficking and illegal fishing.
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Countries that merely receive this data are one thing; those that post an officer to sit inside the Gurugram building alongside Indian Navy personnel are quite another. It is this latter, more intimate tier of cooperation that Indonesia has now entered, and defence officials expect it to sharpen coordination between the two navies at a moment when Jakarta is investing heavily in its own maritime domain awareness, from the Natuna Islands to the Malacca, Sunda and Lombok straits.
BrahMos and a widening basket of talks
Missiles are expected to dominate the substance of the visit even as the liaison posting dominates its symbolism. Indonesia signed its first BrahMos agreement with India in March 2026, covering one coastal-defence battery – launchers, radars and missiles together – in a contract reported to be worth between $200 million and $350 million. That made Jakarta the second export customer for the supersonic cruise missile after the Philippines, whose own $375 million deal, signed in January 2022, began delivering batteries in April 2024.
Jakarta has since gone back to New Delhi asking for more. Indonesia has approached India to procure a second battery of the BrahMos system, building on the deal reached earlier in the year, and has also sought a favourable line of credit from New Delhi to help fund the purchase, at a cost estimated near $300 million.
Officials from both sides are reportedly working out a phased procurement arrangement that would let Indonesia bring multiple batteries into service gradually, and any missiles delivered will keep to the 290-kilometre range ceiling set by the Missile Technology Control Regime.
Beyond hardware, the two governments are expected to sign a clutch of memoranda covering healthcare, pharmaceuticals, education, space cooperation and critical minerals, with Indian officials keen to secure long-term access to Indonesia’s substantial nickel reserves through joint processing ventures.
India also offers training for Indonesian military cadets at the National Defence Academy in Pune and for mid-career officers at the Defence Services Staff College in Wellington, Tamil Nadu.
A tour with wider ambitions
Modi is due in Indonesia until July 8, after which he travels to Melbourne for talks with the prime minister of Australia, Anthony Albanese, and then on to Auckland, where he will meet the prime minister of New Zealand, Christopher Luxon, in what officials describe as the first visit to that country by an Indian prime minister in nearly four decades.
In Jakarta, Modi is also expected to address the Indian diaspora and visit the Prambanan temple complex near Yogyakarta with Prabowo – a nod, officials say, to the civilisational ties binding the two countries.
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