Analyse the challenges of maritime security cooperation between adversarial neighbours in the absence of binding dispute-resolution mechanisms.

Article 10 of the India–Pakistan Agreement on Advance Notice on Military Exercises, Manoeuvres and Troop Movements (April 1991) bars warships of the two navies from closing within three nautical miles in international waters [2]. The INS Kolkata–PNS Hunain collision of September 2026 shows how such cooperation, resting on self-restraint without adjudication, breaks down in practice.

No verification or adjudication machinery

• The pact fixes a rule but names no referee — no joint inquiry, arbitration or third-party fact-finding [2].
• Each navy therefore authors its own version; India protested a "dangerous overtaking manoeuvre" and rejected Pakistan's counter-claim [1]. Both sides remain judge in their own cause.
• The only instrument is a diplomatic protest — India summoned Pakistan's Chargé d'Affaires the following day [1] — which records anger but cannot undo a manoeuvre.

Normative gaps in the bilateral regime

• Article 10 is a distance rule, not a driving rule: it is silent on give-way and overtaking duties, which lie in the 1972 COLREG Convention under the IMO [3].
• The 1991 pact was designed for announced exercises and troop movements, not routine patrols — precisely the situation that produced the collision [2].

Rising operational density

• Both navies now maintain near-continuous presence; under Operation Sankalp India deployed over 21 ships and 450 ship-days in the North/Central Arabian Sea [4].
• Mission-deployed destroyers, including INS Kolkata in the MV Ruen anti-piracy operation, sit on station for weeks [5] — multiplying chances of proximity in the same crowded waters.

Escalation and response-time mismatch

• Redress travels through foreign offices over a day [1], while warships close in minutes — a timescale mismatch that leaves mariners without recourse.

Reassembled, the deficit is institutional rather than diplomatic: rules exist, machinery does not. Such CBMs do not prevent incidents; they convert them into paperwork — itself valuable, since no shot was fired [1]. The way forward lies in a direct navy-to-navy channel, extending the pact's own advance-notice logic to declared patrol areas, and mutually affirming COLREG duties [3] — incremental protocols under an agreement both sides still accept as binding.