India, June 28 -- As Beijing successfully narrows the qualitative gap with Western navies and achieves an unprecedented quantitative advantage, the traditional undersea equilibrium in the Indian Ocean Region is dissolving.

The strategic architecture of what until yesterday was being called the Indo-Pacific is being rewritten not only on the surface of its highly contested sea-lanes, but hundreds of meters beneath them. For decades, maritime discourse surrounding the Sino-Indian rivalry focused primarily on China's "String of Pearls" strategy-a network of commercial ports from Gwadar to Chittagong capable of hosting the People's Liberation Army Navy (PLAN). Today, that paradigm has shifted to an acutely dangerous domain: the rapid, highly...