Reconfiguring maritime defense technology for an archipelagic power: An opinion on Indonesia's strategic pivot toward indigenous, autonomous, and interoperable naval capabilities

Indonesia stands at a strategic inflection point in maritime defense technology. As the world's largest archipelagic state, custodian of approximately 5.8 million square kilometers of maritime jurisdiction, and a middle power positioned across the geostrategic seam of the Indo-Pacific, the country faces an intensifying convergence of grey-zone coercion, naval modernization races, and technological disruption from autonomous systems. This opinion article argues that Indonesia's prevailing acquisition-led modernization paradigm—dominated by heterogeneous foreign platforms procured under fiscal constraint—is structurally insufficient to deter contemporary maritime threats, particularly persistent incursions in the North Natuna Sea and the broader contest over the South China Sea. Drawing on Mahanian sea power theory, the resource-based view of national defense industries, and emerging frameworks of archipelagic defense, the author contends that maritime defense technology should be reconceptualized not as a portfolio of imported assets but as a sovereign capability stack integrating indigenous design, autonomous and unmanned systems, maritime domain awareness, and interoperable command-and-control. The article evaluates recent milestones—the KSOT-008 autonomous submarine, the Bung Tomo-class modernization under the R41 program, and the indigenous Combat Management System—and argues that without coordinated industrial policy, technology-transfer governance, and human-capital development, these advances risk becoming isolated showcases rather than systemic capability. The piece closes with five policy recommendations for Indonesian defense planners, industry stakeholders, and the broader scholarly community studying maritime security in archipelagic developing economies.