Marine and defence engineering, Mumbai

Western Naval Command has been headquartered in Mumbai since 1 March 1968, running the Arabian Sea side of the Navy from the shore establishment INS Angre, renamed in 1951 from INS Dalhousie, itself renamed from HMIS Dalhousie only the year before. Alongside it sits Mazagon Dock Shipbuilders Limited, the Navratna shipyard at Mazagaon that has built more than eight hundred vessels since 1960, including destroyers, frigates and the Scorpene class submarines delivered through to INS Vaghsheer in January 2025. Work on the newer Visakhapatnam class destroyers, the largest front line warships built for the Navy, continues there.

The harbour itself still carries two working dock systems run by the Mumbai Port Authority, the statutory body that succeeded Mumbai Port Trust, itself the renamed Bombay Port Trust, on 31 January 2022: Victoria Dock, commissioned in 1891 and today counting fourteen berths, and Indira Dock, commissioned in 1914 and today counting twenty one berths, with a lock that keeps it workable across the tide. Container traffic moved across the water to Nhava Sheva in Navi Mumbai after 1989, but the older docks and the naval yard beside them are still where a ship in this harbour gets looked at.

The Navy runs its own repair yard in the same harbour: Naval Dockyard, Mumbai, established by the East India Company in 1735 and still, by its own description, the premier repair yard of the Indian Navy. It carries Bombay Dock, commissioned in 1750 and among the oldest dry docks in Asia, and Duncan Dock, built between 1807 and 1810, both still in use alongside more recent basins, and a workforce numbered in the thousands to keep the fleet's hulls and machinery turned around.