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Blanket Access

A classified agreement proposal granting US military aircraft blanket access to Indonesian airspace has exposed a fault line at the heart of Indonesia’s foreign policy.

On 12 April 2026, news reports emerged that President Prabowo Subianto had approved the initial proposal in February during the Board of Peace Summit in Washington, DC. Under the proposal, US military aircraft would be permitted to transit through Indonesian airspace upon notification sans security clearance for “contingency operations, crisis response and mutually agreed exercise-related activities”.

The news broke one day before Defence Minister Sjafrie Sjamsoeddin’s visit to Washington, where he and Secretary of War Pete Hegseth announced the US-Indonesia Major Defence Cooperation Partnership.

According to the US Department of War, the partnership establishes a foundation for co-developing asymmetric capabilities; pioneering next-generation defence technologies in the maritime, subsurface and autonomous systems domains, and; fostering cooperation on maintenance, repair, and overhaul support to improve operational readiness. It was rumoured that the overflight agreement would be formalised alongside or as part of the defence partnership.

Instead, Indonesia backtracked once the confidential proposal became public and drew instantaneous domestic backlash. Indonesian defence ministry officials confirmed that the confidential proposal exists, but no formal agreement has been reached. They also characterised the proposal as a letter of intent still in early internal deliberation.

Currently, foreign military aircraft may transit along Indonesia’s three designated archipelagic sea lane corridors in their normal modes, continuously and expeditiously. This is regulated by (among others) Law No 21/2025 on Airspace Management, Law No 43/2008 on State Territory, the Chicago Convention and UNCLOS. Aircraft transiting outside these corridors must obtain diplomatic or security clearance, reviewed and approved on a case-by-case basis.

Thus, the proposed blanket overflight access would replace this regime for US military aircraft, substituting notification for clearance. That distinction is the crux of the controversy.

Sovereignty and Security

Sovereignty is widely considered non-negotiable and a highly sensitive political issue.

The 2007 Defence Cooperation Agreement (DCA) with Singapore illustrates this clearly, as the agreement took 15 years before Indonesia’s parliament ratified it in 2022. When it was tabled for ratification in 2007, the Indonesian House of Representatives refused it outright; the concern was that granting Singapore access to Indonesian waters and airspace for military exercises could impinge on national sovereignty and security. This is despite Indonesia also benefiting from an extradition treaty which was negotiated as a packaged deal with the DCA.

Compared to the 2007 DCA, the overflight proposal appears to be foisted upon in a matter of weeks without parliamentary scrutiny or public consultation.

The confidential blanket overflight agreement emerged not long after the one-sided US-Indonesia Agreement on Reciprocal Trade signed earlier this year, an arrangement widely criticised for being more reciprocal in name only. Due to its confidentiality, the perception that Indonesia concedes while the United States gains is not an unreasonable perception developed among the Indonesian public.

The agreement carries concrete national security risks. Blanket overflight access leaves Indonesia vulnerable against possible hostile acts conducted in transit, which includes espionage, signals intelligence collection, surveillance of Indonesian military facilities or interference with routine operations. All of these are potentially conducted without Jakarta’s knowledge or consent. Besides, the notification model foreclosed Indonesia’s ability to assess or place restrictions on any potentially harmful activities.

Deeper Entanglement

The external implications of the overflight agreement are at least as consequential as the domestic ones. In fact, Indonesia’s foreign ministry cautioned the defence ministry that granting the US military permission to freely traverse through Indonesian airspace would entangle Jakarta deeper in the Sino-US rivalry in the Indo-Pacific.

From Beijing’s perspective, granting the United States the blanket overflight access may be perceived as Indonesia turning hostile to its ambitions and as a strategic vulnerability. Whatever Indonesia’s intentions, Beijing’s strategists would be compelled to account for the possibility that US military aircraft operating through Indonesian airspace could be deployed in a confrontation over Taiwan, the South China Sea or elsewhere along China’s maritime periphery.

This could push China’s strategic planning to extend the frontline of any hypothetical US-China conflict beyond the South China Sea and East Asia, making Indonesian airspace a variable in a military calculus that Jakarta has no interest in entering.

In the short term, Indonesia should anticipate that Beijing may intensify its grey-zone tactics operations in the North Natuna Sea in response, using coercive yet sub-conflict measures to signal its disapproval without triggering formal escalation.

Economic consequences in trade, investment or bilateral cooperation are also plausible avenues Beijing might be considering. A particularly acute scenario involves China’s eventual military operations to take Taiwan, where approximately 300 thousand Indonesians reside. Beijing’s willingness to accommodate Indonesia’s evacuation efforts would be directly shaped by the state of bilateral relations at the moment. Indonesia’s leverage in that negotiation should not be carelessly traded away.

There is also a regional leadership dimension. Indonesia has cultivated a role as an honest broker in the South China Sea disputes, positioning itself as a credible facilitator of dialogue among claimant states because of its non-alignment position with any major powers in the region.

Granting the United States blanket overflight access would erode that credibility. To regional audiences, particularly China, Jakarta would no longer appear as an independent arbiter but as yet another node in Washington’s regional security architecture. This is a perception that would constrain Indonesia’s ability to play the constructive diplomatic role it has claimed.

Continued Hedging, but Coherence is Required

Observers have raised the concern that the Prabowo administration is gradually drifting away from Indonesia’s longstanding bebas aktif (independent-and-active) foreign policy doctrine as it is increasingly willing to accommodate great power interests at the expense of Indonesia’s own. Taken in isolation, the blanket overflight access proposal might sustain that reading, but the actual mosaic is more complicated.

Shortly after Sjamsoeddin’s Washington visit, Prabowo travelled to Moscow for talks with Russia’s President Vladimir Putin, reportedly to finalise an energy deal. Since Prabowo took office, Indonesia has also joined BRICS and participated in Trump’s Board of Peace. Taken together, these steps suggest not a decisive pivot toward the United States but a familiar Indonesian foreign policy pattern where it maintains an omnidirectional engagement designed to extract maximum gains from multiple great powers simultaneously. That is more consistent with Indonesia’s hedging position.

The problem, however, is not with Indonesia’s style of hedging since Indonesia’s foreign policy principle has long accommodated pragmatic positions but with the apparent absence of a coherent strategic framework where the lines are drawn. Hedging that lacks a clear logic easily becomes knee-jerk improvisation with real costs that affect Indonesia’s sovereignty and national security.

Indonesia’s first vice-president Mohammad Hatta, who also coined the bebas aktif doctrine, wrote twice in Foreign Affairs that Indonesia’s foreign policy should be conducted pragmatically, placing national interests as the foundation of every foreign policy decision while respecting the values Indonesia holds simultaneously.

The question of whether to formalise the blanket overflight agreement ultimately lies with Indonesia’s top decision-makers. However, it must be answered with a clear account of what Indonesia gains, what the risks are and how the decision maps onto the country’s national interests, its sovereignty, and its position in the greater geopolitical environment.

Indonesia does not need to choose between the United States or China, and it should reject such a notion consistently. But the terms on which it engages with each must be set by Indonesia’s own national interests, not by the transactional pressures of any single bilateral negotiation.

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• Indonesia
• US