Indian Navy
Emerging challenges, alliances and partnerships

By Gen V K Madhok (Retired)

Recently, there has been a spurt in induction of naval ships after the 'lost decade' (1987-1997) when for ten years not a single warship was inducted in the Navy. As a result the Force languished and lost its vitality due to neglect and political ignorance and came under serious public censure. But today, media is reporting about Navy's plans regarding its ongoing projects, joint ventures and planned acquisitions in the future. Most new ships will ofcourse replace Navy's ageing fleet and really not augment its expansion. However what is not being debated or reported are the likely future tasks the Navy should be prepared to undertake, in a rapidly changing environment where China and Pakistan are strengthening their strategic partnership and their Navies. Where the new US administration is gearing up to launch vigorous and fresh initiatives to engage South Asia (in particular India), to seek alliances or partnerships with a view to retain their mastery of the Indian Ocean.

Accordingly, an urgent need to assess the likely maritime threats or commitments in the near (5 years) and distant future (10 years). Is the Navy equipped with the necessary wherewithal and would its many ongoing projects or those in the pipeline meet the emerging requirements? What about India's adversaries, China and Pakistan; their intentions and capabilities viz a viz US's interests in the Indian Ocean? Finally, can the Navy go it alone or would get involved in partnerships and alliances with power seeking domination of the Indian Ocean, a situation New Delhi has been avoiding so far.

Such an exercise, perforce, defies solution without reference or support from Strategic Intelligence. About which, the Navy itself has been deeply concerned. Nevertheless, an attempt is vital and worth the effort if it provoke thought.

India's 140 vessel strong Navy of which only 35 are combat ships, the smallest of India's defence machine has often come in for a lot of flak in the past. The barrage of criticism centred on three issues. First, an inadequate naval budget resulting in a financial crunch which in turn, led to the shelving of many indigenous naval projects and acquisition of foreign ships. Secondly, the ageing naval fleet and finally, that the Navy's ability to meet current and future threats had been diluted.

Today, some visible signs of improvement can be seen but not to the extent desirable. The problems not disappeared. Therefore, the questions are : How have these problems arisen? Are they due to lack of perspective planning and adhocism in decision making, a comment made by the Jane's weekly nearly two years ago? Or are they due to neglect by an ill informed polity? Again, what is the present State of India's Naval Fleet? And why is it that an impression has gone around that the Navy would need much more to meet its current and future challenges?

No one can gloss over the fact that the Navy has to shoulder crucial responsibilities which involve guarding the 6th largest coast line (7,600 Km compared with Pakistan's 1120 Km) in the world and ensuring the protection of Andaman, Nicobar and Lakshadweep islands. Besides, there are formidable tasks of ensuring India's sovereignty over a staggering 2.2. million sq Km of its Exclusive Economic Zone (EEF) which extends upto 200 nautical miles. Again, 11 major, 20 intermediate and 100 minor ports have to be defended. Along with this, there is a host of sea borne and mercantile responsibilities.

These involves the protection of sea trade and merchant shipping, considering that 97 percent of India's trade is by sea; ensuring the free flow of oil and even checking infiltration to assist the Coast Guard. Such as in the present case, where eight naval detachments remain deployed on the Tamil Nadu coast for the past three to four years to prevent the LTTE from Carrying out any mischief. And nearly 22 detachments along the Gujarat and Maharashtra coast. Although these constant deployments have reduced to the Navy to a Coastal Police, a situation the Navy dislikes intensely. Because for such local tasks the respective states can raise special forces thus leaving the Navy free to meet bigger challenges.

Moving on to future developments: Like the Army and the Air Force who have to match the combined threats from Pakistan and China the Navy too faces similar challenges. Besides, because of American interests in the Indian Ocean and the Arabian Sea for protection of their trade and markets in West Asia, their oil resources as well as their ally Japan's, their requirement to dominate the Indian Ocean and engage South Asia, they are looking for allies to assist them in guarding their sea lanes. In addition, forages have been made in Bangladesh. US now see India as the centre of gravity in South Asia. Efforts have been made to increase interaction with New Delhi. In fact, the new Bush administration sees a role for India in its foreign policy. Which would be becoming clearer in the coming months and years.

Further, the US strategy aims at neutralization of Chinese, Russian, as well Iranian and Iraqi influence in the area. Some of the steps taken by Washington in the recent past fully support these views. US naval delegations have been visiting to make inquiries about the availability of repair, refit and refuelling facilities at Goa and Mumbai. Sources of oil and gas are being explored in Bangladesh. Offers have been made to develop Chittagong and Dhaka to the standard of an international port and airfield respectively. To assuage India's feelings, sanctions have been lifted from American parts required to repair Navy's Sea King helicopters which have been lying with UK for quite some time for repairs. All this portends far greater cooperation between the American, Japanese and the Indian Navies in the near and distant future.

On the other hand Pakistan has taken substantial steps to strengthen its navy with a view to deterring the type of raid which the Indian Navy had carried out Karachi in December 1971. Gawadar on Makran coast north of Karachi is being developed as its main port in preference to Karachi. Which will be out of Indian Navy's reach. Chinese have sought some facilities over here. Further, Pakistan will like to avenge Indian Navy's raid on Karachi. For that India's soft under belly in the Gulf of Kutch and the coast of Gujarat where a large petrochemical complex, nests of chemical and other industries, gas and oil piple lines, the major port of Kandla and many small ports under development and the nuclear power station at Kakropora offer a wonderful opportunity to do so. Accordingly suicide type attacks at sea by Mujahideen of the USS Cole variety with look place on Oct 13,2000 when the US destroyer was refuelling at Aden Harbour should be expected. There should be no doubt it. Thus, in addition to posing a threat to some of the sensitive targets on India's western coast the Pakistan Navy can now ensure that the Indian Navy does not approch Karachi with impunity.

As regards China, is current focus remains on the South China Sea, the Taiwan. Straits and domination of the sea around Paracel islands. Concurrently, it is engaged in developing ports south of Myanmar to ensure an effective presence in the Indian Ocean and towards the Bay of Bengal. Further, Beijing which earnestly started strengthening its Navy in the 80s has already reached a stage whether they are building submarines, frigates and destroyers. Their two aircraft carriers are likely to be ready in 2007-2008. While the ship building industry in India lagged behind. China has nearly 95 submarines, four of which are nuclear powered and one is reportedly armed with ballistic missiles. During 1992-95 China supplied atleast eight warship to various States in the Indian Ocean region. It needs to be noted that China is sensitive to any Indian naval presence in the South China Sea. With India Defence Minister made a statement after his visit to Vietnam and Japan in Apr 2000 that the Indian Navy will hold joint exercises with these two countries and when INS Delhi and Kora visited Shangai, South Korea and Japan in Oct 2000, China reacted against the presence of these ships. And stated that it was Chinese Navy's job to look after South China Sea.

What about the past criticism about financial crunch? At first sight it seems to be fully justified: No money, no ships. But a closer examination leads one to three observations which cannot go unnoticed and those concerned with naval plans would do well to reflect on these. First, lack of coordination between the Ministry of Defence and Naval Headquarters. To cite one example, a project for construction of dry docks at Mumbai sanctioned in 1985 was shifted to Karwar after six years in response to a fresh proposal by Naval Headquarters. In the process, the Nation suffered a loss of nearly 85 crores although experts deny this. But that does raise a question, as to what was the basis for according initial sanction? Was it given in an adhoc manner without sufficient deliberation? did it require six years to detect the mistake?

Second, the need for a well thought out long term plan for acquisition and production of ships based on threat analysis. Air Forces and Navies are no good without their machines and ships. The average age of a ship varies from 20 to 25 years. Most of the ships which are acquired from abroad always do between 10 and 20 years of active service and as such would need replacement from abroad or indigenous sources. Therefore, there is no reason why plans to replace ageing ships of the Fleet cannot be underaken atleast every ten years. And in doing so, other factors such as the latest and incoming technologies and weapon systems and the changing nature of threat perceptions would also have to be taken into account. But the issue is that having started off well, the plans were not implemented.

Of the three Services, it was only the Navy which had set up a mechanism for indigenisation of its Fleet which included designing and production of submarines, destroyers, frigates, oil tankers and even an aircraft carrier, during the tenure of Admiral Tahiliani in the 80s. This commendable effort which consisted of a naval design organisation at the Naval Headquarters with matching infrastructure at the four ship buildings yards at Mumbai, Calcutta, Goa and Cochin should have been the envy of other Navies in the Indian Ocean region including China. Orders places for ships at that time have materialised in 1995-96. But for some unknown reasons orders dried up suddenly. A highly sophisticated establishment like the MDL-with skilled manpower of nearly 1500, trained to build submarines and other ships remained idle for nearly ten years in the Lost Decade, incurring a loss of upto twenty crores a year. Some of the manpower was kept busy in making windmills for a Madras firm. And yet India went out to buy a 28 year frigate Krishna from UK, an oil tanker and submarines from Russia and continues to grope for acquiring an aircraft carriers from Russia.

And lastly, there is the question of priorities. It is more important for India to acquire an aircraft carrier which is required urgently to maintain Navy's operational capability, than to set up a naval academy at Ezhimala, Kerala on a 2000 acre plot which was supposed to turn out the first naval cadet last year but there has been a delay.

Where does the above brief scenario lead us to? One view is that it is really Pakistan which poses an immediate threat to India with a Chinese threat in the making. But Pakistan's primary interest is to defend in ports and for the time being, it has been taken measures to do so. Islamabad is however not in a position to mount a naval offensive against India. But it has and is developing an ability to hit India's assets in its Soft underbelly by clandestine methods. And unless guarded against, these could lead to major problems. The second view which is probably relevant is that it is realy China which Indian Navy will have to face while Pakistan has merely a nuisance value.

As per media, Chinese combat ships are not in good shape. That it will take time before it turns into a real Blue Water Navy. Meanwhile, the Americans and their security cooperation agreement with Japan will keep the Chinese Navy busy in the Taiwan straits. As regards Indo-US cooperation, in the first instance, India has to articulate its foreign and defence policies. Then and then only the naval tasks or those in support of the US or Japan can be defined.

Let it be said that the most serious threat Indian Navy faces is the absence of an articulate foreign policy of which the Navy is an extremely important tool. Navy's plans to develop an ATV (Advance Technology Vessel) production of an ADS (Air Defence Ship) and 24 submarines in the next 30 years (Project 75) or three stealth ships (Project 17) in the next eight years or acquisition of an aircraft carrier (Admiral Groshkov) and 4xTU 22 surveillance aircraft from Russia or fast attack boats from Israel are well taken. But Pakistan is not lagging behind and is well up in its collaboration with France, China and North Korea.

In the final analysis, India has no option but to have a long term plan for the future. The Indian Navy's problems centre around its equipment needs, the dire requirement of augmenting its submarine fleet which is severely handicapped as none of its 18 submarines is capable of firing missiles (except the latest addition from Russia) and can only use tarpedos. Also, there is the fear of block obsolesence of ships which will catch up in the next 3-4 years and therefore, there is an urgent need to give a fillip to production infrastructures. More then that, the Governments needs to finalise its foreign and defence policies. And till that happens, the tax payer has no option but to pay for whatever the Navy needs even it is on an adhoc basis.