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Defence And Strategic Affairs Blog

Capacity Building for Future Conflict

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In view of India’s unresolved territorial disputes with China and Pakistan in the mountainous Himalayan region, there is a very high probability that the next major land conflict on the Indian sub-continent will again break out in the mountains and, in order to avoid the possibility of escalation to nuclear exchanges, the conflict will in all probability remain confined to mountainous terrain.

A strategic defensive posture runs the risk of losing some territory to the adversary if capabilities do not exist to be able to launch a deep ingress to stabilise the situation. India’s must upgrade its military strategy of dissuasion against China to that of genuine conventional and nuclear deterrence that can come only from the ability to take the fight deep into the adversary’s territory through the launching of major offensive operations. To achieve this objective, it is necessary to raise and position one mountain Strike Corps each in Jammu and Kashmir for offensive operations against China and Pakistan and in the northeast for operations against China. In addition, other defensive corps must be given limited capability to launch offensive operations with integral resources.

Manoeuvre is extremely limited in the mountains due to the restrictions imposed by the terrain. In the plains too India’s Strike Corps cannot execute deep manoeuvres due to the risk of Pakistan’s nuclear red lines being threatened early during a campaign. As firepower is the other side of the coin, it is necessary to substantially upgrade capabilities of the armed forces to inflict punishment and indeed achieve victory through the orchestration of overwhelming firepower, or else India will have to be content with a strategic stalemate.

These capabilities include conventionally-armed SRBMs to attack high value targets in depth. Air-to-ground and helicopter-to-ground attack capabilities need to be modernised, particularly those enabling deep ground penetration and accurate night strikes. In fact, the Indian Air Force should aim to dominate the air space and ground strikes must paralyse the adversary’s ability to conduct cohesive ground operations. Artillery rockets, guns and mortars must also be modernised. Lighter and more mobile equipment is required so that these can be rapidly moved and deployed in neighbouring sectors.

India’s holdings of precision-guided munitions (PGMs) continue to be low. In recent conflicts like the war in Iraq in 2003 and the ongoing Afghan conflict, PGMs have formed almost 80 per cent of the total ammunition used. Indian PGM holdings must go up progressively to at least 20 to 30 per cent in order to achieve high levels of operational efficiencies. India’s defence planners must recognise that it is firepower asymmetries that will help to achieve military decisions and ultimately break the adversary’s will to fight.

Capabilities for heliborne assault, vertical envelopment and amphibious operations are inadequate for both conventional conflict and dealing effectively with contingencies that might arise while discharging India’s emerging regional responsibilities. Two rapid reaction-cum-air assault divisions (with an amphibious brigade each) need to be raised by the end of the 13th Defence Plan, i.e. by 2017-22. The expenditure on these divisions will be highly capital intensive and will be subject to the defence budget being gradually raised to first 2.5 per cent and then 3.0 per cent of India’s GDP.

C4I2SR capabilities are still rudimentary in nature and must be substantially modernised to exploit the synergies that can be achieved by a network centric force. A seamless intelligence-cum-targeting network must be established to fully synergise the strike capabilities of air and ground forces in real time. A good early warning network will enable the army to reduce the number of troops that are permanently deployed for border management and will add to the reserves available for offensive operations. Infrastructural developments along the northern borders have failed to keep pace with the army’s ability to fight forward and must be speeded up.

Defence And Strategic Affairs Blog

Defense Dysfunction

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The MMRCA decision illustrates the deep problems besetting the Indian defense establishment.

Much of the commentary about India’s elimination of the Boeing and Lockheed Martin bids from its hotly-contested, highly-lucrative Medium Multirole Combat Aircraft (MMRCA) competition has focused on its meaning for US-India relations.  The air force is the largest beneficiary of the country’s burgeoning military budget and a number of foreign companies were looking to snap up the $11 billion MMRCA contract. The Americans were also expecting that the diplomatic capital they assiduously built up in New Delhi in recent years would turn the decision to their favor. Instead, New Delhi opted to reject the U.S. entrants and shortlist for final selection the Typhoon aircraft produced by the four-nation Eurofighter consortium (composed of British, German, Italian and Spanish defense companies) and the Rafale offered by France’s Dassault Aviation SA.

MMRCA_ImageMany interpret the decision as an emphatic rebuff of Washington’s overtures for closer security links. John Elliott, a long-time observer of the Indian scene, views the move as an effort at “keeping the U.S. firmly in its place.”  Others see it as a sign that lingering doubts still reside in New Delhi about the reliability of the United States as a defense supplier. Bruce Riedel, an informal Obama administration adviser on South Asia, argues that “there is a belief that in a crisis situation, particularly if it was an India-Pakistan crisis, the U.S. could pull the plug on parts, munitions, aircraft – precisely at the moment you need them most. Memories are deep in this part of the world.” Stephen P. Cohen, the dean of U.S. South Asianists, concurs: “India would have given the order to a U.S. firm if it had been assured that the United States would back India politically thereafter.  Since this guarantee was not available, and awarding a U.S. firm the contract would increase Washington’s ability to influence New Delhi, the United States was a not a good choice politically as a supplier.”

According to Ashley J. Tellis, one of the most insightful and well-informed observers of US-India affairs, both perspectives are wrong, however. In a superb review of the decision, he argues that it represents less an omen about bilateral ties than a sui generis episode involving the Indian air force’s rigid application of technical desiderata. The bottom line, Tellis says, is that New Delhi selected the European contestants for no other reason than they were adjudged the better flying machines.

Some Indian commentators are of the view that, with bilateral ties now so multi-dimensional and mature, Washington’s sense of letdown will dissipate quickly. This is likely to prove wishful thinking, given how aggressively the Obama administration lobbied on behalf of the American bids. But Tellis’s account at least reassures that the decision did not entail a repudiation of the US-India strategic partnership.

Less heartening, including to those in Washington who want to see New Delhi become a more capable global power, are the serious problems in the Indian defense establishment that are highlighted by the MMCRA selection process. Aiming to ward off charges of graft and extraneous influence that have plagued big-ticket military contracts in the past – Rajiv Gandhi’s government collapsed in 1989 due to the corruption scandal involving the Bofors heavy artillery pieces – Defense Minister A.K. Antony crafted a selection process that relied solely on narrow technical assessments that reportedly encompassed some 500 criteria. Relevant strategic, political and financial factors were purposively excluded from consideration. Following extensive field trials, the air force concluded that the two European finalists possessed superior aerodynamic capabilities relative to their American competitors.

Tellis agrees that, on the basis of narrow technical assessments, the Typhoon and Rafale represent the best choices and that the selection procedure was free of corruption. But if the process was clean, it was not in his view a rational or even well thought-out one. By making such a major procurement decision without examining other attendant considerations, the defense ministry, in Tellis’s view, runs the risk of misallocating precious resources, thereby undercutting India’s larger national security interests. Giving due weight to important non-technical factors, he contends, would have cast the American entrants, particularly Boeing’s F/A-18 E/F Super Hornet, in a more favorable light. As he sees it, the Super Hornet is a truly cost-effective choice once issues like unit piece, technology transfer, offsets, production lines schemes and possibilities for strategic collaboration are assessed.

This specific judgment might be contested within the Indian air power community, but the post-mortem Tellis provides about this particular acquisition decision has larger institutional implications. He reveals, for instance, that the financial details of the bids were not examined prior to the short-listing. If they had been, evaluators might well have asked whether the marginally superior performance offered by the Typhoon and Rafale are worth their markedly higher price tags ($125 million and $85 million, respectively) compared to the Super Hornet’s $60 million. And even if Indian officials decided they were still getting their money’s worth, it would have behooved them to include the U.S. plane on the shortlist in order to enhance their bargaining leverage vis-à-vis the European companies.

It is also striking that only after the shortlist was announced did the defense ministry turn to consider important questions about technology transfer, offset arrangements and production efficiency. India’s defense industrial sector remains conspicuously immature, certainly in contrast to other world powers. (As Stephen P. Cohen and Sunil Dasgupta maintain in their new book, the well-funded military R&D system is remarkably short of accomplishment.) Yet Tellis points out that the European aircraft selected have a more limited capacity to transform the country’s technology base than their American counterparts. This, too, would seem to be an important matter to assess, yet it was deliberately excluded from consideration.

Geopolitical considerations were similarly absent from the decision, especially the issue of whether New Delhi should leverage the opportunity to enhance military-technological ties with the United States. With President Obama’s personally intervening with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, the lack of integrated decision-making all but guaranteed negative diplomatic fallout. As Tellis notes:

“In its zeal to treat this competition as just another routine procurement decision falling solely within its own competence, the acquisition wing of the ministry of defense communicated its final choice to the American vendors through the defense attache’s office at the U.S. Embassy in New Delhi without first informing the ministry of external affairs. This action put the latter in the embarrassing position of not knowing about the defense ministry’s decision a priori and, as a result, was unable to forewarn the United States.”


The upshot, according to Tellis, is that the thoughtless manner “in which these results were conveyed did not win New Delhi any friends in Washington, a process that Indian government officials now recognize and ruefully admit was counterproductive.”

New Delhi has now announced that a blue-ribbon commission is being formed to examine the deep problems besetting the defense establishment, including those in the areas of strategic planning, resource allocation and systems acquisition. A good point of departure would be considering the woeful institutional lessons offered by the MMRCA case.

Defence And Strategic Affairs Blog

US-India Strategic Partnership will Counter-balance China’s Growing Assertiveness in Asia

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The India-China strategic relationship is stable at the strategic level, but it is marked by Chinese aggressiveness at the tactical level. Though the probability of conflict is low at present, it cannot be completely ruled out. Given China’s growing assertiveness in Asia, it has now clearly emerged that its rise is likely to be anything but peaceful. Under the circumstances, the US-India strategic partnership is emerging as a counter weight to China’s assertiveness and as a force for stability in Asia.

China is engaged in the strategic encirclement of India, both from the land and from the sea by way of the string of pearls strategy. The China-Pakistan nuclear, missile and military hardware nexus is a threat-in-being for India. Also, China is making inroads into Pakistan Occupied Kashmir and emphasising economic cooperation to justify building its own rail and road route linking Xingjian with Karachi. China and Pakistan have a cosy arms trade relationship. Their friendship, in President Hu Jin Tao’s words, is “higher than the mountains and deeper than the oceans.” Will they collude with each other in a future conflict with India?   The answer to that question is undoubtedly yes. That is why two of the Indian armed forces Chiefs have said recently that there is a possibility of a two-front war in a future conflict either with Pakistan or with China.

China’s far from peaceful rise is marked by the fact that there is not a single bordering country with which China has not fought a war: the erstwhile Soviet Union, Vietnam, India, and Korea.  They have shot down their own satellite in space. They have been firing missiles across the Taiwan Strait. They have begun to physically occupy some of the disputed Spratly and Paracel Islands. Due to internal contradictions there is a probability that some time in the future China may implode. There is also a possibility that China may behave irresponsibly towards its neighbours. China has been modernising its military at a very rapid rate. Its defence budget has been growing at 12-16% per annum in real terms. Therefore, 15-20 years down the line, when China has completed its military modernisation and resolved the dispute with Taiwan, it may turn its gaze southwards towards India. China will then be in the position of military strength and India will be in a position of relative military weakness. China will be able to dictate terms to India in the resolution of territorial dispute. The real driving force behind India’s strategic partnership with the U.S. is to counter China’s diplomatic aggression and military assertiveness.  If China implodes or if China behaves irresponsibly, India would need a strong friend, if not an ally, and no one could be better than the US.

India should upgrade its military strategy against China from that of dissuasion to deterrence in terms of both conventional deterrence as well as nuclear deterrence. The army in particular lacks the ability to deliver a strong offensive punch across the high Himalayan mountains on to the Tibetan Plateau. Genuine deterrence comes only from the capability to launch major offensive operations to threaten the key objectives of the adversary. If the Chinese are convinced that India will launch major offensive operations across the Himalayas in retaliation for Chinese aggression, they will be deterred from waging a war.  Local border incidents can, of course, never be ruled out. The strength of the Indian Air Force has gone down from 39 Squadrons to 32 ½ Squadrons. That should be unacceptable to India’s strategic planners. The Indian Navy needs greater support by way of budgetary allocations, capabilities for tri-Service amphibious operations and offensive air support in order to make it a genuinely blue water navy. The one weakness that China has is that its oil tankers and its trade pass through the northern Indian Ocean Region (IOR). If the Chinese decide to mess with India on the high Himalayas, they can be squeezed in the IOR.

Defence And Strategic Affairs Blog

Iran Imbroglio?

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Is the U.S. sanctions regime against Iran’s petroleum sector undermining India’s energy security efforts? One might think so given the dispute that played out between New Delhi and Tehran over the past few weeks. India is Iran’s second largest oil customer after China and absorbs about 20 percent of its crude exports. But because U.S. sanctions complicate the payment process, the Islamic Republic had threatened to cut off deliveries unless India paid some $5 billion in outstanding arrears by August 1. If implemented, the threat would have disrupted 12 percent of India’s oil imports.

Credit: http://irdiplomacy.ir Tehran’s atomic ambitions have become an irritant in US-India relations. President Obama signed into law last summer a new round of anti-Iran penalties, which affected some Indian companies and prompted complaints from New Delhi about the extra-territorial reach of U.S. laws. Some believe that continued friction over the issue might endanger New Delhi’s candidacy for a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council, while others fear that compliance with U.S. laws will compromise India’s foreign policy independence.

In truth, though, the issue is losing its potency to bedevil US-India ties. This is not because Washington will cease regarding the Iranian nuclear program as a matter of concern. Nor will South Block finally figure out how to painlessly balance its simultaneous quest for constructive relations with Iran and its American nemesis.  Rather, now that Tehran has largely accumulated the requisite materials and technology for a nuclear weapon, U.S. policymakers are increasingly coming to the grudging realization that there are real limits as to what can be done to elicit Iranian compliance with the global nonproliferation regime.

One of the ironies of the diplomatic process that eventuated in the US-India civil nuclear accord is that as concerns about Indian proliferation activities ceased being a hindrance to closer bilateral ties, the Iranian nuclear issue surfaced as a new point of discord. Indeed, in some quarters in both Washington and New Delhi, the two developments were inextricably linked. In the months following the path-breaking July 2005 summit between President George W. Bush and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, US Ambassador David C. Mulford continuously sounded the alarm that a failure to back a series of International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) motions censuring Iran risked jeopardizing Congressional support of the agreement.

Influential Congressional voices underscored the admonishments. The U.S. Congress gave preliminary assent to the nuclear initiative when it passed the so-called Hyde Act in late 2006. But it also attached provisions to encourage Indian backing of the U.S. approach on Iran, thus ensuring that the issue would continue hanging in the air throughout the negotiations over the enabling “123 Agreement.” Congressional leaders also sent a toughly-worded letter to Prime Minister Singh in May 2007 warning of “grave concern” that India’s ties with Iran “have the potential to significantly harm prospects” for the accord’s final passage.

Although President Bush took the position that the Hyde Act’s provisions on Iran were “advisory” in nature, an odd alliance of the Indian Left and Right regarded them as an outright affront to the country’s sovereignty. Pointing to New Delhi’s support of the IAEA censures in late 2005 and early 2006, they accused Mr. Singh of purchasing Washington’s concessions on the civil nuclear initiative by mortgaging India’s prized strategic autonomy. These passions came to a head in the parliamentary vote of confidence that occurred in July 2008, an unprecedented act for a foreign policy matter.

Given what was at stake in the US-India nuclear negotiations – not only critically-need access to reactor technology and fuel but also the prospect of converting a strategic rapprochement with the world’s premier power into a full-fledged partnership – it is not surprising that New Delhi sought to mollify Washington’s concerns on Iran. Still, the charges leveled against the Singh government were off the mark. The IAEA votes in 2005 and 2006 represented a tactical adjustment rather than a wholesale shift occasioned by excessive deference to U.S. policy preferences.

This is not to say that India would otherwise have been supportive of Iran’s nuclear weapons program. New Delhi has been consistent that Tehran must live up to its obligations under the Non-Proliferation Treaty, a position that was reaffirmed in November 2009 when it backed another IAEA rebuke of Iran.

Yet the Indian government also has done little to surrender the pursuit of what it considers important national interests vis-à-vis Tehran. This is vividly demonstrated by the recent acrobatics in finding a mechanism to pay for crucial energy imports from Iran. Acceding to U.S. pressure, New Delhi barred Indian oil and gas companies last December from settling payments through the Tehran-based Asian Clearing Union. Iran had advertised the ACU as a means of sidestepping U.S. economic sanctions and Indian enterprises made extensive use of the facility. Through American officials hailed the move as a “significant step,” New Delhi quickly arranged an alternative conduit, using an Iranian-owned bank in Germany to funnel euro-denominated payments.

When the new connection was shut down this spring, again due to Washington’s insistence, India and Iran began discussions on another arrangement, which despite Iranian threats of shutting off the oil spigot eventuated in an agreement this week to route payments (mainly in euros) through a state-owned bank in Turkey. And even as New Delhi was going through these maneuvers, a consortium of firms, led by the overseas arm of the state-owned Oil and Natural Gas Corporation, was moving forward with plans to invest $5 billion in developing the Farsi gas field in Iran.

Energy security is a substantial reason for New Delhi’s desire to continue its engagement with Tehran. Possessing the world’s second largest oil and natural gas reserves, Iran ranks just behind Saudi Arabia as India’s most important crude oil supplier. And with the country’s power requirements burgeoning, India will be increasingly dependent upon foreign energy sources, including Iran.

Besides the petroleum connection, geopolitics will also drive New Delhi into a closer relationship with Tehran. India has traditionally relied upon Iran to help blunt Pakistan’s influence in Central Asia and to serve as a bridge to trade and energy opportunities there.  And with the endgame of the Afghan conflict beginning to unfold, this reliance will only deepen. New Delhi now has even less incentive to go along with any new exertions of U.S. sanctions, and India and Iran may go so far as to revive their cooperation during the 1990s that provided critical support to the non-Pashtun militias battling the Taliban regime. The Americans will surely grumble about the cozying up with Tehran, but the strategic logic of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan leaves New Delhi little choice.

But as New Delhi adjusts policy, an even more significant change is underway in Washington, with U.S. options in dealing with Iran narrowing in important ways. Critics urge the Obama administration to be more forthcoming in diplomatic talks, though with the current disarray in the Iranian government it is difficult to see how even the most sincere of efforts could gain meaningful traction. The administration has also pointedly stressed that “all options are on the table,” implying that it is willing to pick up the cudgel of military action in the event Tehran fails to engage diplomatically. Yet this threat always had an air of unreality, given how armed hostilities in the Persian Gulf region – the epicenter of the world’s petroleum lifeline – would have calamitous economic consequences.

And now the saber-rattling option is ringing more and more hollow by the month, in view of the political consensus that is quickly growing in Washington in favor of reducing the country’s strategic commitments. Acknowledging that the U.S. military establishment is “exhausted,” just-retired Defense Secretary Robert Gates pointedly cautioned against launching any new conflicts in the Middle East.

Of course, the American focus on a nuclear Iran will not flag entirely.  New unilaterally formulated and enforced sanctions are certainly possible and these could come to ensnare Indian firms.  But the lack of viable alternative options will compel Washington’s acquiescence were Iran to develop a strategic arsenal, affecting in turn the demands that it places on allies and partners.

Indeed, the real challenge for Indian policymakers these days seems to lie more in Riyadh than in Washington. The simmering rivalry between the Shiite theocracy in Iran and the Sunni monarchy in Saudi Arabia is once again coming to a boil. A senior member of the Saudi royal family has reportedly warned that Riyadh is preparing to employ all of its economic, diplomatic and security assets to blunt Tehran’s regional ambitions. India may well get caught in the crossfire. If it does, satisfying the demands of its principal suppliers of crude oil will be South Block’s next balancing act.

Defence And Strategic Affairs Blog

Managing National Security: Structural Flaws

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Despite complex external and internal security threats, unresolved territorial disputes, the rising tide of left wing extremism (LWE) and urban terrorism, India’s national security continues to be sub-optimally managed.

In 1999, the Kargil Review Committee headed by the late Mr. K Subrahmanyam had made far reaching recommendations on the development of India’s nuclear deterrence, higher defence organisations, intelligence reforms, border management, the defence budget, the use of air power, counter-insurgency operations, integrated manpower policy, defence research and development, and media relations. The Cabinet Committee on Security appointed a Group of Ministers (GoM) to study the Kargil Review Committee report and recommend measures for implementation. The GoM was headed by Home Minister L K Advani and, in turn, set up four task forces on intelligence reforms, internal security, border management and defence management to undertake in-depth analysis of various facets of the management of national security.

The GoM recommended sweeping reforms to the existing national security management system. On May 11, 2001, the CCS accepted all its recommendations, including one for the establishment of the post of the Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) – which has still not been implemented. A tri-Service Andaman and Nicobar Command and a Strategic Forces Command were established. Other salient measures included the establishment of HQ Integrated Defence Staff (IDS); the Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA); the establishment of a Defence Acquisition Council (DAC) headed by the Defence Minister with two wings: the Defence Procurement Board and the Defence Technology Board; and, the setting up of the National Technical Research Organisation (NTRO). The CCS also issued a directive that India’s borders with different countries be managed by a single agency – “one border, one force” – and nominated the CRPF as India’s primary force for counter-insurgency operations.

Ten years later, many lacunae still remain in the management of national security. In order to review the progress of implementation of the proposals approved by the CCS in 2001, the government has now appointed a Task Force on National Security and given it six months to submit its report. The task force must review the performance of the National Security Council (NSC), which is responsible for long-term threat assessment and the formulation of comprehensive perspective plans designed to upgrade the capabilities of the security forces to meet future threats and challenges. The task force must also consider whether the NSA should continue to remain only an advisor or he should be given limited executive functions, particularly for counter-terrorism operations, including covert cross-border operations, and intelligence coordination and assessment. Cyber security and offensive cyberwar operations also require apex level policy guidance and oversight.

The integration of the armed forces HQ with the MoD continues to remain cosmetic and needs to be revisited. An issue that needs no further debate is the appointment of a Chief of Defence Staff as the principal military advisor to the government. It is an idea whose time has come. However, the appointment of a CDS should be followed by the establishment of tri-Service integrated theatre commands for greater synergy in the planning and execution of military operations and aid to civil authority. Another key requirement is for the immediate raising of an integrated cyber, aerospace and Special Forces command.

The task force must also consider whether it is necessary to appoint a constitutionally mandated National Security Commission to oversee the day-to-day management of national security in this era of strategic uncertainty and threats and challenges that are continuously evolving and morphing into new forms.