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Defence And Strategic Affairs Blog

Developing Intervention Capabilities

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India needs an Air Assault Division

The death of Osama bin Laden is likely to lead to reprisal attacks against western targets and those in India. As the roots of these attacks will in all probability be in Pakistan, military intervention may become necessary under certain circumstances. The Indian armed forces possess limited air assault capabilities, but these need to be modernised and qualitatively upgraded. The Indian army has half a dozen Special Forces battalions, the navy has some MARCOS (marine commandos) and the air force has a Garuda commando unit. These capabilities need to be substantially enhanced, particularly the ability to fly nap-of-the-earth on a dark night while evading radar detection.

General K. Sundarji, former Indian COAS, had advocated the raising of an air assault division comprising three brigade groups by about the year 2000. However, the shoestring budgets of the 1990s did not allow the army to implement his vision. Air assault capability is a significant force multiplier in conventional state-on-state conflict as well. The present requirement is of one air assault brigade group with integral helicopters for offensive employment on India’s periphery. Comprising three specially trained air assault battalions, integral firepower, combat service support and logistics support units, this brigade group should be capable of short-notice deployment in India’s extended neighbourhood by air and sea. Simultaneously, plans should be made to raise a division-size rapid reaction force, of which the first air assault brigade group should be a part, by the end of the 12th Defence Plan (2012-17).

The second brigade group of the air assault division should have amphibious capability with the necessary transportation assets being acquired and held by the Indian Navy, including landing and logistics ships. The third brigade of the division should be lightly equipped for offensive and defensive employment in the plains and mountains as well as jungle and desert terrain. All the brigade groups and their ancillary support elements should be capable of transportation by land, sea and air and should be logistically self-contained. The recent commissioning of INS Jalashwa (former USS Trenton) has given the armed forces the capability to transport one infantry battalion by sea. The air force has limited tactical and strategic airlift capability. All of these capabilities must be enhanced to plug gaps in India’s ability to intervene militarily across its borders when it becomes necessary to do so.

Military intervention capabilities, combined with the employment of Special Forces battalions when necessary, will allow India to undertake surgical strikes like Operation Neptune Spear – should diplomacy and covert operations fail to secure critical national interests. Such capabilities will also have deterrent value as these will raise the cost for rogue intelligence agencies like the ISI to support terrorist strikes in India. Unless India becomes the undisputed master of its own backyard in Southern Asia, including the northern Indian Ocean, it will not be recognised as the numero uno regional power, leave alone its aspirations to become a power to reckon with on the world stage. The time to start is now as India’s strategic environment is getting murkier by the day.

India-US Relations Blog

Fighter Shoot-Down

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India’s elimination of Boeing’s and Lockheed Martin’s bids in its $11 billion fighter aircraft competition – one of the country’s largest-ever defense deals – is bound to have negative repercussions for the U.S.-India relationship. Analysts had expected at least one of these bids to advance to the final selection round; that neither did is being perceived as a deliberate snub of Washington. John Elliott, a long-time observer in New Delhi, interprets the move as an effort aimed at “keeping the U.S. firmly in its place.”

http://www.usinpac.com//images/stories/F-16IN_AT_AeroIndia2011.jpgThe Indian decision will add to Washington’s growing list of bilateral frustrations and is yet another sign that ties between the two nations continue to fall far short of the promise that glistened just three short years ago when the landmark nuclear cooperation accord was concluded.  That news of India’s action coincided with the (unrelated) announcement of Timothy J. Roemer’s resignation as U.S. ambassador in New Delhi only heightened the sense of disillusionment and fatigue.

The decision makes some sense on the basis of technical merits. The F-16 aircraft proffered by Lockheed Martin is a widely-used workhorse but also a 30 year-old platform; that Pakistan is one of the 26 air forces flying the plane also could not have endeared the Indian defense ministry. Boeing’s F/A-18 is a much newer system but it reportedly did not perform well in flight tests over the Himalayan ridges in Ladakh.  Eurofighter’s Typhoon aircraft – which New Delhi has shortlisted for possible selection – has much to recommend it technically. Additionally, the four-nation Eurofighter consortium (composed of British, German, Italian and Spanish defense companies) – along with France’s Dassault Aviation SA (whose Rafale fighter also was advanced to the final round) – also was more generous than the U.S. companies in terms of technology transfer.

American companies (including Boeing and Lockheed Martin) have snapped up a number of recent contracts from the Indian military, and one can expect New Delhi to award additional deals in the coming months as palliatives for U.S. disappointment at losing out of this highly lucrative transaction.

Some Indian commentators are of the view that, with bilateral ties now so multi-dimensional and mature, Washington’s sense of letdown will be fleeting. But this is likely to prove wishful thinking.  The Indian decision will certainly not derail bilateral affairs. But given the Obama administration’s aggressive lobbying on behalf of the American bids, it will only deepen the perception in Washington that New Delhi has not lived up to its side of the bargain by reciprocating the huge commitment the United States has made over the past decade to bolster India’s great power prospects.

As Siddharth Vadarajan, the strategic affairs editor of The Hindu, notes, Washington came at the fighter deal with “all guns blazing.” The U.S. campaign included President Obama, who made a personal intervention with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh during his state visit to India last November and then followed up in February with a letter underscoring “the strategic importance the United States attaches to the selection of a U.S. proposal in India’s Medium Multi Role Combat Aircraft competition.”  Ambassador Roemer was tireless in pressing the same message.  And to sweeten the pot, the United States granted India the opportunity to participate in Lockheed Martin’s program to develop the advanced technology F-35 fighter aircraft – an offer that New Delhi effectively rebuffed last December when it opted for a joint arrangement with Russia to develop a separate fifth-generation fighter aircraft.

As an earlier post argued, Washington is becoming increasingly weary of New Delhi’s capacity for strategic engagement. The political soap opera accompanying the Indian parliament’s debate about the nuclear cooperation agreement in the summer of 2008 was disheartening from the U.S. perspective and could hardly inspire confidence that India was ready to move ahead with full-throttle cooperation. Adding to the list of sorrows is that the nuclear liability law adopted by India last year has the effect of all but blocking the involvement of U.S. companies in India’s nuclear energy sector – one of the things that the nuclear deal was supposed to bring about. (And following Japan’s nuclear disaster, U.S. hopes that New Delhi would revisit the law anytime soon are stillborn.) And despite numerous suggestions for bi-national endeavors at producing clean energy technology, Washington is miffed that Indian restrictions on imports of solar-power technology are thwarting the entry of U.S. firms into one of the world’s fastest-growing solar-energy markets.

Boeing's F/A-18 at the Aero India 2011 air showTroubling as well are reports that a major factor in India’s elimination of the Boeing and Lockheed Martin bids was the military’s continued wariness of the United States as a full-fledged strategic partner. In contrast to institutional memories of past U.S. technology embargoes that still linger throughout the security establishment, the military supply relationship New Delhi has forged with Paris – Dassault’s Mirage 2000 fighter has long been in service with the Indian air force – seemed to play an important role in the decision to shortlist the Rafale. The Obama administration had worked hard to ease these memories, including advancing the F-35 offer and the further easing of U.S. export controls on India that were announced in February.  Mr. Obama’s letter to Prime Minister Singh also made promises on this score.

While India’s decision will certainly not produce a bilateral rupture, its consequences may be more pronounced than the rosy scenario sketched by the optimists. At a moment when the Obama administration has begun to turn its attention back to New Delhi, it will reinforce nagging doubts in Washington about India’s willingness to make the big decisions necessary to dramatically advance the relationship.  Such doubts could even break into the open given the bilateral frictions likely to ensue as the United States approached the endgame in the Afghan conflict. There may be solid technical reasons behind the fighter decision. But the soundness of its strategic logic is about to be put to the test.

India-US Relations Blog

How to lose friends and alienate people

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India’s decision to reject U.S. fighter planes is strategic stupidity.

New Delhi, it is reported, has shortlisted two European vendors for its long-drawn procurement of fighter aircraft for the Indian Air Force. Now, military analysts can have endless debates and even objective opinions on which among the American, European and Russian aircraft is technically superior and better suits the stated requirements of the IAF. Financial analysts can have similar debates and objective opinions on which is the cheapest or the best value for money. These opinions may or may not converge. But when you are buying 126 planes worth more than $11 billion dollars, you are essentially making a geostrategic decision, not a narrow technical/financial one.

The UPA government’s decision to reject both American proposals, of the F-16 and F/A-18, demonstrates either a poor appreciation of the geostrategic aspect or worse, indicative of a lingering anti-American mindset. While the U.S. ambassador has resigned, whether or not it will prove to be a setback for India-US relations remains to be seen. Damaging the careers of pro-India American officials is a silly thing to do.

This move will most certainly reduce India’s geopolitical leverage with the U.S. military-industrial complex, at a time when India needs it most. From the unfolding dynamics in the Afghanistan-Pakistan region, to the changing balance of power in East Asia, to UN Security Council reform, to a number of geoeconomic issues, the United States can take positions that can have long-lasting consequences for India’s interests. Is the United States more likely to be sympathetic to India’s interests after a $11 billion contract—which means much needed jobs for the U.S. economy —is awarded to someone else? Long used to complaining that the United States doesn’t care for India’s interests, will awarding the contract to some European firms help change the situation?

The argument that the European bids were ‘technically’ superior are not entirely credible either, for two reasons. First, at sufficiently high levels of technology, the difference between the planes on offer is marginal. To suggest that the European models are vastly superior defies logic, because some of the world’s most powerful air forces are flying F-16s, leave along F/A-18s. Second, the notion that combat requirements can be perfectly defined at the time of procurement is false. It is the combination of man and machine that wins battles. The focus on machines ignores the reality that much swings on the man flying it. Moreover, given the nuclear deterrence relationships obtaining in the subcontinent and across the Himalayas, those planes might never see an aircraft-to-aircraft dogfight in their lifetimes. For other tasks like air support for ground operations, the specifications are even lower.

What about those alphabet soup agreements and fine-print contracts that the U.S. insists that India sign, that might prevent the planes from being used when needed? Those who make these arguments do not understand what war means. War means all bets are off, and India will do whatever necessary to protect its interests. While the existence of those agreements was a usual bargaining chip for India, to get a discount, to believe that such arguments will hamstring India’s military options is naivete. The government might not need to spell this out in public, but it should know it.

It has been this blog’s argument that in the contemporary geopolitical environment, India’s interests are best served by being a swing power, holding the balance between the United States and China. It must enjoy better relations with each of them than they have with each other. It must also have the credible capacity to give pleasure and inflict pain. In this context, buying fighter planes from the United States would have been an excellent move.

And who has New Delhi shortlisted instead? European companies. The European Union is a bit player in the international system, zealously safeguarding its own legacy position at the United Nations Security Council, the G-20, the World Bank, IMF and other places, against India. Italy is engaged in process of blocking India’s UNSC candidature. An order placed with Eurofighter or Rafael isn’t going to change its plans. EU busybodies can be found everywhere from inviting Kashmiri separatists to speak, to attending court hearings of Binayak Sen. Some small EU states almost wrecked the India-specific waiver that the United States was obtaining at the Nuclear Supplier’s Group. When it’s crunch time in Afghanistan, does anyone in New Delhi think that the EU will or can make any move that’ll safeguard India’s interests? Why is India being gratuitously generous to Europe when there is much to gain from giving the contract to the United States?

Yes, France, Britain and Germany are countries that India must engage. There are ways to allow them to benefit from India’s growth process—from power projects to manufacturing to services. The fighter aircraft contract need not be awarded to European firms, because it has higher strategic opportunity costs.

The downshot is that the UPA government has squandered a unique opportunity to gain leverage in Washington at a crucial time when closer ties are in India’s interests. It first took way too long to decide, dragging the procurement process even China built its own new fighter plane. It now decided to pick two vendors who might well sell a technically superior and cheaper product, but do no more than that. To put it mildly, this is strategic stupidity.

(This post originially appeared on this author’s blog at acorn.nationalinterest.in)

Defence And Strategic Affairs Blog

India’s Military Modernization is Stagnating

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According to a recent KPMG report, India is likely to spend up to US$ 100 billion on the purchase of military equipment over the next 10 years. During the last decade, India acquired T-90S main battle tanks; the USS Trenton, an amphibious warfare ship that can lift one infantry battalion; AN-TPQ37 weapon locating radars; and, signed deals for six Scorpene attack submarines as well as for upgrading Mirage 2000 fighter-bomber aircraft. Admiral Gorshkov, a Russian aircraft carrier, will soon be on its way after a prolonged refit and INS Arihant, an indigenously designed nuclear-powered submarine is undergoing sea trials.

USS Trenton; Credit: www.defense.govIndia also acquired a host of low-end equipment for counter-insurgency operations and for upgrading the infantry’s combat efficiency. Besides these purchases, the acquisition or manufacture of 126 MMRCA fighter aircraft, almost 1,500 155mm howitzers, about 250 light helicopters, P8I Poseidon maritime reconnaissance aircraft, C-130J Super Hercules aircraft for Special Forces, C-17 Globemaster heavy lift aircraft and many other items of defense equipment, is in the pipeline.

Are these defense acquisitions part of a carefully structured strategy for military modernisation or are these piecemeal purchases that will only replace obsolescent weapons and equipment with more modern ones but not add substantially to India’s comprehensive military power? In their recent book Arming without Aiming: India’s Military Modernization, Stephen P. Cohen and Sunil Dasgupta aver that the process lacks political support and guidance, is haphazard and bereft of strategic direction and is not in consonance with evolving doctrinal and organisational changes.

In the absence of a resolute strategic culture and the gross neglect of long-term national security planning, it is difficult to dispute Cohen and Dasgupta’s finding that India is arming without aiming. Not only does India not have a coherent national security strategy, but also lacks the tools and processes necessary to formulate such a strategy. While there is a National Security Council for long-term defence planning, its apex body – which essentially comprises the Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS) plus the National Security Advisor (NSA) – seldom meets to deliberate over long-term threats and emerging challenges and the adversaries’ military capabilities that should together drive military strategy, force structures and the modernisation plans necessary to meet and defeat future threats.

The armed forces have drawn up a long-term integrated perspective plan (LTIPP), but it is yet to be approved by the government. The 11th Defence Plan (2007-12) is now in its fifth year and has not been accorded formal approval. The armed forces are left with no choice but to stumble along from one financial year to the next. The defence acquisition process is plagued by tardy decision making and large amounts of budgetary allocations on the capital account are surrendered every year, leading to completely haphazard military modernization.

However, not all is lost. The two new mountain divisions now under raising by the army clearly indicate that the emphasis in defence planning has shifted from Pakistan, whose military power is rapidly declining, towards a rising and increasingly assertive China, which shall indisputably remain a long-term military threat as long as the territorial dispute is not satisfactorily resolved. The acquisition of strategic sealift and airlift capabilities and air-to-air refuelling for fighter aircraft signals India’s attempts to build intervention and rapid reaction capabilities in keeping with its regional power status. The importance being given to upgrading command and control (C4I2SR) systems shows the aspirations of the armed forces to acquire the tools necessary to benefit from the combat synergies provided by network-centric and effects-based operations.

India-US Relations Blog

A US-India Nuclear Alliance

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Although President George W Bush understood the need to ensure parity for India with France and the U.K. in a 21st century alliance calculus, the Europeanists within his administration slowed down his effort at ensuring an equal treatment for India. Much the same as Winston Churchill in the previous century, they regard it as a “country of a lesser god” that is simply undeserving of any except a subservient status. Sadly, the Obama administration has become even more a Europeanists’ delight than its predecessor, and it has very rapidly sought to dilute the few concessions that President Bush succeeded in extracting from his skeptical team.

Credit: IBNLive.com

This has been especially pronounced in the nuclear field. It is not rocket science that India’s ascent into middle income status will depend on a huge increase in its generation of energy, and that such an increase, given existing green technologies, will need to be powered mostly by energy from nuclear sources. The nuclear industries of India and the U.S. have excellent synergy between them, provided the U.S. acknowledges the implicit premise of the 2005 Singh-Bush statement and the 2008 unanimous vote of the Nuclear Suppliers Group to allow commerce and cooperation with India.

The non-proliferation lobby within the U.S. (a group heavily represented in the Obama administration) made India its primary target since 1974, neglecting to take account of the leaching of nuclear and missile technology from China and other locations to Pakistan and North Korea. Small wonder that it has demonized the India-US deal as a “danger to non-proliferation efforts”, despite the fact that a democracy of a billion-plus people is as much entitled to critical technologies as France or the UK. The reality, however, is that the Manmohan Singh government made several concessions to the U.S. side that have had the effect of substantially degrading India’s offensive capability. An example was the closing down of the CIRUS reactor, which was producing weapons-grade plutonium for decades. In exchange, India was to be given access to re-processing technology. Not merely has such technology continued to be denied to India, but the Obama administration is seeking to cap, roll back and eliminate India’s homegrown reprocessing capabilities.

Apart from strong-arm (and secret) tactics designed to force India to agree to the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) and the Fissile Material Cut-off Treaty (FMCT), the Obama administration is now seeking to force India to give up its Fast Breeder Reactor program. As if on cue, those commentators in the world’s second-largest English-speaking country – including those not known for any previous interest in matters nuclear- who hew to the line of any incumbent U.S. administration have used the Fukushima disaster to call for the FBR program to be abandoned.

Whether by accident or by design, since 2007, this program has slowed down substantially, to the dismay of scientists working in the Atomic Energy Establishment who were rooting strongly for the India-US nuclear deal on the premise that this would ensure a much-needed alliance between the nuclear industries of both countries.

 Instead, because of the present administration’s steady drumbeat of fresh conditions (and retrogressive tweaking of existing agreements), nuclear cooperation between the U.S. and India has remained frozen, even while that with Russia has bloomed. Hopefully, such a state of affairs will not continue for long.

One sector where a vigorous India-US partnership would immensely benefit both countries (of course, on the assumption – challenged by key elements in the Obama administration – that India is entitled to the same status as other key U.S. allies) would be in the field of thorium. India has nearly 300,000 tons of thorium (Th), more than enough to power the nuclear industries of both countries. India has already gone a substantial distance towards a viable thorium-based technology. The catch is that this involves reprocessing on a significant scale, a technology that the Churchillians in the U.S. administration say should be denied to India. This is despite the fact that when anyone last checked, India was not an authoritarian state but a democracy. Unless of course, such a prejudice is based on instincts that are not mentionable in polite company.

Despite having been treated as a pariah state by the US, India consistently abided even by agreements that the U.S. side had unilaterally discarded, for example at Tarapur. In this facility, a huge amount of radioactive material has piled up, that India has not re-processed, despite having the technology to, because the plant was set up in collaboration with the US. Some of the spent fuel has been converted after much expense and effort from unsafeguarded radioactive material to safeguarded irradiated fuel, especially in RAPS 1 and 2.

Despite such good behavior, not to mention an impeccable non-proliferation record, the Obama administration in effect continues to treat India as a nuclear pariah, seeking to drive it down to the status of a recipient country under the proposed international scheme for nuclear cooperation. Such a mindset would put paid to any possibility of an India-US alliance, and would be very good news to a country that U.S. non-proliferationists treat with kid gloves, China.

Credit: www.dae.govIndia has already developed two thorium-based systems, the Advanced Heavy Water Reactor (AHWR) and the Compact High Temperature Reactor (CHTR). Although for some reason there seems to be a sharp deceleration in such plans by the present Manmohan Singh government, plans are for the entry of the Indian private sector in this greenfield industry. Ideally, these would partner with U.S. companies, but the way matters are going, it would seem that Russian state enterprises may eventually end up as the preferred partners. This is presumably the reason why there is a significant lobby within India that opposes those within the government who seek to buy either the F -16 or the F-18 for the Indian Air Force. The continued reluctance to give India its due as a major power is behind the skepticism in South and North Block about relying on the U.S. for critical defense equipment. The Obama administration’s cavalier treatment of India’s rights as a responsible nuclear power are behind the pressure by elements of the armed forces to backtrack on plans for a comprehensive defense partnership with India. India gets treated as a Sudan or as a Gautemala in such a pairing, rather than get located in the same bracket as France and the US.

 

Despite their worst efforts, the plan to once again consign India to the bottom of the nuclear heap will not succeed. The 21st century mandates a vigorous partnership of the two most populous Anglosphere countries, India and the US. The non-proliferationists in the U.S. ought not to be allowed to make this hostage to their refusal to admit that India and its population are as responsible and deserving of privileges as the people of major U.S. allies in Europe. Should such a Churchillian view on India continue, the geopolitical gainers would be Russia and China.