Politique Internationale — What are the latest geopolitical developments you perceive, and to what extent have they influenced the Indian Navy’s roadmap?
Vice-Admiral Pradeep Chauhan — Within the vast and predominantly (though not exclusively) maritime expanse of the Indo-Pacific, the geopolitical environment in which we find ourselves is one marked by significant and pervasive maritime uncertainty at the strategic level as well as at the level of operational art. Before going any further, let me hasten to remind ourselves of two things. First, “strategic” is an adjective. It presupposes the presence of its associated noun, namely, “strategy”. If you do not have a “strategy”, you cannot have a “strategic” anything! Second, the level of “operational art” must not be confused with the “operational level of war”. “Operational art” is simply the deployment of tactical assets of one (or more) Armed Forces, in sequences of “time” and/ or “space” and/or “event”, so as to achieve a desired strategic aim. It is applicable in all environmental conditions — peace, tension, and armed conflict. That having been said, let me return to the ubiquitous uncertainty that pervades the Indo-Pacific. Two broad systems are currently engaged in global competition. The first is a state-system that draws its legitimacy from a consensually derived rules-based order.
The second is a state-system that seeks to disrupt the consensually derived rules-based order and supplant it with an international order whose rules are generated in an exclusive State, namely, the People’s Republic of China. The US advocates a system that coordinates its own actions with those of major likeminded Indo-Pacific middle powers such as Australia, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore, South Korea, the UK, and Vietnam — and contends that such a system is necessary to balance and counter belligerent actions from State actors that undermine and threaten the endurance of a liberal rules-based order. In sharp contrast and reflecting a desire to return to the “Middle Kingdom” period of Chinese hegemony, China is pushing for a system of unipolarity that will be guided and governed by rules that would be formulated in Beijing — a system that would situate China as the keystone of all aspects of intra- and extra-regional affairs, integration, and engagement.
Adding to this geopolitical uncertainty is the fact that several democracies are currently in the throes of elections. Consequently, political candidates and contenders are making statements driven wholly by their perceived domestic compulsions. Perhaps the most amazing one was made on February 8 this year, when US presidential-hopeful, Donald Trump, reportedly said “The Rules- based Order is an Orwellian linguistic atrocity… it’s time to junk that cliché…!”.
The specific geopolitical developments that impact the Indo- Pacific and “maritime India” as well, are too well known to bear any great elaboration. Even the most cursory listing would include the Russo-Ukraine conflict that is now in its third year; the Hamas- Israel armed conflict that is approaching its eleventh month; the associated disruption of trade caused by attacks by Houthi rebels in Yemen on merchant shipping in the Red Sea and especially in the vicinity of the Strait of Bab-el-Mandeb; the Taiwan crisis in the East China Sea; Sino-Japanese tensions over the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands in the East China Sea; the ongoing Sino-Indian standoff along the trans-Himalayan border; the increasing Chinese naval presence in the Indian Ocean; and of course, the continual threat to India’s territorial integrity posed by Pakistan, whose chief export appears to be terrorism. Taken in aggregate, these geopolitical developments influence and impact the Indian Navy in significant manner. On the one hand, they have led to a much greater appreciation in all echelons of the government and, indeed, amongst the Indian polity as a whole, of the importance of “matters maritime” and the criticality of the Indian Navy. On the other are a slew of more serious impacts. The most pervasive one is the greatly increased strain on Indian Naval capacity, manpower, and capabilities. Adding to this is the increasing demand from regional and extra-regional naval and maritime agencies for the establishment of more intensive and extensive international maritime partnerships with the Indian Navy. There are also concomitant impacts on the technical underpinnings that enable, in substantive part, India’s naval prowess. Sino-Pakistani military collusion and collaboration means that India cannot afford to take its eye off any of the three balls in the air — China, Pakistan, and maritime crime, including piracy and state-sponsored non-state malevolent activities at sea, especially terrorism.
P. I. — Does the Indian Navy have sufficient resources to support the “dual front” strategy against China and Pakistan?
P. C. — When discussing “resources” it is very important to be quite clear about the difference between the terms “capacity” and “capability” and to avoid the mistake of using them interchangeably. “Capacity” relates to “material” wherewithal — that is, the acquisition of submarines, provision of hardware (manned and unmanned ships/ aircraft/ submarines), material-infrastructure such as dockyards, workshops, buildings, equipment, spares, etc.
“Capability”, on the other hand, refers to the creation, expansion, and sustenance of domain-specific “aptitude” or “skill sets” and is mostly by way of intangibles and cognitive processes (organisation, training, maintenance, operational-exploitation doctrines, etc.).
The acquisition of a complex major platform — such as an aircraft-carrier, for instance — might well represent a significant augmentation of capacity. However, to integrate the aircraft carrier into a Carrier Battle Group (CBG) or a Carrier Strike Group (CSG), and to then be able to deploy it in battle over sustained periods of time and at large distances from shore-support infrastructure, involves processes that call for enormous investment in “capability” and must be persisted with over time periods of the order of two decades or more. The timelines for “capacity-building” can be shortened by enhanced financial freedom arising from economic progress, or by the acquisition (whether above-board or underhand) of weapons, sensors, propulsion, and power-generation packages, or, indeed, the entire platform itself. In sharp contrast, timelines for “capability- enhancement” are far more difficult to cut short. For example, the generation of individual pilot-skills and then the melding of multiple pilots into battle-ready formations, are all very demanding of time and very unforgiving of any attempts to short-circuit these processes. Insofar as your specific question is concerned, I guess that it is principally “capacity” to which you are referring. However, my response amalgamates both, our capacity, and our capability. We have a well-known Order of Battle (ORBAT) of well over a hundred warships and submarines and a range of very modern and capable manned as well as unmanned aircraft, quite apart from some 68 warships that are at various stages of construction in our own warship building yards. This ORBAT, along with our experience, training, and professional competence — and our pronounced ability to play the geopolitical game simultaneously at the strategic level and the operational one, along with our likeminded partners and friends — gives us the requisite confidence that we do, indeed, have the resources to tackle a two-front challenge. We intend to do so in the maritime areas of our own choosing rather than in sea areas decided by our potential adversaries.
P. I. — At the end of 2023, the project to acquire a third aircraft carrier was put on the table. What are the next steps? What technological expertise do you have to move such a program forward?
P. C. — It is important to recognise that a mature and experienced navy never considers solely an aircraft carrier that it needs to acquire or build. It is always the Carrier Battle Group (CBG) or the Carrier Strike Group (CSG) that needs to be conceptualised, decided-upon, and then inducted. Thus, a CBG or a CSG is an entire, integrated combat-system. Just as an army tank is a “combat-system” comprising the chassis and the turret and the many connectivities between the two, and, just as it would be ridiculous to talk about the survivability of the tank’s chassis and that of the turret separately, so too is the case with a CBG or a CSG. Either term refers to a synergistic and mutually supporting complete system and it is this system (that is, the “group”) and not the aircraft carrier alone that must always remain the central point of reference. Many armchair analysts from the media, never having experienced the synergy that a CBG or CSG develops, are quite unable to appreciate this fact. And yet, all too often, their vanity compels them to talk or write about the aircraft carrier as a standalone ship. Thus, they frequently end- up propounding a whole range of erudite and impressive-sounding arguments, but nevertheless ones that are quite simply erroneous (and often siloed), centred upon the several perceived vulnerabilities of the aircraft carrier alone.
The terms “CBGs” and “CSGs” do not reflect a mere play of semantics. They reflect, instead, very different raisons-d’être for not just the aircraft carrier alone but for the group as a whole. A CBG is principally designed for sea control missions — to attack enemy ships while protecting one’s own fleet units. A CSG, on the other hand, is designed for the projection of military power ashore. The principal rationale underpinning its production is “land-attack” or “strike” — that is, to attack heavily defended targets on an enemy shore, even while protecting its own fleet units. Since in a strike by aircraft from the sea, the shore-based defender enjoys several inherent advantages that need to be nullified, a “strike” package comprises aircraft that will actually deliver the ordnance, plus additional aircraft that will suppress enemy surveillance radar, command-and-control chains, and their associated electronics, plus escort fighter aircraft that will take on the air-defence fighters that the enemy will deploy, plus aircraft to suppress the enemy’s ground- based air-defence missiles and guns. There must also be an adequate number of fighters that will continue to provide for the air defence of the aircraft carrier itself and the fleet as a whole. In sum, therefore, the aircraft carrier upon which a CSG is centred must be a very large ship. This is why the US Navy constructs and fields aircraft carriers that displace a hundred thousand metric tons (tonnes) and carry a mix of between 90 and 100 very modern aircraft, albeit of different types - fixed-wing, rotary-wing, crewed, uncrewed, perhaps even some that are lighter-than-air craft. What is certain is that such an aircraft carrier would require a commensurately large shipyard and drydock facilities for its building, as also for its periodic maintenance and/or battle-damage repair. It also requires an enormous financial outlay in terms of capital cost. India, like every other country aspiring to field a CBG or a CSG, needs to take stock of its available facilities for such construction, maintenance and repairs, and also the finances it has at its disposal. What if India determines that she does not, as yet, have the wherewithal to build a super-carrier and therefore field a CSG? Would a decision to build another CBG be an operationally useless one? Let me preface my answer to this with a counter question. Would a future “combined” fleet of the US and its allies plus its partners, when arrayed against China and its partners, require both CBGs and CSGs? The short answer is “undoubtedly”. It is against this backdrop that the third Indian aircraft carrier needs to be viewed. The Indian economy is growing at an impressive rate. However, its per capita income is still low while the inequality of its wealth distribution is still high. A stage will, indeed, come when the Indian Navy will field CSGs centred upon super carriers. But it is not here yet. The third carrier will, therefore, probably displace some 45,000 to 60,000 tonnes and will form the centrepiece of a CBG rather than a CSG. It will field a mix of crewed and uncrewed aircraft and will be worked into operationally viable deployment patterns with other CBGs and CSGs fielded by its friends and partners, through wargaming and real-world exercises of increasing complexity. India already has the technical capability to construct such a carrier but will always be keen and eager to jointly develop advanced technologies and their applications, in cooperation and collaboration with its friends and partners.
P. I. — In the same vein, India wants to acquire a fleet of nuclear submarines. What are the industrial challenges involved?
P. C. — Given that the Government of India has consistently abjured any military alliance, the Indian Navy simply cannot develop niche capacities and capabilities in any given dimension of maritime conflict, relying upon other alliance partners to fill in capacity and capability gaps. Consequently, it is forced, in its pattern of growth, to give primacy to the attainment and sustenance of “balance”. This “balance” is ubiquitous across all segments and all dimensions of the Indian Navy - balance between “blue-water” surface combatants and “brown-water” ones; balance between different types and capabilities of fixed-wing aircraft and rotary wing ones; balanced between crewed platforms and uncrewed ones; balance between surface platforms and sub-surface ones; and balance between nuclear-propelled submarines and conventionally propelled ones. The Government of India recognises and fully supports this balanced growth of the country’s navy. Within this paradigm of balance, there is no doubt that India needs both conventionally propelled submarines (SSK) and nuclear propelled ones (SSN and SSBN). Indeed, the Indian Navy’s SSBN programme has been a sterling success with multiple SSBNs slated to follow the first two of these nuclear propelled boats, the Arihant and the Arighat. Indian public sector and private sector industries have played a stellar role in the SSBN programme. Private industry majors such as Larsen & Toubro (L&T), Walchandnagar Industries, Tata Power Strategic Engineering Division, have buttressed the excellent work done by the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, and state-owned industrial giants such as Bharat Electronics Limited (BEL). At the other end of the scale are an impressive number of domestic micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) which have been an invaluable part of the SSBNs supply chain and supplied a host of pipes, pumps, cables, compressors, air-conditioning equipment and generators. A handful of Israeli and French companies, working through Indian counterparts, also pitched in, providing an assortment of systems and sub-assemblies. All in all, the industrial eco-system that has been built for the SSBN programme is entirely capable of constructing the country’s SSN programme. That having been said, there will most certainly be a place for select foreign industrial participation through the creation of joint ventures with Indian industry partners.
P. I. — As far as Indian defence programs are concerned, priority is given to “Make in India” and to technologies that are already operational. Do you think that partnerships with foreign manufacturers will be necessary?
P. C. — The Indian Navy has only recently finalised the latest edition of its indigenisation and innovation perspective plan (roadmap), generically known as Swavlamban (which is a Hindi word that translates as “self-reliance”). The clarion call to all Indian societal structures to create an Atmanirbhar Bharat is all the rage at the present juncture and has largely taken primacy in Indian discourse, subsuming the “Make-in-India” initiative that you have mentioned, which had been launched in September of 2014. Actually, the current articulation of Atmanirbhar Bharat is a logical broadening of that 2014 campaign, which had sought to encourage the global manufacturing sector to perceive India as an opportunity rather than a risk. It had invited global manufacturing “majors” to “set-up shop” (so to speak) in India and, in so doing, transform the country into a global design-and-manufacturing hub. Unfortunately, in both the 2014 call to “Make-in-India” and the present call for Atmanirbhartha, there is much that has been “lost in translation” as the aphorism goes. This is because these slogans are the product of sophisticated but largely Hindi-thinking and Hindi-speaking minds. Once they are translated into the English language, there is a risk that might, quite inadvertently, have created some degree of misunderstanding abroad. Even in 2014, there was discernible confusion between the terms “Make-in-India” and “Indigenisation”. The fact is that the former was meant to encourage largely foreign major manufacturing companies to set-up manufacturing-units in India — whether for consumption by the Indian market itself or for export from India to markets in other countries. As such, its principal aims were job creation, skill development, and the transfer and absorption of cutting-edge manufacturing technology and management techniques. “Indigenisation”, on the other hand, is, perhaps, better described by the less well-used slogans, “Make-by-India” or “Make-for-India”. In short, “indigenisation” involves Indian industry manufacturing products and processes that would otherwise have had to be imported by India. It is a major error to conflate Atmanirbhartha (self-reliance) with ‘import-substitution’. Atmanirbhartha, as I have just said, expands the concept of “Make in India” in that it accords considerable centrality to defence exports.
The Indian Navy’s efforts at self-reliance are guided by two basic roadmaps, the second being more detailed than the first. The first is a 15-year “Science and Technology Roadmap” that identifies fourteen contemporary technologies that the Indian Navy feels have significant defence-related applications. These are: (1) Robotics and Artificial Intelligence; (2) Sensor-technologies; (3) Materials Technology (Stealth, Meta-metals, etc.); (4) High Energetics technology (Explosives, Anti-matter, Thorium, etc.); (5) Fusion Technology; (6) Space Technology; (7) Hypersonic Missile Technology; (8) Nano Technology; (9) Bio-technical Weapons- technology; (10) IT and Cyber Warfare Technology; (11) Unmanned Weapon Delivery-Systems; (12) Ocean-acoustics in littoral waters; (13) Networking technologies; and (14) Bio-fuels. The second roadmap is called “Swavlamban 2.0”. As I have just mentioned, this is a more granular roadmap that provides centrality to India’s MSME sector. In 2022, the Indian Navy had committed to develop some 75 technologies and the promises made by India’s MSME sector have been fully met, primarily through the “SPRINT” initiative (Supporting Pole-Vaulting in R&D through Innovation for Defence Excellence), the “Naval Innovation and Indigenisation Organisation” (NIIO), and the “Technology Development Acceleration Cell”. Understanding these initiatives and organisational structures is crucial for any foreign defence manufacturer that wishes to be a part of the new (and very exciting) growth story that is being scripted by India.
It is important for foreign defence manufacturers to be guided by the fact that over the medium term, conventional maritime conflict under the India-Pakistan-China nuclear overhang is very likely to be time-compressed and ‘Special Ops’-intensive. There is much that astute foreign industry houses can do to participate in the ongoing story of Indian defence transformation. What I think will NOT work is for them to approach India with their earlier mindset of being mere “sellers” of defence equipment. Instead, they would be well advised to amalgamate themselves into Indian industrial houses, large and small, and endeavour to jointly develop military and naval applications based upon jointly developed cutting-edge technology. India is not seeking technology transfers. It is looking for joint technology-development.
P. I. — Cooperation between the Indian and French navies is a regular occurrence: how will this continue and develop? In your opinion, what areas of cooperation need to be developed further to meet India’s security needs?
P. C. — Even allowing for the enormous increase in Indian military (and especially “naval”) cooperation with the US, it is nevertheless France that occupies pole position in the Indian mind. For one thing, the trust factor is very strong and this, coupled with Indian admiration for the technological prowess of France and, even more importantly, the widespread belief that France is a reliable partner underpins the India-France story. Three factors do, however, need to be addressed. The first is language. Despite the relative fluency of French people in the English language, difference in the grammatical construction and syntax of French and English means that documentation is sometimes open to interpretation and there is considerable risk of meaning and nuance being lost in translation. This is, of course, easily remedied at the level of private industry in France, but it is something that needs to be improved at the working- levels of government defence personnel. The second is price. The rupee-euro currency differential is a major impediment, given the price-sensitivity that characterises the Indian mindset. The third is that French firms need to understand and internalise the fact that the defence ecosystem in India has become extremely dynamic — even transformational. Keeping pace with governmental policies, organisational structures, and initiatives will be essential attributes if French industry is to retain this “pole position” of which I have spoken.
In specific terms, there is much scope in critical but niche areas such as post-quantum computer protection technologies, underwater situational awareness and underwater domain awareness, super-cavitation for propulsion, autonomous underwater systems and vehicles, advanced batteries (including paper batteries for ultra-lightweight uncrewed aerial systems), high altitude pseudo- satellites (HAPS), low-observable stealth craft, underwater position- fixing systems, high-speed low-noise electrically propelled surface and underwater craft, crewed-uncrewed teaming systems (CUTS) also referred to as manned-unmanned teaming (MUM-T), the multinational amalgamation of CSGs and CBGs, amongst a slew of others.
P. I. — How does cooperation with France fit in with other regional or international cooperation programs (e.g. QUAD)?
P. C. — India’s principal strategy in environmental conditions short of armed conflict is that of “constructive engagement”. India is currently concentrating upon five major — but very different — approaches for its maritime endeavours vis-à-vis “constructive engagement”. The first is through large (and fairly traditional) multilateral constructs such as IORA. The second is Indo-Pacific Oceans Initiative (IPOI). The third is through smaller multilateral constructs such as BIMSTEC or the Colombo Conclave, or the six maritime trilaterals that India is at the heart of ([1] India-US- Japan; [2] India-France-Australia; [3] India-France-UAE; [4] India-Japan-Italy; [5] India-Australia-Indonesia; [6] India-Brazil-South Africa). The fourth is the QUAD, to which you have alluded. The fifth is through maritime mega-connectivity projects such as the International North-South Transport Corridor (INSTC), the India- Middle East Economic Corridor (IMEC), the Asia-Africa Growth Corridor (AAGC), etc. Of greater relevance to our conversation are constructs such as IONS, in which India and France are major partners and where the scope for cooperation between the defence industries of both countries has hardly been explored but which nevertheless holds enormous potential. It is, I am afraid, a lack of military imagination that has prevented us from realising this potential. The question is whether our respective military-industrial complexes can find it in them to rise to the occasion or whether we will both be content merely with common lament.