Navy needs indigenous carriers, subs

One does not require the wisdom of the great American naval historian Alfred Mahan or British admiral Julian Corbett to state the obvious: no nation can aspire to be a sea power without producing its fighting ships indigenously. Being the smallest of the three arms of India’s defence forces (taking personnel strength as the parameter), attaining expertise in the manufacture of quality (surface) fighting ships of up to 8,000 tonnes is the best to have happened to the Indian Navy. However, in the sub-surface and aircraft-carrier category, India is a late bloomer due to the lack of any sustained, long-term initiative.

Hence, it is obvious that one cannot manufacture sophisticated, technologically-complex submarines and aircraft-carriers without having long experience in the sea. And that is exactly the case with the Indian Navy. It was the second Asian Navy, after Japan, to induct a used 20,000-tonne aircraft-carrier of British origin, INS Vikrant, on March 4, 1961. (It was eventually scrapped in 2014-15.) A long “active sea-time” gave the right exposure to the Indian Navy men before India launched the first phase of building its own aircraft-carrier (also named INS Vikrant) on February 28, 2009 at Kochi. Although French DCNS and Italian Fincantieri were reportedly involved in its initial “conceptualisation and design” work, the completion of the 40,000-tonne-plus first indigenous aircraft-carrier will be a feather in the cap for the Indian Navy, thereby fulfilling a long cherished dream.

China has recently announced that its first indigenous aircraft-carrier Liaoning  is combat-ready. Unlike India, China has been a case of “first produce, then use”. It would be interesting to see how the carriers of Delhi and Beijing sail in the future, though prima facie the Chinese aircraft-carrier is bigger at 60,000 tonnes (full load). They have emphasised on speed as one of the key elements.

Being a late entrant in submarine warfare perhaps helped India to be bold, brave and wise. Without producing a single indigenously-conceived and designed conventional underwater vessel, Delhi leapfrogged into the nuclear strategic missile submarine (SSBN/SSGN) club in 2004 at Visakhapatnam. No doubt Russian cooperation was “acknowledged” at the time of launching the 600-tonne submarine INS Arihant on July 28, 2009; nevertheless, it speaks volumes about India’s naval achievement and fulfilment of its “Make in India” vision. Here, one has to concede that China has been the Asian pioneer in nuclear submarine building, beginning its voyage before India way back in 1980 with three 5,700-tonne Han class nuclear subs.

As is well known, if a submarine succeeds in diving deeper than the standard 300 metres (985 feet) under the sea, things become that much more difficult for the anti-submarine assets to detect, identify and take position, defensive or offensive. Hence a recent report on India’s nuclear submarine INS Arihant’s “diving depth of 450 metres approximately” is promising. Another reported feature of the “dived speed” of 24 knots gives it an edge over other South Asian or West Asian submarines operating in the combat radius of the Indian Navy.   

The positive story of India’s naval buildup, however, is overshadowed by chronic time and cost overruns. The Navy continues to struggle to maintain the “minimum deployable and to-be-deployed” fleet as often the speed of decommissioned ships outpaced the speed of commissioned ships. The classic example is reflected in the depleted strength of India’s submarine squadrons.

Indeed, things became acute at the beginning of the 21st century owing to the spill-over effect of former Soviet-origin ships on the Indian Navy. Precious time was lost on production, delivery schedule and maintenance programme of the ships, owing to breakup of the USSR in 1991 and the resultant disarray of Moscow’s shipbuilding industry. This setback was reflected in the 2011 CAG report: “Between 2011 and 2013, the Indian Navy would have only 61 per cent of its envisioned frigate fleet, 44 per cent of its envisioned destroyer fleet, and 20 per cent of its envisioned missile corvette fleet.” It must be remembered that the frequency, duration and out-of-area operational deployment of the Indian Navy is no longer what it used to be 25 years ago. The fleet’s “sea-time” has increased manifold, thereby putting pressure on its wear and tear as well as logistics and material management.

Admiral Gorshkov, an USSR-made, Russia-refurbished, India-used, carrier is another classic case of a monumental disaster due to cost overruns. A ship is neither produced overnight nor an FMCG product. Aircraft-carriers had been built by only seven (US, UK, France, Russia, China, Italy and Spain) countries; thus India became the eighth producer. Indeed, a blessing in disguise if India successfully commissions the carrier in 2019.

Good things apart, there still exist matters requiring urgent action, as can be gleaned from the CAG report tabled in Parliament on February 18, 2014: “Between 2005 and 2010, 113 of 152 Indian Navy refits were completed after an accumulated delay of 8,629 days, or 23.6 years”. It attributed the delay to “growth attributable to the ageing ships, and the inability to ensure timely induction of new ships”.

Very serious stuff surfaced subsequently as Navy stated “that delays of five to 67 months in commencing mid-life upgrade (MLU) of naval platforms had prompted cascading delays in refitting other ships which resulted in operational unavailability”. Another angle to India’s indigenous shipbuilding enterprise is the uncooperative bureaucracy. Indian Navy officials have long claimed that although it had received new platforms in the past decade, the defence and finance ministries had declined to provide additional funds to pay for the consequent increase in staffing levels, leading to meagre resources being stretched and to officers with limited experience assuming charge of technically-advanced vessels, many of which experienced mishaps. Indeed, a serious matter pertaining to safety and security of the State even if half of these claims are found to be correct. The bottomline, therefore, comes down to administering and interfacing man and machine. India traditionally has never had an acute shortage of trained and qualified manpower. However, what is required now is time management. That itself will give boost to the indigenisation enterprise of the Indian Navy.