Indian Maritime Strategy 2015 and Future Indian Ocean Plans: Possible Options for Pakistan | War Strategy

Indian Maritime strategy 2015, Ensuring Secure Seas: Indian Maritime Strategy 2015, Options for Pakistan, War Strategy

Indian Maritime Strategy 2015: The Indian navy is aimed at adopting a concept that tends to make it a focussed, committed, and a conscious force. Indian navy plays an important role in supporting the foreign policy of India. The Indian navy has a role to strengthen the pivotal position of India in the Indian Ocean. India is an important link between Indian Ocean’s various maritime zones including Malacca straits, Arabian Sea, Bay of Bengal, Central Indian Ocean, and other extended regions of Gulf and Red Sea (Nizamani, 2014).

Indian Navy aims at becoming a blue-water force and enhancing its capabilities by adding submarines, reconnaissance aircraft, aircraft carriers, and landing platforms to its fleet. The events in 2008, and in the following years made the Indian Navy define its short-term and long-term objectives (Pant, 2016). The strategic community of India had been planning to acquire some expansive naval doctrine since the start of the previous decade. One such strategy was adopted in 2015 that was named "Ensuring Secure Seas: Indian Maritime Strategy 2015." The basic aim of this naval doctrine was to enable India to dominate the region of the Indian Ocean through naval expansions.

Firstly, the Indian Maritime Strategy of 2015 developed the idea of the region “Indo-Pacific.” This particular region constituted the Indian Ocean Region and the Western Pacific. The changing views of the world regarding the relocation of international economic and military balance towards Asia, and transformation from Euro-Atlantic discourse to Indo-Pacific concept created prominent economic, political, and social alterations in the Indian Ocean Region by influencing India’s maritime environment. Moreover, the emerging Indo-Pacific concept legitimized the Indian role in coupling as well as protecting the Indian and Pacific areas together.

Secondly, the Indian Maritime Strategy of 2015 tended to redesign and expand the regions of the Indian Navy's interest. In addition to the Indian coastline, some regions such as the Red Sea were considered the primary regions of Indian interest in previous doctrines. Indian Maritime Strategy expanded the scope of primary interests of the Indian Navy by considering the additional regions like “Southeast Indian Ocean” (routes to the Pacific Ocean and the littoral region, Mediterranean Sea, as well as the Western Coast of Africa). Similarly, the naval strategy of 2015 also expanded the scope of secondary areas to the Western Pacific as well as the East China Sea. The expansion in the primary and secondary regions of interest for the Indian Navy reflected the intent and willingness of India to effectively enhance the role of the Indian Navy in these waters.

Thirdly, the Indian Maritime strategy recognized the Indian role as the net security provider in these regions. This naval strategy or policy has not defined the extreme regional limit to which India would be providing the security. Thus, providing India with unlimited legitimacy in these regions. So, the basic concept of this strategy has been the enhancement of military capabilities by acquiring unlimited roles in the Indian Ocean Region and beyond (Hanif, 2017).

In addition to the Indian Maritime strategy of 2015, India has many other future plans, for its navy, as well. The recent collection of evidence also suggested that the Indian Navy has even bigger plans as India implemented another 20-year program. This 20-year program involved increasing the legitimacy of the Indian Navy by allowing it to spread across the entire Indian Ocean Region, the Arabian Gulf, and four corners of Asia.

Indian Navy is the world's fifth-largest naval force and possesses over 220 aircraft, 15 submarines, and about 132 ships. In order to meet the objectives of Indian Maritime strategy and other future plans, Indian Navy has approved a future program to enhance its capabilities and strengths by increasing its fleet size to 200 ships, 25 fighter submarines, and about 500 aircraft by the year 2050 (The Economic Times, 2019).

In order to support the likely role of the Indian Navy in the Indian Ocean Region in the future, India has been considering the induction of credible air defense setup and long-range anti-missile defense systems for the Indian Ocean. Indian Navy also plans to improve or acquire new capabilities regarding anti-ship missiles, anti-submarine warfare, amphibious assault, airborne early warning system, mine countermeasures, airborne maritime reconnaissance, ship-borne support system and logistics, and special services corps. Indian Navy is believed to possess two nuclear-capable submarines, and is likely to enhance the number of nuclear-capable submarines in the near future (Hundley, 2018).

Options for Pakistan to manage Advancement of the Indian Navy

Long-standing Indo-Pak tensions and conflicts have increased the anxiety of Pakistan as India has already been increasing its influence in the Indian Ocean Region. Pakistan believes that India can use its naval build-up to show aggression in strategic waters that touch the Pakistani boundaries. Moreover, the ever-increasing piracy, terrorism, and varying geo-security dynamics in the Indian Ocean and surrounding regions made Pakistan Navy focus on concentrated modernization strategy to upgrade as well as acquire new assets. Thus, Pakistan Navy is aimed at developing the latest capabilities to effectively operate in blue waters at the end of this decade.

Pakistan possesses a smaller coastline as compared to India. Defense of Pakistani coastline is the responsibility of the Pakistan Navy (PN). Pakistan Navy is the highly professional naval force that has been effectively playing its role in the overall defense of Pakistan. As per the latest statistics, Pakistan Navy possesses 9 frigates, 8 submarines, 17 patrol and coastal vessels, and 8 combat-capable aircraft (Dhaka Tribune, 2019). Keeping in view the advancements of the Indian Navy, Pakistan Navy (PN) also plans to equip its 3 submarines with cruise missiles having nuclear capabilities. Pakistan has made an agreement with China to buy 8 more submarines that will be delivered by 2028. These submarines will be having the capability to support the deployment of nuclear weapons, if required (Hundley, 2018).

Moreover, the strength of PN has been improving consistently and is likely to increase further after the acquisition of 4 advanced warships that are under development in China in the Hudong-Zhonghua Shipyard. Warships to be acquired by Pakistan include "Type 054A/JiangkaiI II-Class" frigates. These warships are capable of performing multiple roles including the duties of anti-ships and anti-submarines. These warships are also capable of supporting the air defense operations of the naval force.

Chinese Type 054A can help launch anti-ship cruise missile and land attack, hence equipping PN with new generation vessels. The range of these frigates is 8000 nautical miles, and their units can operate at twice the range of existing F-22P Zulfiqar-Class frigate of Pakistan Navy. Pakistan has also been focussing on building partnerships with many countries like China, the US, and various European countries to acquire the latest technology in order to improve the competitiveness of its navy (khan, 2018).

The size of Type 054A warships is not much larger than Talwar-Class Frigate of the Indian Navy. But, the latest version of Type 054A warships is more agile in combat. The updated versions of Type 054A are equipped with HQ-16 medium-range missiles (surface to air). These missiles have multiple fire capacities with a range of 50 km and speed of over 3 Mach. In addition to Type 054A warships, Pakistan also plans to acquire 8 Hangor class submarines (to be provided by China), and 4 of these submarines are to be manufactured in Pakistan.

Keeping in view the advancements of the Indian Navy, Pakistan has been replacing and modernizing its current assets. Pakistan plans the overhauling and up-gradation of its Agosta 90B submarines in Turkey. Turkish company STM will equip these Agosta 90Bs with unique and state of the art capabilities. The capability of these submarines will be enhanced by adding Torpedo countermeasure systems and updated acoustic measurement sensors (Raza, 2019).

Along with the up-gradation of the existing technology and acquisition of new technology, Pakistan Navy also aims at improving its operational capabilities. Pakistan Navy focusses more on professionalism to effectively respond to possible threats (Romaniuk and Burgers, 2019). Depending on the relatively smaller coastline, Pakistan aims to have minimal naval capabilities in order to ensure the security of its essential interests in the region. Pakistan Navy has also been developing the minimal nuclear capability, in order to bring the balance of power, that will overcome the disparities in conventional fleet size of two countries. The achievement of these targets will provide Pakistan Navy with second-strike capability in order to secure the integrity of nuclear deterrent (Jalil, 2016).

Sources

Dhaka Tribune, 2019. India Vs Pakistan: Military Strength And Arsenal. [online] Dhaka Tribune. Available at: <https://www.dhakatribune.com/world/south-asia/2019/02/28/india-vs-pakistan-military-strength-and-arsenal> [Accessed 19 May 2020].

Hanif, S., 2017. Indian Maritime Doctrine: Implications for Pakistan’s Security. NDU Journal, [online] Available at: <https://www.ndu.edu.pk/issra/issra_pub/articles/ndu-journal/NDU-Journal-2017/6-Indian-Maritime-Doctrine.pdf> [Accessed 19 May 2020].

Hundley, T., 2018. India And Pakistan Are Building Nuclear-Armed Submarines. [online] Vox. Available at: <https://www.vox.com/2018/4/2/17096566/pakistan-india-nuclear-war-submarine-enemies> [Accessed 19 May 2020].

Jalil, G., 2016. Analysis Of Indian Naval Capabilities: Implications For Pakistan. [online] Issi.org.pk. Available at: <http://issi.org.pk/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/Final-Issue-brief-Ghazala_dated_14-10-2016.pdf> [Accessed 19 May 2020].

Khan, B., 2018. Steel Cut For The Second Of Pakistan’S Four Type 054A/P Frigates. [online] Quwa. Available at: <https://quwa.org/2018/12/20/steel-cut-for-the-second-of-pakistans-four-type-054a-p-frigates/> [Accessed 19 May 2020].

Nizamani, S., 2014. India’s Emerging Indian Ocean Strategy. IPRI Journal XIV, (1), pp.66-80.

Pant, H.V. ed., 2016. The rise of the Indian Navy: internal vulnerabilities, external challenges. Routledge.

Raza, S., 2019. Pakistan Navy’S Blue Water Ambitions - Global Village Space. [online] Global Village Space. Available at: <https://www.globalvillagespace.com/pakistan-navys-blue-water-ambitions/> [Accessed 19 May 2020].

Romaniuk, S., and Burgers, T., 2019. Pakistan’S New Generation Of Chinese Warships. [online] Thediplomat.com. Available at: <https://thediplomat.com/2019/01/pakistans-new-generation-of-chinese-warships/> [Accessed 19 May 2020].

The Economic Times, 2019. Significant Steps Towards Modernization Of Armed Forces, But Challenges Remain. [online] The Economic Times. Available at: <https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/defence/significant-steps-towards-modernization-of-armed-forces-but-challenges-remain/articleshow/67405882.cms> [Accessed 19 May 2020].