The budget for 2024-25, which allocated approximately $ 75 billion for defence, combined with the optimistic estimates of India’s Gross Domestic Product in 2047, encourages naval planners to look hopefully to what the future Navy would look like.
There are many numbers out there, from Mckinsey’s low estimate of $ 19 trillion to a whopping $ 55 trillion by the executive director at the International Monetary Fund. To be cautious, and for safety’s sake, even if one took the lowest estimate of $ 19 trillion, the defence budget in 2047, at 2% of the GDP would come to roughly $ 400 billion. At 20% of the defence budget, the Navy share would be $ 80 billion – a number that naval perspective planners would drool over. Although, the most capital intensive service, unit costs would no more be frightening; from $ 4 billion for the UK costs of an aircraft carrier of 60,000 tonnes, to $ 4 billion for US costs of a Virginia class SSN .
Indian costs will clearly be lower, normally 50% of US building costs, for a comparable ship. An expanding Navy has greater international implications, than is the case with the other two services, being a force that operates beyond territorial limits and therefore associated with regional power.
Such intense capital infusion has occurred in the international scene in three other well known cases, with uneven results.
The first was the transformation of the British Royal Navy at the turn of the 20th century, under Admiral ‘Jacky’ Fisher, from the sail to coal powered and further, to oil fired propulsion, and the construction of large powerful Dreadnought battleships and a submarine fleet. Yet, a decade later, in World War I, this powerful fleet pursued an independent strategy, while the British Army was bogged down in the bitter and infructuous trench warfare in France suffering losses of 880,000 men.
The second instance was the transformation of the Soviet Navy under Admiral Gorshkov who commanded from 1956-1985 and influenced the Soviet leadership to build an oceanic Navy after the Cuban Missile crisis. Gorshkov was careful to articulate his own strategy in ‘Seapower of the State’, but the ‘state’ imploded in 1989, a year after his death and the Navy he built was whittled down, and shorn of his pride – his aircraft carriers.
The third example is the staggering growth of the PLA Navy, driven by Admiral Liu Huaqing, the father of the Chinese Navy. Starting service as an army officer his tenure lasted from 1982 to 1987 after which he continued to influence naval expansion from the Central Military Commission. Liu’s maritime strategy was modest, and not at all Mahanian. He visualised that the PLAN would operate upto the 2nd Island chain by 2020 and become a blue water navy by 2050, objectives that reflected a gradually expanding territorial defence strategy. US writers have dubbed him the Chinese Mahan, but this writer is skeptical. Above all neither Liu Huaqing nor his successors have been able to address the weakness of China’s maritime geography, a factor central to the Mahanian philosophy of maritime dominance. Even today, about 70% of China’s oil transits the Indian Ocean and is funnelled through the Malacca Straits, creating for Beijing, a problem that they refer to as the Malacca Dilemma.
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However, no chief of the navy can have the 10 to 30-year tenures that the three Admirals quoted earlier had, to leave their permanent imprint on navies. We can nevertheless, write on visionary maritime strategy to accompany the blistering growth of the Navy in he next three decades. The navy was the first service to publish a Maritime Strategy in 2006, that looked ahead to 2015. The second version came out in 2015. The service has the intellectual resources to debate what should go into this visionary document. To-date, our strategy has been largely Mahanian, in enabling national sea – use during war, to ensure which we were prepared to fight the big battle. Some alternations may be necessary.
The most important is the advent of the long range land attack cruise missile (LACM) which enables navies to not merely battle the adversary navy, but to attack his homeland. The US navy has acknowledged this change by fitting LACMs as the main armament in all surface combatants since 1990. The Indian Navy is doing likewise in the proposed type 18 destroyer.
The second change is the demise of the underwater threat to national commerce and shipping lanes, owing to the internationalisation of cargo shipping as well as the unacceptability of creating massive oil spills. Selective interdiction of enemy shipping is still an option, by doing so under dominant control. To achieve that sea control becomes the strategic rationale for a four-carrier navy.
The third alteration is that unlike in the days of Admiral Fisher, the upper echelons of the three services are integrated, calling for a notional tri-service military strategy. This should be based upon a study of India’s Geostrategic Space 2050, factoring in Indonesia’s rise to be the fourth economic world power, Vietnam’s rise, the political collapse of Myanmar and a Chinese advance into the Bay of Bengal, turmoil in Pakistan, the industrialisation of Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states and the new trade corridors to central Asia and Europe. The idea of an actual conflict in 2050 between China and India, the second economic power and third economic power, both nuclear armed, is too fantastic to contemplate.
Besides, India as a democratic country would never initiate a war. But communist China, with a declining economic growth, and a possible revolt against one party rule cannot be trusted to remain non-aggressive. The Indian military must be able to influence Beijing’s choices. The Indian army, hindered by appallingly bad Himalayan geography can only fight a successful defensive battle. A maritime strategy to influence Beijing to keep the peace would mean naval deployment in the South China Sea, requiring land attack capable SSNs. There is thus the strategic justification for a substantial submarine force of SSNs, pushing the Navy into building another SSN production line, leaving untouched the SSBN production line.
Rear Admiral Raja Menon is the author of the highly regarded Maritime Strategy and Continental Wars.
