The Albatross void

Posted on March 30, 2017 by Bharat Karnad

TU-142M aircraft

(CNS ADM Sunil Lanba at the Tu-142 de-induction at Arrakkonam, March 29, 2017)

The fleet of 8 or so Tu-142 ‘Albatross’ maritime reconnaissance and anti-submarine warfare aircraft with the Indian Navy based in Arrakkonam (near Chennai) will stand decommissioned as of April 2017. It was inducted in 1988 with the navy issuing a statement hailing this aircraft for “their phenomenal maritime reconnaissance (MR) capabilities” and as “spearheading the Navy’s MR effort ever since”. It further added that it was “among  the finest aircraft of their kind in the world in addition to being the fastest turbo-props,”

A lot of frantic sorties have been launched in recent months regularly to as far down as South Africa, in order to rundown the remaining air frame time and wind down the clock on this Tupolev, almost as if the navy wanted to be done with it. But why has the good vibes about this bird turned over the years into antipathy towards it in a service that now finds itself without really long range MR and interdiction assets?

A very senior naval person of impeccable integrity and vast and varied experience with whom I had, a few days back, raked up the topic of the imminent de-induction of the Tu-142, responded that left to him he’d have tried and retained this aircraft and its capability. Russia has been offering 22 Tu-142s, from a huge store of this aircraft, possibly kept as war wastage reserve. He called today to say that as he was not an aviator, he had consulted with his naval aviation colleagues and was now persuaded by their argument that it was a damnably difficult plane to upkeep, and the attention it required after each sortie was just too onerous. In comparison, the Illyushin-38 for like missions in the ‘Sea stallions’ squadron based in Goa,  is a dream, easy to service and maintain, and a delight to operate.

The trouble though is the Il-38 has very little combat range compared to the Tu-142, and also a limited lethal payload capacity — the Sea Eagle anti-ship missile, free fall bombs, and a short-range Air-to-air missile for self-protection versus the Kh-22 anti-ship cruise missile and the Kh-15A short range air-to-surface missile carried by the Tu-142.

What many in the navy are getting exercised about is their belief that Russia through their commission agent in India is stirring up a needless controversy about a contingent strategic void being created by the absent Tu-142s, given that the great expanses of the Indian Ocean still need surveillance and armed monitoring, a role the Il-38, optimized for what the Russians call the “coastal ASW” mission, simply cannot pull. Those having anti-Tu 142 views, however, point out that the offer of 22 or howsoever many planes the Indian Navy wants to offtake is because Kremlin has decided that it wants to revive an oceanic anti-submarine warfare capability for itself but lacks the financial resources to set up a factory to produce a new power plant for it. And here’s where an Indian buy of these aircraft was supposed to come in handy. It was expected to generate the funds for the Russian Navy to get a newly re-engined fleet of Tu-142s.

That this is Moscow’s way of modernizing its MR/ASW capability is not in doubt. That Indian agents will make a lot of moolah out of such a deal cannot be doubted either. That the Indian Navy has scarce monies and is in no position to “waste” any is also a fact. The question still looms — how is this strategic MR-ASW void to be filled? And if the Tu-142 is not the answer, what’s the alternative? P-8I? But the synthetic aperture radar on the P-8I, it is said, cannot pick up the Karachi port — which may be apocryphal view. but the fact is it has simply not panned out as the navy expected. Then again, neither did the Tu-142.

Posted in arms exports, Asian geopolitics, Culture, Decision-making, Geopolitics, Great Power imperatives, India's strategic thinking and policy, Indian ecobomic situation, Indian Navy, Indian Ocean, Military Acquisitions, Military/military advice, Missiles, Relations with Russia, Russia, russian assistance, russian military, South Asia, Weapons | 7 Comments

Why Parrikar failed in Defence

Posted on March 20, 2017 by Bharat Karnad

modi-m

(Parrikar with PM)

Few Defence Ministers began their tenure with such high expectations and ended it on such low key with almost nothing to show for the two-odd years spent as the military’s boss, as Manohar Parrikar. Returning to Goa without making the slightest ripple in a ministry crying out for hard political decisions and implementation of even harder solutions, may be something of a record.  Even so, were we all wrong in hoping Parrikar would do big things differently, logically, with oodles of practical good sense? For one as a graduate of IIT, Mumbai, it was expected that he would bring an engineer’s approach and problem solving methodology to issues of national security, especially those relating to the conventional forces that in many respects are mathematical in nature.

He started out promisingly. The MMRCA race was decided by the time Manmohan Singh demitted office. It only remained for the incoming BJP government to  sign on the dotted line of a contract for the Rafale aircraft that would enrich France, the French economy, the French aerospace sector, and specifically, Dassault Avions, without doing much for IAF’s fighting ability.  He did the unexpected, showing the greatest reluctance to sign a contract, Parrikar pondered more economical options in lieu of the Rafale. He came to the obvious conclusion that the entire ‘medium’ category in combat aircraft is bit of  a hoax perpetrated by IAF. This may be seen in his exploring a Hi-lo solution revolving around the Su-30 MKI license-produced by HAL in Nasik as the high end fighting platform, and the indigenous Tejas as the low end bulk combat component. His publicly observing that the price of a single Rafale can fetch the IAF three Su-30s, arguably the best multi-role fighter plane currently flying barring the F-22 Raptor, and his refuting the IAF’s charge propagated through the media that the Sukhois suffered from heavy downtime, by talking of its serviceability rate as comparable to any other aircraft in the fleet, suggested that here was a defence minister who was prepared to take Air HQrs head-on.

Then prime minister Narendra Modi’s Paris trip happened in April 2015 and, voila! just like that, there was the announcement of  a buy of 36 Rafales — a ridiculous figure because it meant the IAF could do very little with it in terms of strengthening its force posture or warfighting capability. They were too few in number to operationally matter, and too costly to risk in hostilities, but may prove useful to Vayu Bhavan as a wedge to wangle the resources to get an additional 100-200 Rafales in the future. This decision marked Parrikar’s slide. He could not in good conscience act gung-ho about Rafale, equally he couldn’t be seen,or even politically afford,  to oppose the PM.

This is a sidebar– but why Modi made this decision remains a mystery,  considering the Rafale makes little military, political, or economic sense. If, as is being alleged, President Francois Hollande lubricated the Rafale deal by promising Indian nuclear weapons designers access to the French inertial confinement fusion (ICF) chamber in Bordeaux so that India’s unproven and untested thermonuclear designs can be validated short of explosive underground testing, and also finessed, by triggering miniature fusion reactions in the ICF facility, then Modi has taken a big gamble. Paris has not always delivered on its contractual or even secret executive-level agreements. Assuming they do this time, where’s the guarantee that the French won’t pass on the Indian ICF data to its friends and allies, thereby compromising the Indian deterrent? Moreover, is a paper promise of access to ICF, Bordeaux, worth the escalating costs of the Rafale, considering Indian scientists continued to gain from access to the Russian ICF in Troitsk, outside Moscow?

In any case, Parrikar was never the same again. He chose thereafter to do what any lay politician has done as defence minister — surrender to the autonomy exercised by the civilian bureaucrats running his ministry. Leaving it to the babus to do all but formally make decisions meant he sidelined himself, and wound up enmeshed in the Gordian knots of red tape he had set out originally to untangle.

One is tempted to compare Parrikar’s fairly undistinguished time in office with that of the longest serving defence minister, AK Antony, in the preceding Congress Party coalition government. Unlike Parrikar, Antony, a lawyer, understood the pitfalls of decisionmaking and was wary of civil servants weaving a web to victimize politicians. Zealous in protecting his reputation for absolute propriety, he shunned all decisions concerning procurement of major military hardware — Project 75i, MMRCA, howitzers, etc. Consequently, in his eight years as defence minister nothing was decided on the big ticket items, nothing was bought.

In both cases, the usual rampaging waste of national economic resources was avoided but at the cost of weakening force readiness and modernization, by Parrikar because he permitted the civil servants to create an impasse at every turn, and by Antony because he deliberately avoided taking any decision at all.

Not sure which is better — Parrikar’s mode or the Antony operandi.

Posted in Asian geopolitics, civil-military relations, corruption, Culture, Decision-making, Defence Industry, domestic politics, DRDO, Europe, Geopolitics, Great Power imperatives, India's strategic thinking and policy, Indian Air Force, Indian Army, Indian democracy, Indian ecobomic situation, Indian Navy, Indian Ocean, Indian Politics, MEA/foreign policy, Military Acquisitions, Military/military advice, Nuclear Policy & Strategy, Nuclear Weapons, Relations with Russia, Russia, russian assistance, society, South Asia, Technology transfer, United States, US., Weapons | 14 Comments

More Disruption Please

Posted on March 17, 2017 by Bharat Karnad
Now let there be a course correction in defence and international relations
THE RULING BHARATIYA Janata Party’s success in the recent state elections, crowned by the stunning results in Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand, has stamped Narendra Modi as a political man without parallel perhaps in the history of the Republic. No Prime Minister so far has sported such keen political antennae that pick up the slightest tremors of popular anger and angst, gauge the people’s frustrations and despair, and shape the voters’ collective consciousness and cater to it with appropriate government action and policies. He can apparently do no wrong. Everything he attempts, however dubious, turns into a political windfall (to wit, demonetisation). That unerring sense of what will play at the grassroots level is instinctive, not something learnt over time. If this were not the case, Rahul Gandhi and Akhilesh Yadav would now be preparing for bigger things, one as Congress party chief busying himself to replace Modi at 7 Race Course Road two years hence, the other as UP Chief Minister consolidating his hold over the country’s most populous province and positioning himself in national politics to pole vault into the Prime Minister’s seat should the opportunity arise. But compared to Modi, these two seem like amateurs, ‘bachcha log’ playing at power daddies. Then again, there’s no stalwart political leader elsewhere in the country who is the Prime Minister’s equal. With BJP boss Amit Shah playing Tonto to his Lone Ranger, Modi has tamed the opposition and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and about wrapped up the 2019 General Election as well.

However, for a politician who has overturned every political rule of business at home, remade his party, and is in the process of making the country over, the surprise is that he has not been disruptive in India’s international relations. Disruption is what got China to where it is now, has strengthened Pakistan’s hand in dealing with great powers, and provided North Korea the wherewithal to hold the US at bay. The adoption of a disruptive attitude and policy mindset that has helped other countries make it in the harsh global milieu should commend itself to Modi, who has embarked on realising a brash ‘new India’. This will run smack into the Ministry of External Affairs’ traditional advice to prime ministers emphasising continuity and caution, counsel that Modi has faithfully followed since May 2014. His foreign and military policies are a copy of those pursued by the much reviled Congress Government of Manmohan Singh. But it is not a recipe for a ‘big bang’ impact.

The ‘short-term maximiser’ policies that Manmohan Singh followed, mixed more recently with the drumbeat about terrorism and ‘surgical strikes’ to pressure Pakistan, have about played themselves out. It has never made strategic sense, moreover, for India to buy goodwill of the West and Russia by signing multi- billion dollar deals for high-value military hardware, and this approach won’t persuade the Trump administration to leave the H1B/L1/H4 visa channels slightly ajar for Indian techies to squeeze through. Nor will any big power relent on India’s membership to the UN Security Council, the Nuclear Suppliers Group, or even the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum— unless Delhi shows it means business.

What is not recognised in Delhi is just how crucial reaching a modus vivendi with Pakistan is to India’s great power ambition. Pakistan is sufficiently strong, especially with military, economic and technological aid and assistance provided by China, huge transactional fees (as a frontline state on Afghanistan) extracted from the US, and a Russia loosening up on military supplies, to seriously hinder India’s plans. Maybe Modi is aware of the importance of cultivating Pakistan. His clearing the visit by three Members of Parliament, including Shashi Tharoor of the Congress party, to attend the Asian Parliamentary Assembly in Islamabad soon after the announcement of the game-changing Uttar Pradesh election results, is a good sign. Perhaps the Prime Minister will follow this up by reviving the Musharraf solution for Kashmir. Atal Bihari Vajpayee almost accepted President Pervez Musharraf’s July 2001 proposal, which offered Islamabad a fig leaf to back out of championing the Kashmir cause by forming a joint India-Pakistan body to ‘oversee’ the state’s affairs even as each country retained sovereign authority over J&K territory in its possession. It’d have turned the Line of Control into the de jure border. But with Vajpayee’s advisers distrusting Musharraf’s promises about stopping jihadi terrorism, that solution was interred in Agra.

If despite a horrible record of violating contractual obligations, the Indian Government trusts Washington, Paris and London to deliver specialised ordnance and critical military spares in crises, Modi can surely take the far lower risk of trusting Pakistan to stick to its word. And now there’s a Pakistan Army chief, General Qamar Javed Bajwa, who is mulling the Indian model to keep the army out of politics. Were Modi to show the slightest interest in a Musharraf-type compromise, an entente with Pakistan is possible, with Bajwa likely supporting the Nawaz Sharif regime.

It will forever rid Indian policy of its Partition pathologies and the tendency to externalise communal tensions in society into mindlessly adversarial relations with Pakistan. The result will be that the United States, Russia and China, in the main, that have manipulated Delhi by calibrating their approach to Pakistan, will be bereft of that lever. It will be the foreign policy reset the country has long been looking for, raising India’s stock and Modi’s standing in the world, and comprehensively enhancing the country’s geopolitical stature and diplomatic leverage. With the big powers losing their punch, Modi can play off the US against Russia, Russia against China, the US against China, and generally position India as the global power balancer able to twist the outcomes of regional and international forums to India’s advantage.

IN TANDEM WITH those developments, Modi has to ensure that India ends its arms dependence on foreign countries by rejigging his ‘Make in India’ programme. Apparently because of lack of clarity on its objectives, this policy has so far cued the licence manufacture by private sector players of obsolete weapon platforms, such as F-16 combat aircraft of early-70s’ vintage. Constituting a parallel capability to that of defence public sector units for assembling weapon systems based on screwdriver-level technology will not, however, make India self-sufficient in arms. Nor will it help set up a profitable, self-sustaining, high employment-generating national defence industrial powerhouse that acts as a technology innovator. For such an industry to be viable, India would need the integration of public and private sector resources, economies of scale, and a military fully reliant on indigenously designed weapons and equipment.

Yet, decisions to meet military needs with imports get more egregious by the day. The latest is the Navy’s opting for an imported carrier fighter plane at the expense of the navalised Tejas Light Combat Aircraft, thereby all but killing the latter’s development as a flagship enterprise that showcases the country’s capacity to design and produce complex weapon systems. The foreign aircraft for our Kochi-built aircraft carriers won’t be inducted before 2025, by when the naval Tejas, of reduced weight, would be available for induction. In the face of reckless foreign procurements by the armed services, Modi has to do something revolutionary: announce the termination of all underway defence deals and ban all armament imports. Since the addiction of Indian armed services to foreign military goods could cost the country $250-$300 billion over the next 25 years, going ‘cold turkey’ is the only remedy. There will be withdrawal pains, but if this ban is combined with making the military brass and Defence Ministry bureaucrats in the acquisitions loop—everybody, that is, from the armed services’ chiefs to the defence secretary—formally accountable and responsible for bringing indigenous armament projects in on time and within allotted cost frames, the impact will be enduring. With a Damocles sword hanging over their necks, you can bet there’ll be no pussyfooting.

Negative reactions from supplier states grown fat on arms sales to India can be expected. But Modi can ward them off by warning that any untoward action will mean an instantaneous cut-off of access to the Indian market. It will have a salutary effect. In this respect, Modi may care to recall that it was precisely the Western technology denial regimes of the 1980s and the consequent absence of an import option that compelled India to become entirely independent in strategic armaments—ranging from nuclear-powered ballistic missile firing submarines and accurate long-range missiles to nuclear weapons. Replicating such results in the technologically far less challenging conventional weapons sphere should not be difficult.

It only needs a strong-willed Modi to shut down the deeply entrenched arms import eco-system in Delhi that features foreign arms companies, commission agents, and hordes of facilitators within and outside government. If the Modi dispensation has so far escaped being tainted by defence scams and charges of corruption, of bribery and payoffs, that have tarred many reputations in the past (including Indira Gandhi’s), and brought down the governments of Rajiv Gandhi and Manmohan Singh, it is a matter of luck. Unless the arms import lobby is weeded out, root and branch, the influence on Indian policy of the US, France, Russia, Israel and the UK will remain unchecked, and the resulting corruption will end up soiling the BJP Government’s escutcheon, doing Modi’s reputation and his 2019 re-election prospects no good.

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Published in ‘Open’ Magazine, March 17, 2017, at http://www.openthemagazine.com/article/mandate-2017-comment/more-disruption-please

Posted in arms exports, Asian geopolitics, China, China military, corruption, Culture, Decision-making, Defence Industry, domestic politics, DRDO, Europe, Geopolitics, Great Power imperatives, India's China Policy, India's Pakistan Policy, India's strategic thinking and policy, Indian Air Force, Indian Navy, Indian Ocean, indian policy -- Israel, Indian Politics, Israel, MEA/foreign policy, Military Acquisitions, Military/military advice, Missiles, North Korea, NRIs, Nuclear Weapons, Pakistan, Relations with Russia, Russia, russian assistance, SAARC, society, South Asia, Strategic Relations with South East Asia & Far East, Strategic Relations with the US & West, Technology transfer, Terrorism, UN, United States, US., Weapons | 12 Comments

ITBP — best paramil, rising with new roles

Posted on March 8, 2017 by Bharat Karnad

The Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP) is the best para-military around, with very good operational ethos and habits. Recognizing its abilities, the Modi government has decided to put it in charge of the country’s border with Myanmar. In fact, the 15 new battalions  that the Assam Rifles (AR) — India’s oldest paramilitary organization, is raising will now go to ITBP instead, even as it takes control of the border with Myanmar, and tries to shut off the flow of arms to rebel movements and insurgents active in the northeast. A Cabinet note formalizing this enlarged role of ITBP coupled with pullback of Assam Rifles from border policing has been prepared and will be put to the Cabinet for approval very soon.

This shock of Assam Rifles, officered by the army, no less, has hit Army HQrs, which has not come to terms with its officers and the AR’s established modus operandi being directly blamed for the continuance of tribal insurgencies in that region and is, understandably, resisting the move.  Army’s loss of face aside, the failure of army led AR in the last few years has become so pronounced, a drastic solution is believed necessary. Of special concern was intelligence that army officers deputed to the AR were a mostly compromised lot. As much to blame were the Assam Rifles’ method of basing its units some 40-50 kms behind the actual border, which only helped the unhindered movement of insurgents, arms and ammo. This in turn kept the insurgencies oxygenated. There’s, moreover, enough evidence with the government to suggest that the flow of Chinese arms into the northeast was facilitated by China through the Kachin Army it controls in northern Myanmar.

The government examined ITBP’s performance not just on the Tibetan border, but also its sterling successes in one of the worst Naxal-infested areas, the Narayanpur District of Chhattisgarh. Some eight  ITBP battalions are deployed there and has resulted in the Marxist guerilla fighters in that area being on the run, desperately avoiding fights. The reason for this, it is realized, was because of ITBP tactics. Firstly, Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF), the main force in anti-Naxal ops, sticks to the roads in the hinterland and uses lorries for movement. Owing to their road-boundnes, Naxalites routinely mine these country roads, blow up truck transports carrying CRPF units, register mounting casualties, and hurt the morale and emphasize the ineffectiveness of government forces. Further, the ease with which the Naxal cadres operate and their aggression in tangling with CRPF only burnishes their reputation with the local tribal people, firms up their support among the latter, and reinforces Naxal control of the ‘Red Corridor’ running from the Andhra region all the way north to the Nepal border.

ITBP personnel, on the other hand, used to walking  and preparing to fight in mountainous terrain — there being no roads or other infrastructure in the Himalayan uplands, have no problems in establishing their presence and wrenching back control from the Naxals in the areas its units are posted to. Deploying for 2-3 weeks at a time on long range patrols, ITBP jawans and officers live off the land, move rapidly and stealthily  in the jungles, and hunt down and eliminate Naxal fighters. Unused to such tactics by these foot-mobile government forces, the Naxals run because they can’t match the ITBP firepower either. Thus, the areas assigned to  ITBP soon become devoid of  Naxals. A DG, Chhattisgarh, reportedly mused rather loudly that if he had sufficient ITBP units, his state would be rid of these home-grown ideological insurgents  in double-quick time.

Further, AR’s inflexible strategy of staying back from the border is in sharp contrast to the ITBP’s of installing itself right on the border it monitors. This impressed the PMO as did  the other attributes (some of which are discussed above). These aspects taken together convinced Prime Minister Modi that ITBP was the force to rely on to seal the Myanmar border, prevent the rebels from easily replenishing their arms & ammo stocks owing to its support base across the border, choke off the insurgencies, and compel the rebel groups to come to the negotiating table.

This is all very good, and ITBP deserves all the kudos. But it has nested problems the government should address. As its name suggests ITBP is meant for the Indo-Tibetan border, its skills and competences honed for the specific Himalayan milieu. Dissipating its role and mission by pitting it against Naxals, the northeastern insurgents, etc. is to end up blunting its core expertise, and diminishing its utility. India needs more specialist forces on Line of Actual Control (LAC), in the main, because the Chinese PLA believes there are no big wars, only small wars that become big. In other words, the country and government need to strengthen ITBP, make it a genuinely powerful force on China border to ensure that should small-time hostilities be initiated by PLA, they remain small. ITBP’s usefulness should, in fact, be enhanced by (1) recruiting Tibetans from the exile community in India, and (2) the officers in particular given Mandarin language training in order to make them proficient in handling small scale Chinese contingencies, generating intelligence, and having the capacity to gauge Chinese intentions, all on their own. In other words, ITBP should be assisted to become an even more consequential China border force.

If, however, the ITBP ethos and tactics are prized, then why not depute on short term basis the specialist ITBP officers to run Assam Rifles, and to lead counter-insurgency state police and CRPF units in the fight against Naxals? Their task will be to train AR, CRPF, et al to become more like ITBP in their fighting skills and methodologies, and to get the jawans from these latter units off their butt, off trucks, and on foot for long term deployment without much logistics support, in the jungles of Central India to finish off the Naxals once and for all, and to shut down the flows of everything, including armed rebels, from Myanmar. This is the best solution.

On its part though,  ITBP morale is hurting because, for all its efficiency and effectiveness, it is controlled by Indian Police Service officers occupying top posts, rather than allowing the Force’s own encadred officer corps to fill these positions and run ITBP. This is cause for much heart-burning and discontent, and the Modi government will be well advised to pay heed. IPS officers, like their counterparts in the Indian Administrative Service to which most of the IPS recruits aspired, have become a generalist cadre with no specialist skills or domain expertise, and generally muck up things as IAS members do elsewhere in running very disparate agencies of government with only minimal understanding of what they should ideally be doing. If ITBP is a good force, it will become even better if their own officers are given the opportunity to run it. And because, ultimately, it is the quality of officers that distinguishes one paramil org from another, one thing you don’t want is a thoroughly disaffected ITBP officer corps.

Posted in China, civil-military relations, corruption, Culture, Decision-making, domestic politics, Geopolitics, Great Power imperatives, guerilla warfare, India's China Policy, India's strategic thinking and policy, Indian Army, Indian democracy, Indian para-military forces, Indian Politics, Internal Security, MEA/foreign policy, Military/military advice, Myanmar, SAARC, society, South Asia, South East Asia, Special Forces, Terrorism, Weapons | 30 Comments

Tejas & the single-engined fighter aircraft debate

Posted on March 5, 2017 by Bharat Karnad

Perhaps, of interest: A video debate on the merits of sticking with Tejas vis a vis producing the Swedish Gripen E or the American F-16 Blk 70, featuring RK Tyagi, former Chairman, HAL, AVM Kapil Kak (Retd), R Rajagopalan ORF, and yours truly. Also included are the commercial pitches made by Saab and Lockheed Martin reps at AeroIndia 2017. Judge for yourself what makes more sense. It is at:

 

Posted in arms exports, Asian geopolitics, civil-military relations, Decision-making, Defence Industry, Europe, Geopolitics, Great Power imperatives, India's Pakistan Policy, India's strategic thinking and policy, Indian Air Force, Indian Navy, MEA/foreign policy, Military Acquisitions, Military/military advice, Pakistan, South Asia, South East Asia, United States, US., West Asia, Western militaries | 13 Comments

Counter China on Tawang solution, and rid Maldives of Abdulla Yameen

Posted on March 3, 2017 by Bharat Karnad

It is not surprising that in the wake of the Foreign Secretary S Jaishankar’s most recent visit to China, Beijing has hinted at its solution of choice to resolve the border dispute. India, this solution goes, can have the rest of Arunachal Pradesh and freeze the border at the Line of Actual Control in Ladakh and in the Central Sector, but will have to cede the Tawang Division containing the Tawang Monastry, which is at the very core of China’s Tibet problem.  “The major reason the boundary question persists is that China’s reasonable requests have not been met,” says Dai Bingguo, the former Counselor in the Zhongnanhai and one of the latter day architects of China’s India policy. “If the Indian side takes care of China’s concerns on the eastern section of the border, the Chinese side will respond accordingly and address India’s concerns elsewhere.” http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/china-ready-to-cede-land-for-part-of-arunachal-pradesh/articleshow/57438182.cms.

So, what’s the problem with Dai’s solution? First of all it only exacerbates India’s strategic problems while robbing Delhi of the one serious leverage it does have — Tibet. With Tawang in Chinese custody, China will kill two birds with a single stone. It will position China permanently on this side of the Himalayan watershed and enable it to consolidate its military position on the plains. That strategic problem the Chinese PLA faces of credibly sustaining military actions on the Indian side of the LAC will be instantly gone. Beijing will then feel free to build up militarily on its own territory in the Tawang wedge with what horrific results for India’s security can only be imagined.

But let’s assume Dai’s solution is a mere negotiating gambit — the first move, what should India’s response be? Not jump on this wretched deal as the best Delhi can get, which I suspect is what Jaishankar will suggest to prime minister Narendra Modi. This counsel Modi should reject with extreme prejudice.  A reasonable counter should skirt around the Tawang issue by promising measures to ensure the Tibetans in India don’t pose any security problems to China in the future, and to tie this up with Beijing getting Pakistan to vacate its occupation of Balawaristan (Gilgit-Baltistan and all of the Northern Areas). To sweeten this transaction, Delhi could offer to sign on to the CPEC (China-Pakistan Economic Corridor) project.

Of course, this is “a bridge too far” for the Chinese to get to, let alone cross,  and is generally unrealizable even with Beijing’s friendship with Islamabad that in Chinese words is “deeper than the sea, and higher than the mountains”,  but that’s the whole idea. If China can forward a perfectly ridiculous, one-sided, solution of India ceding Tawang and tout it as reasonable, then why should Delhi quail at responding in kind with a nonsensical remedy with an equally straight face?

The larger strategic calculus is simple enough. Resolving the territorial squabble by other than legitimating the LAC as international border makes no sense, because now the Indian Army is fairly well entrenched at the eastern and the western ends, and however much the PLA may huff and it may puff, it cannot easily overcome the Indian military buildup in these regions. Should an Indian government at any time begin to think strategically for a change and shift the Indian armed forces’ operational focus north and east-wards, away from Pakistan, Delhi will have the monies to get 17 Corps going, raise two additional mountain offensive corps, and the wherewithal to conduct a remorseless kuttayuddha (covert war) in Tibet using Tibetan exiles in India, and to link up this effort with the activity of the radicalized Uyghur Muslim “splittists”  gathering strength with the defeated Baghdadi’s ISIS guerillas now reportedly streaming back home, and intent on realizing a “river of blood” in Xinjiang — yea, per the old saw of the enemy of my enemy is my friend — then we can create a really bad situation for China at its western extremities. To obtain that condition, why not persist with the status quo?

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Isn’t it time to rid the Maldives of the troublesome President Abdulla Yameen Gayoom? He is proving to be a major headache. When he visited Delhi in April 2016, he gave no indication of what he had up his sleeve. And, in any case, is Indian intelligence even in the neighbourhood so poor that the Modi govt had no inkling of Yameen’s long-lease of the Faafu Atoll to the Sauds? If there’s any strategic foresight anywhere in Delhi, it is time to show  it in Male. Modi should  immediately dispatch a naval flotilla with a MARCOS contingent to the Maldives and  instruct the Indian High Commissioner there, Rajeev Shahare, to visit with Yameen and tell him to nix any draft-agreement leasing any Maldivan atoll to anybody except India, and definitely not to Saudi Arabia, the locus genesis of the Salafi-Wahabbi incubus infesting the Islamic regions, the rest of the world, and India’s Kerala. This may crimp Modi’s not fully baked strategy of cultivating Riyadh and the Gulf emirates, but Maldives in India’s backyard cannot be allowed under any circumstances to pass under Saudi and hence wahabbi-terrorist control.

Shahare should remind Yameen that just as the Indian Army’s airborne ops (Op Cactus) in 1988 summarily dealt with the mercenary coup d etat-ists headed by Abdulla Lutufi, and saved his relative the then beleaguered President Abdul Gayoom’s goose, a dose of pointed MARCOS attention may do him no good. Liberalizing the Maldives, forcibly if need be, is not a bad idea for Delhi to undertake. A government of the Maldives Democratic Party requires to be installed in Male with India’s trusted friend Mohammad Nasheed as President.

It is because India has not taken care to preserve and protect its national interest by periodic displays of  good old “gunboat diplomacy” that it has suffered so many reverses in its maritime approaches.  Time for Modi to correct this situation, for Abdulla Yameen to depart the Male shore, and to round up the salafists, including the locals, who have taken up the radical Islamist Cause. May be the Faafu Atoll can be turned into a Guantanamo -style hard prison for Islamic extremists.

Posted in Asian geopolitics, Central Asia, China, China military, Cyber & Space, Decision-making, Geopolitics, Great Power imperatives, guerilla warfare, India's China Policy, India's Pakistan Policy, India's strategic thinking and policy, Indian Air Force, Indian Army, Indian Navy, Indian Ocean, Maldives, MEA/foreign policy, Military/military advice, Pakistan, Pakistan military, SAARC, society, South Asia, Special Forces, Terrorism, Tibet | 17 Comments

Trump drives a stake through the Indian tech-settlers’ mindset and Modi’s

Posted on March 1, 2017 by Bharat Karnad

Just returned from an extended session this morning on News X TV channel covering Donald Trump’s 1st State of the Union address to the US Congress. Firstly, not sure why the Indian media is stuck on covering purely internal American events with often embarrassing interest, unless, of course, they mean to cater  to the aspirational middle class in small and big Indian towns and cities who hope, somehow, to secure a ticket to the land of their dreams. That ticket, in recent times has been provided by the H1B or L-1 visa, which immigration channel; has buttressed the traditional longstanding route into the US — the I-20 student visa.

What few Indian commentators understand  and have, therefore, not noted is that the chief attraction for these would-be Indian “economic refugees” to America of once settling down there is the “family reunification” provision open to any legal migrant. This has been used by several generations of Indians to cart not just their spouses but the extended family into the US, namely,   parents, parents-in-law, siblings of either or both sides. On average, a single Indian immigrant can thus take an additional 10-12 persons with him. That door is now getting shut.

Trump has declared in his address that his immigration policy will allow persons with merit to legally come into America but not immigrants who can’t fend for themselves economically or are otherwise unable to contribute in a substantive way to the US. AS he said, he will especially bar the group of people seeking to migrate to the US who will end up being  a burden on the social and public services of that country.

Foreign Secretary Jaishankar and Prime Minister Narendra Modi will try and modify that stance by emphasizing, as newspaper reports suggest, the wealth the HiB/L1 visa holders create and their contribution to the US economy and hence the advisability of retaining, if not enlarging, these entry channels. This will not cut mustard with the Trump Administration.

But let’s assume for argument’s sake that Washington stays its hand on closing down the H1B/L1 route, how motivated will potential Indian immigrants to America be once they discover they can’t import a whole bunch of their family members into the US? I suspect there will be a definite falloff of interest.

That said, this is a great opportunity for the Modi government to reverse its fairly foolish  policy of encouraging an ever bigger Indian brain drain to the US and the West in the hope of using the thus expanding Indian population in the US, in particular, as political and diplomatic leverage, and as external support base able to support the Bharat Janata Party monetarily. But Trump’s rejection of free trade and the notion of competitive advantage of countries as driver of international commerce means he will be more than happy to see still larger quantities of the sorts of things the Modi government seems keen on acquiring — old weapons (M-777 ULH) and platforms (F-16), but not let up or give even an inch to other countries. As he pointedly reminded his audience worldwide — “I have been elected to be President of America”, not president of the world.

And India can expect no real help or assistance to counter China or contain terrorism emanating from Pakistan or elsewhere beyond Trump’s interpretation of US interests, and he will expect India to pay for every little bit of security it gains therefrom! The US president had made plain that Asian partners, allies, friends will all have to ante up monies, there being no such thing as free security, any more than there’s “free lunch”.

If Modi and his PMO, and  Jaishankar and Co. at MEA haven’t grasped this essential, fundamentally changed, reality, then there’s lots more New Delhi is going to keep getting wrong to the nation’s detriment. To repeat what I have said in previous posts, PM Modi, adapting himself to the new conditions, should prepare for hard, and possibly futile, negotiation in which because Trump will not concede even a sliver of advantage. The question is will, can, Modi rein in his fascination with America, and his apparently natural inclination to please Westerners, long enough to prevent Trump having his way with India?

Trump’s “Make in America, Buy American” call is clear indication of his intent. The trouble is Modi’s “Make in India”, whatever its intent, for all practical purposes, translates into “Buy American” and assemble the product in India! GOI better get into its head that hereafter the only way the national interest will be served is to match the Trump Administration and be severely transactional which, realistically, may be beyond Modi to manage.

Posted in arms exports, Asian geopolitics, China military, Culture, Decision-making, Defence Industry, domestic politics, Europe, Geopolitics, Great Power imperatives, India's China Policy, India's Pakistan Policy, India's strategic thinking and policy, Indian Air Force, Indian Army, Indian ecobomic situation, Indian Politics, MEA/foreign policy, Military Acquisitions, Military/military advice, NRIs, society, South Asia, Strategic Relations with the US & West, United States, US., Weapons | 22 Comments

State Elections – Tidbits

Posted on February 28, 2017 by Bharat Karnad

Just some state elections tidbits I picked after interacting with some MPs. Conversing with knowledgeable politicians is always a treat and the ongoing elections in various states was one of the issues I informally plumbed in discussions on the topic of the underway  popularity contests. Two in particular may be of interest.

The Badals and the SAD/BJP combine are unlikely to be returned to power in Punjab, I was told, because of the scale of corruption the ruling Family indulged in in their ten years in the saddle. Consider one metric and a comparison with Tamil Nadu at the other end of the country. Punjab and Tamil Nadu have about equal number of liqour vends, around 1,600 in each state. However, the liqour consumption in Punjab is several multiples of the level of the hard stuff imbibed by the people of Tamil Nadu. But, and here’s the clincher,  the Punjab exchequer last year reported only some Rs. 6,000 crores as revenue from liqour sales while the Tamil Nadu government in its budget showed liqour sales revenue in excess of Rs 28,000 crores!

Uttar Pradesh:  BJP, I was informed,  was  in even play in the first three rounds of the ongoing elections in that state meaning, perhaps, a sub-par performance. But its game apparently picked up in subsequent rounds, and it expects much from eastern UP  in the next few days. An awful lot of money has been spent by BJP to ensure there are adequate returns on Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s extensive touring of the state combined with some very intensive canvassing.  Nothing less could have been expected with Modi’s reputation on the line, and his chief lieutenant, Amit Shah, pulling out all the stops.

The country awaits, no doubt with bated breath, the results on March 11. Of equal interest , to me at least, are the above two professional polictical assessments. If Badals somehow  pull it off and Modi’s remorseless, often heated, campaigning pays dividend then the PM will get the majority he needs in the Rajya Sabha to ram through his pet programmes in the nick of time and will, almost certainly, be assured another 5 years at 7, Race Course Road, come 2019.

 

 

Posted in civil-military relations, corruption, Culture, Defence Industry, domestic politics, Indian democracy, Indian Politics, Internal Security, society, South Asia | 12 Comments

Missing pitchmen in Moscow, and price India will pay

Posted on February 26, 2017 by Bharat Karnad

The foreign and military establishments in major countries are vast bureaucracies where policies get made by the outcome of clashing interpretations of the national interest, of course, but also by the influentials with access to the powers that be who shape and tilt policies one way or the other. Until some time back India had a very strong lobby in Moscow. As a small number of the well informed in New Delhi who are Russian-speaking and try to keep up with developments in Moscow attest, the one time large crew of well-placed officials — old India hands — who understood and empathized with India, and backed its initiatives, is fast disappearing as much because of natural attrition as the Indian government’s approach that is increasingly tilting US-wards and alienating well-wishers in the Kremlin. Soon New Delhi will find there is no one to pitch India’s case there.

Perhaps, this doesn’t matter much to the bulk of the MEA and GOI establishment who feel little need to have a close relationship with Russia to counterbalance the United States and cultivate leverage in both Washington and Moscow as a means of enlarging India’s policy choices and options, and the freedom to maneuver for best results. This was, until not too long ago, one of the drivers of Indian foreign and defence policies, and made for certain stability and equipoise.

With the death of the Hindustani-speaking Russian Ambassador Alexander Kadakin, ironically, on 26th January, India has lost the most powerful voice on its behalf, a man who was carefully listened to in Moscow and who, for years, sculpted the Russian government’s attitude toward this country. This is a big void that will be hard to fill.

As important, two other influentials who pleaded India’s case are turning away. Consider the other regional specialist Zumair Kabulov, an Uzbek, who until 2009 was the Russian Ambassador in Afghanistan and since has been President Vladimir Putin’s Special Envoy for Afghanistan. While earlier he was understood to have wanted an Indian role in that country, now doesn’t even mention India when Afghanistan comes up. (Refer his December 2016 interview at http://aa.com.tr/en/asia-pacific/exclusive-interview-with-russian-diplomat-zamir-kabulov/717573) Why is this important? Because this means Moscow has written off India as an independent actor even within the region with the standing and  ability to play a larger role in Asia, seeing it, rather, as essentially an American hanger-on. This was reflected in the original Russia-China-Pakistan conclave called to discuss Afghanistan that did not envisage Indian participation. New Delhi was finally accommodated but found itself isolated on this forum.

But when troubles come, as Shakespeare ventured, they come in battalions, another high Russian official, retired Major General Vladimir Dvorkin, possibly the most experienced of the strategic forces adviser to Putin, too has become less sympathetic to India’s fairly precarious position where its nuclear forces are concerned. Dvorkin, who in times past, argued for Russian support for a credible Indian thermonuclear arsenal and, by inference, for resumed testing if an Indian government got up the guts to initiate this time open-ended series of underground fusion weapons test explosions, too has cooled. With Kadakin gone, Kabulov and Dvorkin caring less, Kremlin will be left to make its decisions without the benefit of advice from the once India-friendlies.  This will mean that that little bit of extra consideration and warmth Moscow traditionally showed New Delhi will be missing.

In fact, there is evidence already of the hardening of the Russian position. The Indian government, one is given to understand, has already been told that Moscow will feel free to craft its Pakistan policy as it sees fit, including the sale to Pakistan Air Force of the MiG-35. The transfer of a few Mi-35 attack helicopters was to only whet the appetite. Russia’s pulling away will begin affecting strategically sensitive programs as well, starting with the Aridhaman — the second Arihant-class SSBN in the final stages of production in Vizag. Especially because Russia’s technologically far-reaching offers in the military technology sphere have met with tepid response. (More on this in a future post.)

Given the Indian government’s fairly pronounced West-ward slant, Russia has few takers in New Delhi, even fewer in the MEA which, top to bottom, functions like all but an arm of the US government. Indeed, President Donald Trump and America will lose nothing from closing down the US Embassy in New Delhi, and saving lots of money. Between Carnegie’s and Brookings’ active presence in Delhi, their ranks filled with former NSA and the like, and pliant media, commentariat, and MEA-MOD officialdom, it is virtually Washington on the Jamuna anyway.

What this means for India’s prospects is becoming clearer. With Delhi formally sliding over to America’s side in global power politics, it was only a matter of time before the effects became evident. One of Washington’s India policy weather vanes, Ashley Tellis, of Carnegie Washington, for example, has downgraded India from  an “indispensable” power to the US in Asia, to now, a merely “leading power” in the region. India will soon become, and be treated as, a client state — a lowly and contemptible status, sourcing for the US an endless stream of low-cost IT and other tech coolies. A client state is what Pakistan was. Except with some characteristically deft diplomacy, Islamabad has become fairly central to Chinese and Russian calculations in extended Central and southern Asia, even as it has held on to its prime slot as a”front line” state in US’s reckoning. Meanwhile, Indian emissaries, beginning with Foreign Secretary K Jaishankar in  the next week, followed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, during his Washington visit scheduled for May, will beg for more H1B visas to “drain” India’s “brain” bank. Great going.

Posted in Afghanistan, Central Asia, China, civil-military relations, Culture, Decision-making, Defence Industry, domestic politics, Geopolitics, Great Power imperatives, India's China Policy, India's Pakistan Policy, India's strategic thinking and policy, Indian democracy, Indian ecobomic situation, MEA/foreign policy, Military Acquisitions, Military/military advice, Nuclear Policy & Strategy, Nuclear Weapons, Pakistan, Pakistan military, Relations with Russia, Russia, russian assistance, South Asia, Strategic Forces Command, Strategic Relations with the US & West, United States, US., Weapons | 19 Comments

Mystery behind repeated C-130 mishaps cleared

Posted on February 23, 2017 by Bharat Karnad

February 21st saw a C-130J Super Hercules while taxi-ing for a night sortie at the Thoisie ALG in Ladakh instead of taking-off, run smack into a solid structure, nearly shearing off part of a wing and an outer turboprop engine requiring major expenditure to make the plane fit again. That this plane had the CO of the Hindon-based 77 Squadron, a presumably experienced transport pilot, one Grp Cpt Jasveen Singh Chathrath, at the controls only makes it worse. Three years back on March 28, 2014, another of this type of airlifter on a low level Special Forces’ drop training sortie proved that in IAF hands, it is neither super nor Hercules, leave alone ‘super Hercules’, when it dove into the ground killing the entire crew. [Originally in this post written last night, I said that a C-17 had gone down. Not so, My wrong!]

After the 2014 C-130 accident,  the statement by the air chief at the time Air Chief Marshal Arup Raha said the service had picked the best pilots to take charge of these American planes. If this is the level of aircraft handling ability of the best IAF transport pilots, then speculating about the averagely competent pilot’s ability (or lack of it) beggars the imagination.

But let’s tally the cost of the mishaps. The first lot of six C-130s were bought from Lockheed for Rs 6,000 crores, or a cool Rs 1,000 crore per plane. With one of these aircraft already lost, IAF has already had to write off Rs 1,000 crores. Not to be deterred, IAF means to buy a second lot of eight Super Hercules and, after a decent interval to give the Exchequer time to recover, a third lot of 6 aircraft for a fleet strength, minus the lost C-130, of 19 aircraft in all.

Ten C-17s were purchased for Rs 18,645 crores from Boeing, the unit price of some Rs. 1,865 crores. Fortunately, Boeing has closed down the C-17 production line. So IAF-cum-Govt of India’s apparent default option of buying C-17s and C-130Js more to keep Washington pleased  and the two US aviation  majors in a happy state of anticipating richer deals in the offing, than because acquiring more and more of such aircraft makes any military, economic, or even political sense — is a line I have taken in previous writings. Especially, as the IAF chiefs have time and again disavowed any expeditionary role for the Indian military, which is what these planes do best. In the event, if all that was required of these aircraft was to lift troops from one sector to another, the IAF could, surely, have made do with the more economical workhorses to-date, the An-12s and An-32s.

The CAG in its 2014 Report was harsh on the parties involved, slamming Boeing for not fulfilling its offsets commitments — no simulators and ground equipment, such as fork lifts, were set up on Indian air bases, the IAF for not preparing the Hindon tarmac and the potential landing grounds elsewhere to the level of the required Pavement Classification Number, and implicitly both the GOI and IAF for not making any fuss whatsoever about the US Company not delivering on its contract obligations. The CAG also pointed out that owing to the absence of special forklifts on all the potential bases and LGs, the Super Hercules was compelled to carry one in its belly wherever it landed or took off from, but it took so much internal aircraft space — fully 35% of the cargo hold, that instead of just one sortie to carry a full load, two sorties were needed to do the job. And that cost money. The CAG calculated that it costs India Rs 43.19 lakh for every hour a C-130 is in the air.  Post-CAG Report, whatever else was done or not done, Lockheed hurriedly setup a C-130 simulator near Delhi. It is not known if just one simulator is all that has been paid for, and whether the C-17 buy too mandated a Globemaster simulator in India which, perhaps, is not considering there are only 10 C-17s, a number that does not justify a simulator.

Like in the adventure — “Silver Blaze”, where Sherlock Holmes solved the mystery of the missing horse by referring to the fact of the non-barking dog in the stable (who recognized the miscreant as his master and didn’t raise hell), the mystery about why the Indian government did not cry foul and penalize Lockheed, is also easily solved. New Delhi (previously run by Manmohan Singh and now by Narendra Modi) as mentioned  wants to be on the right side  of the US because America is viewed as the vehicle for India to ride to economic prosperity and technological Valhalla! Remember too that the Lockheed F-16 and Boeing F-18 are on the short list of the proposed buy of 200 single-engined combat aircraft.

But the matter of the unfulfilled offsets is of the gravest concern particularly because foreign suppliers, while ready to pocket the money,  are aware that GOI will do nothing if they fail to follow-through on their obligations. In previous posts the fact of all kinds of extraneous expenditures being counted as offsets has been mentioned, such as seminars and conferences hosted by the supplier Companies, etc. And it is very likely that Boeing and Lockheed charged the offsets account for the use of their simulators in the US to train IAF’s C-17 and C-130 pilots, even though the main purpose of the offsets is to help build up an industrial-technological base in India. Then again, why should foreign companies deliver when there’s not a squeal out of the govt if they don’t?

The IAF, on its part, would have been pleased to carry on doing what it had done prior to the installation of the simulator here post-CAG Report : Send pilot crews in relays to train on Boeing simulators in Seattle an Lockheed simulators some place else in the US at additional expense (if nothing else in terms of extra pilot hard currency allowances and stipends for stays abroad). Why is lacing the selected transport pilots’ careers with nice little holidays in the American Northwest to uplift their spirits, not a good thing, is IAF’s thinking, given that the poor chaps cannot strut around back home like the fighter-jocks, who also hog all the plum posts in the service.

Posted in Afghanistan, arms exports, Asian geopolitics, Culture, Decision-making, Defence Industry, Geopolitics, Great Power imperatives, India's strategic thinking and policy, Indian Air Force, Indian Army, Indian ecobomic situation, MEA/foreign policy, Military Acquisitions, Military/military advice, Russia, russian assistance, South Asia, Special Forces, Strategic Relations with the US & West, United States, US., Weapons, Western militaries | 36 Comments