LCA maneuvers in Bahrain and Tejas’ immediate prospects

Posted on January 21, 2016 by Bharat Karnad

The stalwart fliers who will be piloting the two Tejas LCAs at the Bahrain Air Show (BAS) every afternoon post-lunch in the time slot 1300 hrs- 1600 hrs for the duration of the BAS are, from the Navy — Cmde. Jaideep Maolankar, presently head of the National Flight Testing Centre, Bangalore, and the service’s chief test pilot, Captain Shivnath Dahiya, and from the air force, Group Captain Madhav Rangachari.

Today is the first BIG day for the LCA and Maolankar and Rangachari will be at the controls. According to an unimpeachable source they “will perform (at the very least) a square loop, two rolls, a steep pitch up, a low speed pass combined with half roll and a loop.” This should quieten the doubters in IAF, MOD, and GOI and indeed prompt everyone in the procurement decision loop to trust in Indian talent and R&D programmes. Defmin Parrikar should capitalize on the Tejas impact at BAS, and instruct the ADA, DRDO, et al to transfer in full and without ado the technologies they have developed, ideally, to an Indian private sector defence industrial consortium to produce in large numbers and with hugely improved production quality (something HAL never achieved over the decades which, perhaps, was the reason for IAF’s reluctance to accept indigenous stuff), more realistically to a slate of Indian private sector firms with HAL, may be, retaining the prime integrator role. The ramped up Tejas production will meet both the country’s needs and a rapidly cultivated export market. The priority foreign customers should be Sri Lanka and Malayasia who, with slight Indian persuasion, opted out of their initial decision to tap Pakistan for the Sino-Paki JF-17 Thunder, followed by other neighbouring states, including Bangladesh, Myanmar and members of ASEAN. Vietnam, in particular, will be especially motivated to exploit the fighting qualities of the Tejas to the max.

Posted in arms exports, Asian geopolitics, Bangladesh, China, China military, civil-military relations, Defence Industry, DRDO, Geopolitics, Great Power imperatives, India's strategic thinking and policy, Indian Air Force, Indian ecobomic situation, Indian Navy, Iran and West Asia, Military Acquisitions, Myanmar, Pakistan, Pakistan military, SAARC, society, South Asia, South East Asia, Sri Lanka, Strategic Relations with South East Asia & Far East, Technology transfer, Weapons, West Asia | 2 Comments

1st video of the Tejas at Bahrain

Posted on January 20, 2016 by Bharat Karnad

For the first video of the Tejas performing aerobatics at the Bahrain Air Show, see https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=oQ_ZnWbQk74, or slightly better at https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=oQ_ZnWbQk74 .

One can (1) see right away why the PAF chose to withdraw the Sino-Paki JF-17 Thunder from the show, (2) understand why potential customers would be very interested in a relatively light multi-role plane that will not cost buyer-states their GDP, and (3) wonder at IAF’s and MOD civilian bureaucrats’ distaste for this indigenous combat aircraft and if it is not the usual inducements — the pleasures of Paris/etc, secret offshore accounts, offers of “scholarships” for suddenly “brilliant” progeny in prestigious universities and/or placements in well paying jobs in MNCs/FSIs in the West packaged with residential permits, that are at work.

If Defmin Parrikar still does not appreciate the strategic value of the Tejas (and its variants) as the mainstay combat aircraft of the IAF for as long as warfare by manned weapons platforms lasts, which is not too long into the future, as the seedbed for a genuinely Indian aerospace industry, and as an enormously prized product whose export potential is vast, then he might as well retire to Goa where he will at least do no harm to the national security interests.

Posted in arms exports, Asian geopolitics, China, China military, civil-military relations, Culture, Defence Industry, DRDO, Europe, Geopolitics, Great Power imperatives, India's strategic thinking and policy, Indian Air Force, Indian ecobomic situation, Iran and West Asia, Military Acquisitions, Pakistan, Pakistan military, society, South Asia, Strategic Relations with the US & West, United States, US., Weapons, West Asia | 2 Comments

Tejas — Pak Thunder(bird) fearing comparison/competition in Bahrain, pulls out

Posted on January 18, 2016 by Bharat Karnad

The word is the Pakistan Air Force has decided to pull its MiG-21 Chinese derivative — JF-17 Thunder(bird), built at the Kamra Air Complex from the forthcoming Air Show in Bahrain. (For the list of aircraft on static and dynamic –flying–display, see http://www.bahraininternationalairshow.com/trade/Content/Aircraft/5_7/.) It suggests that PAF both fears comparison with the Indian Tejas, flying under DRDO (not Indian Air Force) aegis, at the air show — they were allotted the same exhibition pad (Number 15) to park the planes in — and competition in terms of flight performance at the show. There were some doubts about the Sino-Pak JF-17 taking to the skies, now it will not even be seen in Bahrain. Discretion being better part of exhibiting a fairly antique combat aircraft, it would have been damned difficult for PAF to sing their plane’s praises and maintain a straight face while seeing the 4th-Gen Tejas pull tight 8-g turns above them, and otherwise impress with its manoevereability and stealth attributes that the Thunderbird can’t match. It would have highlighted the generational difference between these two aircraft. The PAF is apparently prepared to forfeit the unrefundable half a million dollars to reserve exhibition space than risk exposing their bird to expert criticism, and negative contrasting with the Tejas.

Incidentally, of the three test pilots that will be putting the 5th and the 7th of the Tejas prototype series deployed to Bahrain, two are from the Navy, emphasizing the Navy’s belief in and support for the indigenous navalised version of the Tejas aircraft under development. The Navy needs to be commended; IAF needs to hang its head in shame.

Posted in arms exports, Asian geopolitics, China, China military, Defence Industry, DRDO, Geopolitics, Great Power imperatives, India's strategic thinking and policy, Indian Air Force, Indian Navy, indian policy -- Israel, Iran and West Asia, Iran and West Asia, Military Acquisitions, Pakistan, Pakistan military, Russia, SAARC, society, South East Asia, Weapons, West Asia | 21 Comments

Terrorists’ Edge: India’s Systemic Disorder Exposed in Pathankot

Posted on January 15, 2016 by Bharat Karnad

Suppose there was perfect “intelligence”, advance notice of the time, place, and date of a terrorist attack. Suppose further that all local state and central organisations, police at different levels, and paramilitary and the armed services, were all in sync, had familiarised themselves with situations that may arise, and practiced the precise actions needed to thwart the terrorists. What would happen in this situation in real life? As evidence shows, there would be inter-agency chaos and jurisdictional confusion leading, inevitably, to delays and a muddled response.

In Pathankot, there was 24 hours’ notice about the Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM)-inspired terrorist event, and yet the jihadis managed, with ease, to breach the defence system. A few of them traversed the distance to the Pathankot air force base (AFB) in the local Superintendent of Police’s car, penetrated the AFB perimeter and holed up unmolested for a whole day to rest and recuperate in an unused shed not far from where the Indian Air Force planes were parked.

They embarked on their suicidal shoot-up mission that met with little initial resistance because the nearby Army Division didn’t act, assuming that a National Security Guard (NSG) unit was flying in from Delhi. Once deployed, the NSG lost a senior officer because he failed to take the elementary precaution of treating a dead jihadi as a potential booby-trap.

Lapses in Security

This episode also reveals the rot of corruption at all levels, especially the BSF, state police, and the AFB guard, and how easy it is for an intruder simply to buy his way into sensitive areas (according to news reports, fifty rupees procured access to the Pathankot base). It also brings to light the severely lax attitude to security (with no surveillance cameras on the perimeter and no cordon sanitaire, with habitation allowed just beyond the boundary markers.

A more egregious example of system breakdown was witnessed in December 1999 with the hijacking of the Indian Airlines flight IC 814 by militants who obtained the release of Mahmood Azhar, the JeM chief, in return for the safe return of passengers. The awful thing was that just a year earlier exactly this situation was gamed, and a multi-agency ‘Exercise Sour Grapes’ carried out to practice moves to frustrate hijackers, such as parking a truck/tanker in front of the plane, disabling the plane by blowing out its tyres, and mounting commando action.

But, when IC 814 touched down at the Amritsar airport to refuel, all hell, predictably, broke loose. Every responsible head of agency in government from Chandigarh to Delhi lost his head, none of the practiced actions were implemented, the Punjab Police commando unit and Indian Army formation in the vicinity were asked to stand down, and the refueled aircraft took off, eventuating in the humiliating negotiation involving External Affairs Minister Jaswant Singh and Taliban ruffians in Kandahar.

Lessons Not Learnt

Sandwiched between these incidents during the BJP governments was the still more devastating Mumbai 26/11 strike in 2008 during the Congress Party’s watch by a handful of seaborne terrorists. I had written then that, luckily, their Pakistani minders didn’t have another ‘Pearl Harbour’ in mind because the terrorists could as easily have blown up a large part of the navy’s Western Fleet, then lying at anchor 500 meters away and 40 degrees off the jihadis’ approach line to the Gateway of India on an outboard motor-rigged inflatable dinghy.

So, the problem is not the party in power, or the incompetence of politicians at the helm, but the absence of operating procedures standardised across a spectrum of terrorist actions that every relevant police and intelligence agency at the local, state, and central government levels, as well as the paramilitary, NSG, and the armed services should adhere to strictly in counter-terror contexts anywhere in the country. The need is, therefore, urgent for a slate of counter-terror SOPs to ensure predictable, decisive, prompt, integrated and effective responses.

Why We Urgently Need the NCTC

Minus this, as in all terrorist-induced crises to-date, every agency will act separately according to its own bureaucratic lights and succeed only in getting in the way of every other agency doing the same. It advantages the jihadis and encourages their state-sponsors to rely on terrorism as asymmetric means of warfare to unsettle the Indian state and society at will.

Worse, there’s no nodal organisation, such as the National Counter-Terrorism Centre (NCTC), to coordinate intelligence inputs, tailor the SOP-related actions to specific situations and to control all anti-terror operations. Mooted by the Manmohan Singh government after 26/11, NCTC is lying fallow. With neither SOPs nor an apex agency in sight, all such crises invariably end up being handled by the National Security Adviser of the day. Brajesh Mishra tackled the IC 814 hijack, MK Narayanan 26/11, and Ajit Doval Pathankot and each, in his own way, made a hash of it.

Snapshot

NCTC Can’t Wait Any More
•Pathankot terror attack raises the issue of severely lax attitude to security besides highlighting how easy it is for an intruder to buy his way in.

•Luckily terrorists behind Mumbai 26/11 strike didn’t have another ‘Pearl Harbour’ in mind with the navy’s Western Fleet being a few metres away.

•The need is, therefore, urgent for a slate of counter-terror SOPs to ensure predictable, decisive, prompt, integrated and effective responses.

•A large part of the problem can be addressed by institutionalising the NCTC to coordinate intelligence inputs and control all anti-terror operations.

——-
Published in ‘The Quint’, January 15, 2016; at http://www.thequint.com/opinion/2016/01/14/terrorists-edge-indias-systemic-disorder-exposed-in-pathankot

Posted in Afghanistan, Asian geopolitics, Culture, domestic politics, Geopolitics, India's Pakistan Policy, India's strategic thinking and policy, Indian Air Force, Indian Army, Indian Navy, Indian para-military forces, Internal Security, Pakistan, Pakistan military, society, South Asia, Special Forces, Terrorism | 5 Comments

Watch out for the Tejas, Sakhir!

Posted on January 13, 2016 by Bharat Karnad

Two Tejas LCAs should at this moment of writing be flying over the northern Arabian Sea for a refueling stop in Muscat before taking off for the Sakhir AFB, Bahrain. At the Air Show starting January 21, the Tejas will be parked on Pad 15 between pairs of the Pak-China product, JF-17 Thunderbird, and the RAF Typhoon Eurofighter. This is actually a wonderful placement for the obvious reason that visitors will be able to compare and contrast the antique nature of the ungainly, nearly 60-year old Sino-Pakistani knock-off of the ex-Russian MiG-21 on the one hand, and the 4.5 generation (when equipped with the 2052-based AESA radar), largely composites-made and hence immeasurably stealthier and beautiful-looking Indian Tejas, sporting smooth lines and modern design with, moreover, a larger operating radius on internal fuel and bigger weapons-carrying capacity available at around the same price as the JF-17, and the Eurofighter (designed by a consortium of the most advanced aerospace European countries, including Germany, UK, and Spain) with longer range but also a price tag some four times that of the LCA. Indeed, there isn’t a fitter aircraft for India to arm itself with at lower unit cost, and amortize its investment in the Tejas programme by creating a market for it in developing countries (by initially selling a few aircraft at cost price) and then growing the market with attractive deals and “friendship” payment modes.

No bad thing at all for the internationally-known aviation experts and cognoscenti generally to inspect what is potentially a great air defence aircraft India has produced inside of 35 years from a designing and industrial base that was reduced to zero with — and I repeat this — the KILLING in the early 1970s of the Marut HF-24 Mk-II by the Indian Air Force in the main. That the Tejas that will be put through their paces over the Shakhir skies will be flying DRDO colours, and will not be operating under the IAF’s aegis, shows the level of antipathy to home-grown aircraft of the Service’s leadership that has refused to-date to take ownership of it. (A comparison of the timelines: the US F-35, some 20 years in the making, is turning out to be an absolute lemon but is nevertheless being inducted into the US Air Force!) IAF’s treatment of the Tejas is a national shame, revealing to the world the Service’s outrageously regressive fixation on imported fighter aircraft and its resistance to anything indigenous. Once the praise and good notices start rolling in, however, IAF will rue the fact it didn’t back the LCA to the full.

End-note:

The Bahraini air show managers have apparently made the Tejas and JF-17 share the same exhibition space to spark interest in the regional and international media. But, along with the DRDO testing crew and maintenance personnel GOI has, by way of abundant caution, hopefully had the foresight to also dispatch a well-armed security team to mount 24/7 guard around the Tejas — the enormously capable Indian Navy’s Marine Commandos (MARCOS) would be best for this task — to augment whatever security is afforded the participating aircraft by Bahrain. Too many ill-wishers inside and outside the country, alas, have an interest in showing down the Tejas to not try and sabotage the Indian LCA in small and big ways and otherwise to spoil its international coming-out party.

Posted in arms exports, Asian geopolitics, China, China military, civil-military relations, Defence Industry, DRDO, Europe, Geopolitics, Great Power imperatives, India's strategic thinking and policy, Indian Air Force, Internal Security, Iran and West Asia, Military Acquisitions, Pakistan, Pakistan military, Russia, society, South Asia, Special Forces, Weapons, West Asia | 27 Comments

Hanut Singh dishonoured

Posted on January 12, 2016 by Bharat Karnad

Just a few months after his death the memory of the late great Lt Gen Hanut Singh (CO, Poona Horsein 1971 ops; GOC II Corps 1987 Exercise Brasstacks) stands dishonoured. The Armoured Corps Centre and School, Ahmednagar, to honour its most reputable commandant and the army’s most renowned armoured commander in its history since independence, decided to memorialize the General — the epitome of competence in command, and of steadfast integrity and unimpeachable character, with an annual lecture. But this the finest of gentleman-officers the army has known finds that no one in the army or government wants to so remember him. Two high-placed persons who were approached to deliver the inaugural ‘Lt Gen Hanut Singh Lecture’ declined to do so. Finally, the former Vice Chief of the Army Staff Lt Gen Philip Campose, a mechanized infantry officer (1/8 Gurkha) has been roped in to give the talk scheduled for Monday, January 18.

In other words, not one stalwart from the BJP Govt or from the retired cavalry officer cadre could be found to do Hanut’s memory the honour it richly deserves. This is the fate suffered by the most exemplary of mobile warfare exponents in the Indian Army — he wrote the manual for armoured operations — and unarguably the most effective battlefield commander the country has seen. There lies Hanut then, with no one from even his own combat arm willing to publicly sing his praises for the service he rendered the army and country.

Feel really sorry and ashamed.

Posted in civil-military relations, Culture, domestic politics, Indian Politics, Pakistan, Pakistan military, society, South Asia | 3 Comments

Chasing the “bandicoot”: All tactics, no strategy, & a no change-regime (after Pathankot)

Posted on January 10, 2016 by Bharat Karnad

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s inspection tour of the Pathankot air base yesterday — the scene of the usual, snafu-ridden, effort to subdue the infiltrating JeM terrorist team, and his endorsement of his NSA Ajit Doval’s handling of the crisis situation (“Noted with satisfaction the decision-making and its execution, the considerations that went into our tactical response. Also noted coordination among various field units”) suggests that, as that song in ‘3 Idiots’ went — “Aaall is welll!!”, nothing needs to be changed.

Implicit then is the belief that because everything worked tickety-boo there is no requirement for reviving the anti-terrorism centre (National Counter-Terrorism Centre) as the central decision-making and coordinating agency, and for instituting SOPs (standard operating procedures) that would apply across situations so every agency with interest/jurisdiction hews to the same response plotline rather than each organization going off on its own or, as happened in Pathankot, standing down, doing very little, awaiting instructions, and being aware enough of Doval to not take initiative for fear of upsetting whatever plan he may have up his sleeve.

In the event, the Pathankot response was a meandering one, wasted valuable time, involved misuse of available resources — airlifting NSG troops rather than using the army units in the immediate vicinity as the cutting edge of the effort (with the Lt. Col. heading the NSG effort ignoring the obvious possibility of the JeM militants boob-trapping their bodies to increase adversary attrition post-their elimination and losing his life in the bargain).

Perhaps, it was silly to expect things would be different after this newest terrorist event. Or that Doval would suppress his RAW/IB “field agent’s” impulses and not insert himself centrally into the proceedings, forsake direct control of the unfolding event by not dispatching NSG rather than working with the proximal army unit through the army line of command, and hence being forced to share the credit, rather than monopolize it. Of course, the downside of this approach is what actually happened — the profusion of command and control mistakes, and the confused ops to flush out and corner the JeM jihadis that prevailed, which is being laid at Doval’s door.

True, Modi had no option than to back Doval and the manner in which the latter tackled the unraveling events. After all as PM, he cannot be expected to be conversant with national security matters in any great detail. Which is all the more reason for PMs to pick persons as NSAs who are conversant with the larger issues in the strategic context. The danger of appointing policemen or militarymen to the apex position is reflected, say, in General Pervez Musharraf’s Kargil adventure — commendable tactics, bad strategy. The negatives were apparent — and so analysed in my new book ‘Why India is Not a Great Power (Yet)’ during another policman MK “Mike” Narayanan’s tenure as NSA to Manmohan Singh. Mike was mostly preoccupied with placing which policeman in what billet in RAW, IB, here and abroad, etc. When he did venture into the external realm, he ended up pushing the nuclear deal with the US to the detriment of the country’s thermonuclear pretensions and its deterrence stance.

Doval is more ambitious but his limitations are not dissimilar to Narayanan’s in that he believes every problem has a tactical, policing, small-time solution when, in fact, national security policy making should properly be concerned with an instinctive understanding of internal, regional and international developments that meshes with historical understanding of how circumstances may pan out. Doval has been nothing if not vocal. Hear his numerous videographed speeches on youtube.com, and what you come away with are ideas that have been there in the public realm for a while but now packaged with lashings of Hinduistic ideology and Pakistan-bashing.

And that’s the whole problem right there in a nutshell, isn’t it? Beating up on Pakistan rhetorically and in public speeches, promising retribution, is good theatre but does not make for sustainable national security thinking and policy, not when China is right there, standing with a club in its hands while Delhi chases the local “bandicoot” and ruffles the scenery.

The more debilitating aspect of the Indian reaction to the more important undercurrents is to rely on Washington to “read the riot act” to Islamabad and get it to to respond appropriately. Can there be a more de-spiriting and national self-defeating response than this?

Deal with Pakistan on its own terms with relentless covert warfare actions. Don’t squawk and complain, and act the supplicant, and plead with America to bring the Pakistanis in line. Seeking out Washington’s help in absolutely any circumstances is what Delhi should not ever do because it hands Washington the leverage to use against India. India should take care of its business by itself — the one thing Delhi and Indian governments/political leaders since independence have not done nor, after repeated bad experiences, have learnt to do.

Posted in Asian geopolitics, China, China military, civil-military relations, Culture, domestic politics, 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 democracy, Internal Security, Pakistan, Pakistan military, SAARC, society, South Asia, Strategic Relations with the US & West, Terrorism, United States, US. | 6 Comments

Taking the wrong tack after Pathankot

Posted on January 7, 2016 by Bharat Karnad

The Indian govt having conveyed “actionable intelligence” to Islamabad, the MEA spokesman announced, using that hag of a phrase, “the ball is in Pakistan’s court” which, in the South Asian context, means nothing. Have just come off a TV show (on News X) where there was a great deal of huffing and puffing by two retired militarymen — a major general and an air marshal both of whom called the Pathankot terrorist intrusion än act of war” deserving of harsh reaction. But, when specifically asked, neither was able to say just what kind of action they’d rather the Modi regime take. This is the problem with a lot of public military posturing — it stops at hollow histrionics. It has become part of the routine!

The fact is Nawaz Sharif is up a tree — he feels he needs to respond positively to Modi’s Lahore stopover initiative but is in no position to get the Pak Army-ISI combo to relent. So there’s unlikely to be the sort of action that would satisfy Delhi by way of a mea culpa and show of contrition.

Is the option then to call off the foreign secretary-level talks scheduled for Jan 15 the only thing available option to stop the baying by the opposition and salve national honour? This is what the Modi govt may end up doing but it would be wrong for the obvious reason that it would be to play into the hands of the elements in the Pak military establishment seeking to perpetuate the status quo.

But the status quo is potentially beneficial to the Pak-Army-ISI nexus only if its slate of sponsored terrorist actions fails to fetch a series of equal or intensityh and loss-wise greater covert reaction. As I have been stressing, in the age of covert warfare Indian conventional military retaliation is a non-starter. But a sustained strategy of covert actions at all levels and especially actions to take out the ISI-nursed monster by eliminating its hydra-heads every time a new one crops up, but without extending these actions to those outside the terrorist outfit leadership ranks will have two immediate effects: (1) By targeting only terrorist leaders and property within Pakistan and in PoK it will establish the reaction threshold minus any escalatory possibilities (because by definition terror outfits are outlaws that Islamabad cannot formally claim as its own creatures), and (2) Suggest to the Pak govt that Delhi is quite willing to play the covert-asymmetric warfare game if that is what it wants, but in the final analysis Pakistan will lose both because of disparity of resources and because of the many more exploitable faultlines in Pak society.

By separating the dialogue process from the covert warfare scene, the signal will go out and loud and clear to GHQ-Rawalpindi that the Indian govt is happy to talk and just as willing to wield the concealable wagh-nakh (as Shivaji did to tear open the Bijapur commander Afzal Khan’s entrails). Just issuing loud meaningless threats or demands makes India look vulnerable, particularly when nothing of note ever follows.

Posted in Asian geopolitics, civil-military relations, Culture, domestic politics, Geopolitics, Great Power imperatives, guerilla warfare, India's Pakistan Policy, India's strategic thinking and policy, Indian Politics, Internal Security, Pakistan, Pakistan military, society, South Asia, Special Forces, Terrorism | 12 Comments

NKorea/Pakistan’s thermonuclear test details

Posted on January 6, 2016 by Bharat Karnad

The International Monitoring System based at Petropavlovsk, Kamchatka Peninsula in Russia (comprising 5 primary and 13 auxiliary seismic stations, 4 infrasound stations, 8 radionuclide stations, 1 radionuclide laboratory), downwind from the North Korean Hanggyong mountain test site, has detected tritium. It confirms that the test Pyongyang was preparing for, and which the North Korean supremo Kim Jong Eun today confirmed, was of a hydrogen device, as warned in my blog on the subject three days ago. The seismic reading of 5.1 on the Richter Scale, in that rock hard substratum, translates to yield in the 50-100 kiloton range.

What experts believe is that given the relatively small yield for a fusion design but an apparently nearly flawless performance of the critical radiation channel that directs the fission energy from an atomic explosion into the tritium fuel package (that is the two stage system) in order to set off a full thermonuclear burn, the very good possibility is that the Pakistani designers have achieved something even more challenging — a successful tailored yield device and that too in miniaturized form!

This is a remarkable technical achievement even with Chinese weapons experts assisting and helping in configuring the design and vetting it before final engineering, for Pakistan to get right at the first shot — something India failed to do, whatever R. Chidambaram may say by way of obfuscatory explanations about the S-1 test in May, 1998.

But this is not the end. There is a certain method here. The 2013 test carried out in North Korea was of an FBF (fusion-assisted fission) device. The present one was “the lower-bound test of a dial-a yield TN weapon.” Far from being the terminus, there’s likely to be still another test in the series which will be full-fledged thermonuclear, and this new test could be conducted as early as July (or thereabouts) 2016 — i.e., just some six-odd months from now.

The strategic implications of Pakistan going fully thermonuclear with tested and proven weapons, courtesy the North Koreans and their making their test site available to the Pak Army’s SPD (Strategic Plans Division)-run nuclear weapons programme and hence providing Islamabad with plausible deniability — a brilliant working of the ‘rogue triad’ of China, Pakistan and North Korea, are too daunting to consider. For starters, it nullifies the official Indian doctrine’s misplaced reliance on “massive retaliation” as credible deterrence.
When an adversary confronts you with a proven and tested high yield weapon and you have only a notional fusion weapon that may or may not work — thanks to the lack of open-ended testing owing to the test moratorium persisted with by now four successive govts (including, so far the Modi regime) since the Shakti series of tests 17 years ago, then we have a problem.

The crucial difference is an incomprehensibly contented India habituated to thinking and acting small and minimal, sat still, thinking it had accomplished every thing, and is now where it was in May 1998 in terms of a noncredible thermonuclear arsenal. On the other hand, an unsatisfied Pakistan, displaying the sort of strategic verve and imagination absent in GOI, sought out other means of getting the weapons inventory it desired, and found a way out from under the US sanctions overhang in cahoots with its willing partners — China and North Korea.

Delhi sought Washington’s suffocating embrace and now finds itself inferior strategic weapons-wise to a rump state carved out of India some 70 years ago but one with a far stronger will, a formidable sense of its national self, and an infinitely greater flair for playing the international power game.

Guess where that leaves India?

Posted in Asian geopolitics, China, China military, civil-military relations, Culture, domestic politics, Geopolitics, Great Power imperatives, India's China Policy, India's Pakistan Policy, India's strategic thinking and policy, Indian Politics, Northeast Asia, Nuclear Policy & Strategy, Nuclear Weapons, Pakistan, Pakistan military, Pakistan nuclear forces, Russia, society, South Asia, Strategic Relations with South East Asia & Far East, Strategic Relations with the US & West, United States, US., Weapons | 8 Comments

Interoperability out of Gwadar

Posted on January 6, 2016 by Bharat Karnad

On Dec 31, 2015- Jan 1, 2016, two ships of Pakistan Navy’s grandly labeled “25th Destroyer Flotilla” with lead ship PNS Shamsher (and a supply ship) exercised off Shanghai with two vessels of the Chinese East Sea Fleet. This was the first of its kind event, hailed by the Chinese press as increasing “interoperability” between these forces. Because Pakistan Navy is unlikely ever to become a major force, leave alone a presence in the Indian Ocean, its very rare forays east of Malacca amount to little. However, the fact that interoperability is on the minds of the naval brass of the two countries suggests that frequent joint naval exercises are meant to hone their ability to cooperate not in the waters nearer China but off Gwadar. This development is not unconnected with Pak Navy chief Admiral Mohammad Zakaullah emphasizing his service’s determination to protect this Baluch port and ensure the CPEC (China-Pakistan Economic Corridor) connecting the Pak coast with Xinjiang and Chinese-occupied Tibet, with CPEC as sort of a southerly extension of the Karakoram Highway to the warm waters of the northern Arabian Sea, is obtained, at least, seaward without a hitch. In the context of CPEC, moreover, increasing naval collaboration could well eventuate in the permanent deployment of Chinese PLA-Navy ships in Gwadar.

Hence, greater the imperative for the Modi govt to get going on building up Iranian Chahbahar port, some 70 miles up the coast, as base for possible Indian naval use outflanking PLAN-PN in Gwadar. But Delhi is showing no urgency about coming to terms with Tehran, and fortifying the Gulf-end of India’s maritime security architecture. True, Iranians have upped the ante now that they are released from Western sanctions. This was bound to happen — the reason why I was pleading in the past decade and more to clinch a deal for Chahbahar on favourable terms at a time when no other country was willing to do business with Iran, and build up diplomatic capital and goodwill. As elsewhere, the then Manmohan Singh regime was keener to please Washington than to advance the national interest.

So now we are stuck with having to cut a deal on much harsher terms but there’s no getting around it. But better this access than no access at all to Chahbahar — which will lead to this country’s Afghanistan-Central Asia policy options (with promise of an alternative north-south route, with such transit being denied through Pakistan) going up in smoke.

Posted in Asian geopolitics, Central Asia, China, China military, Geopolitics, Great Power imperatives, India's China Policy, India's Pakistan Policy, India's strategic thinking and policy, Indian Navy, Indian Ocean, indian policy -- Israel, Iran and West Asia, Iran and West Asia, Pakistan, Pakistan military, South Asia, South East Asia, Strategic Relations with South East Asia & Far East, Tibet, West Asia | Leave a comment