Seeing itself as rightful heir to the former British Empire, India intends to become a full-fledged world power with a blue-water navy. The purchase and construction of aircraft carriers to replace the aging Viraat will supply the backbone of this ocean-going fleet.
Most Americans used to view India as an antique, exotic land of snake charmers, sacred cows, and ornate temples. Few Western observers bothered to note its economic progress and modernization, growing military capabilities, or Delhi's increasingly assertive ambitions to become a full-fledged world power with a blue-water navy-until India detonated five nuclear devices in May 1998.
Since then, Washington has begun to accommodate itself to the new strategic reality of India. The incoming Bush administration viewed India as a vital strategic counterweight to potential enemy China and, accordingly, accelerated Indo-U.S. entente. After the 11 September 2001 attacks, India came to be seen as a useful ally in the conflict with Islamic militancy and a possible source of troops.
At the same time, India was opening as a new market for U.S. investment and exports and becoming a supplier of low-cost human services to U.S. industry.
Today, there is general acceptance by the U.S. security community that India is indeed a regional superpower and major Asian land power. Its well-trained million-man army, with nearly 4,000 tanks and an equal number of artillery, and paramilitary forces numbering more than one million are second only to China's ground forces, and considerably more modern and mobile. The Indian Air Force, equipped with some of the latest Russian and French aircraft, is a potent force-though it also is a world leader in flying accidents. Recent simulated combat trials between U.S. F-15s and India's Su-SOs, however, left the Indians clear winners.
Behind India's large air and ground forces lies an extensive and expanding military-industrial base capable of supplying and maintaining high-intensity combat operations for more than 30 days and building some of the weapon systems India needs.
In addition, India's fast-paced development of nuclear strike forces is challenging Asia's strategic status quo. India currently is estimated to possess at least 35 and as many as 90 nuclear weapons, sizeable stockpiles of weapons-grade uranium and plutonium, and numerous reactors and plants capable of producing more fissile material. India's Prithvi short-range missiles and Agni II mediumrange missiles can deliver nuclear warheads across Pakistan and to parts of China. The soon to be deployed Angi III will be able to reach Beijing.
While these developments are by now well known, India's evolving naval strategy is less understood than it should be.
India reportedly is spending $1 billion this year on a top-secret project to build a nuclear-powered submarine (aka Advanced Technology Vessel [ATV]) based on the Soviet Charlie I-class design and $2.5 billion to buy from Russia the 44,500-ton ex-Soviet carrier Admiral Gorshkov and four Tu-22M long-range naval bombers/strike aircraft. India also is leasing-to-buy two Type 971 Akula-class nuclear-powered submarines from Russia and will build six or more French diesel submarines. Another $1.5 billion will go to buy 40 nuclear-capable MiG-29K interceptor/ strike fighters for the carrier air group. The true cost of India's expanding nuclear programs and other secret defense projects, like the ATV and a new 32,000-35,000-ton light carrier, do not appear in the grossly understated $16.5 billion annual defense budget.
India's naval ambitions are nothing new. The nation's ruling political and military establishments see India as rightful heir to the former British Empire, in which India was the most important foreign component. India's conservative security establishment and the Hindu fundamentalist-nationalists of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) have long called for a strong foreign policy of regional hegemony and extended spheres of geopolitical influence. Though it lost power in spring 2004, the BJP and its militant ideology still influence Indian public opinion, politics, and defense policy.
The centrist Congress Party, now back in power, is expected to maintain a more moderate foreign policy, but Indian strategists are united in the need to develop powerful naval forces to protect the nation's coasts, fight Pakistan, protect foreign trade, and assert Indian interests abroad. Most important, at least for the United States, is India's intent to build a powerful carrier, submarine, and surface force to dominate the Indian Ocean and its subsidiaries, the Bay of Bengal and the Arabian Sea. Chief of Naval Staff Admiral Madhavendra Singh told newspapers India intends to create a "full-fledged blue water navy."
Last year, India tripled its naval spending, to 18% of the defense budget, reflecting the new emphasis on quickly deploying an oceangoing fleet. The purchase of the Admiral Gorshkov, delayed by eight years of torturous negotiations with Russia, was made more urgent by the approaching retirement in 2007 or 2008 of India's sole remaining aircraft carrier, the 28,700-ton Viraat. The Navy's original carrier, the Vikrant, was decommissioned in 1997.
The Indian-built light aircraft carrier now in the works is supposed to be ready by 2008-2009, though most Indian defense projects are seriously overdue. Delhi's plans to control the Indian Ocean with two carrier battle groups backed by nuclear-powered submarines will be supported by long-range, shore-based naval aviation, with communications and targeting provided by a constellation of specialized Indian-made satellites.
India also deploys 19 conventional submarines, including 10 Russian Kilo-class diesel boats, 4 German T-209s, and 5 Soviet-era Foxtrots in reserve. The Russian Akulas now on order will spearhead this impressive underwater force.
For surface warfare, India has 8 modern or modernized destroyers, 5 of them Soviet Kashins, 16 frigates, and numerous fast-attack craft and patrol boats, supported by a squadron of Harrier ground attack fighters and eight dated but still formidable long-range Tu-142F Bear reconnaissance bombers. Three Russian-built frigates, armed with long-range BraHmos cruise missiles, are being delivered this year.
Today, the prime mission of this force, divided into Eastern and Western Commands, is to confront Pakistan. In any new conflict, India's overwhelming naval power could quickly eliminate Pakistan's eight outdated destroyers and frigates, hunt down its seven conventional submarines, and blockade Karachi and Gwadar, Pakistan's two ports, cutting off imports of fuel, munitions, spare parts, and strategic goods.
In short, the Indian Navy could be more decisive in any war than India's Air Force and Army, which could be held off at least for a time by Pakistan's tough troops and skillful pilots. Pakistan could not fight for longer than a week in the face of an Indian naval blockade-unless the U.S. Navy challenged it.
It was the appearance of a U.S. carrier battle group in the Arabian Sea in tacit support of Pakistan during the 1971 IndoPakistani War that, Indians believe, forced Delhi to halt its planned offensive in the west aimed at overrunning and crushing Pakistan. India's defense establishment was so incensed it determined to develop naval forces capable of counteracting or even defeating any future U.S. intervention in its self-proclaimed sphere of influence-the genesis of India's current naval buildup.
The second prime concern of India's evolving naval grand strategy is China, whose decision to develop a blue-water navy caused considerable alarm. The two Asian giants share a poorly demarcated, disputed 2,486-mile border in the high Himalayas and Karakorams. In coming decades, geopolitical tensions between the two uneasy neighbors and rivals easily could intensify as they vie for hegemony over South and Central Asia, Indonesia, and even the South China Sea; political influence; oil; resources; and markets.
Potential flash points are Chinese-occupied Tibet; Nepal, where a growing Maoist insurgency could provoke a military intervention by India that could be challenged by China; and Burma. India already is deeply worried over China's growing influence in Burma, which, with hostile Pakistan, would threaten both of India's flanks.
Though barely noticed in the West, China and India have been locked in a nuclear arms race for the past decade, developing medium-range, nuclear-armed missiles specifically designed to attack each other's cities and troop formations.
Even less noticed abroad, India has been building heavy space boosters with Russian help, notably its PSLV series, that, according to a recent U.S. intelligence estimate, easily could be transformed into intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) capable of striking the United States.
There are persistent reports India is developing a 7,000-mile-ranged ICBM called Surya. Since the Agni II and III can hit any of India's possible enemies-China, Pakistan, even ally Russia-Surya would have only one main target: North America. Yet, the United States and Israel have been helping India to develop medium-range and intercontinental ballistic missiles by supplying advanced computer and electronic technology.
As the third leg of its nuclear triad, India is working on a submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM), Sagarika, and, possibly, another called Dhanoush that may be operational in 2010. Little is known about the ranges or payloads of these systems. India, however, insists they are cruise missiles, not SLBMs. The new ATV is being designed to carry them.
India has been reinforcing its Eastern Command and developing new naval installations around Port Blair (damaged by the tsunami, as was the air base at Car Nicobar) in the Andaman Islands, only 500 miles from the Strait of Malacca and the Burma coast. The Indian High Command is concerned by growing Chinese naval penetrations of the Andaman Sea, ports calls in Burma, and the threat of major naval action against Chinese submarine and surface forces in the event of a war, either directly with China or as a result of a new conflict with Pakistan.
Given India's carrier strike force, missile-armed submarines, and land-based naval aviation, Chinese naval forces would be at a serious disadvantage in any conflict in the eastern Indian Ocean until they are able to provide effective air cover, either from carriers or future air bases in Burma.
The third strategic factor impelling India's naval plans is the growing fear of worldwide oil shortages. A 1997 U.S. Defense Department study estimated that when India and China reached the then per capita energy use of South Korea, their combined demand for oil would be 120 million barrels daily. Today, global oil consumption is about 79 million barrels daily. Unlike most dire studies, this one appears to have been prescient. An era of growing shortages and fierce rivalry for oil is clearly on the horizon. One reason for the Bush administration's decision to invade Iraq, which has the Mideast's second largest oil reserves, may have been fear of the United States being denied its former unrestrained access to Mideast oil by competition from Europe, Russia, Japan, China, and, soon, India.
India's economy is actually rather small, about the same size as the Netherlands, but it still will consume enough oil to pinch world reserves. Delhi is determined to ensure its access to Persian Gulf and Indonesian oil by means of its navy, and clearly does not regard the Arabian Sea and Gulf as unique preserves of the U.S. Navy. If India's current high rate of economic growth continues, by 2015 it will be a significant user of oil and a key rival of other major consumers, including the United States.
The fourth factor driving India's naval strategy is the concept that the vast Indian Ocean is its mare nostrum. Indian strategists have long contended that the entire triangle of the Indian Ocean is their nation's rightful and exclusive sphere of interest, from the Arabian Sea and Bay of Bengal to the Mozambique Channel, Australia, and the Antarctic. The littoral states of East Africa, Arabia, Madagascar, Indonesia, and western Australia, all fall, say Delhi's more adventurous strategic thinkers, into India's ambit of influence. So does Fiji, in the south Pacific. The corollary of this grand strategy is: Other nations' navies, keep a low profile in the Indian Ocean.
It is significant that the Indian Navy has been investing much effort in developing, with Russia, the BrahMos 174-mile-range, supersonic antiship missile, supplementing its existing Russian-supplied antiship weapons, including the potent, 180-mile-range SS-N-27 Club. India's new Akulas reportedly will carry the Global Positioning System-guided BrahMos.
These missiles are designed to destroy large surface targets. Since the Indian Navy already has ample antiship missiles to sink the small Pakistani surface force, the only likely targets for these new weapons would be either Chinese destroyers that rashly ventured into the Andaman Sea or U.S. carrier battle groups. In fact, the BrahMos and Club are ideal anticarrier weapons. Indian naval aviation also will carry the long-ranged missiles.
Relations between Delhi and Washington, long frosty, are rapidly warming. U.S. and Indian military forces are conducting joint exercises, and the two nations are sharing some intelligence. India clearly wishes to pursue this new entente and so is trying to downplay its ambitious strategic naval programs to avoid alarming U.S. defense planners.
But there seems little doubt India, no matter how dulcet its tone, is determined to assert its influence in Asia and as a world power. Delhi has long complained of Western "nuclear apartheid" that allows certain nations to possesses nuclear arms while denying them to others, and its defense establishment does not accept that the U.S. Navy has an inalienable right to go wherever it desires and to intervene in the affairs of South Asia.
Behind the current bonhomie between India and the United States lies lingering hostility among India's anti-American socialists and concern that Washington will seek to constrain or even curb what India sees as its rightful exercise of national power. There also is a not unrealistic concern that one day India and the United States could become direct rivals for Mideast oil.
The U.S. Navy is now facing two major potential competitors in the Pacific and Indian Oceans at a time when its resources in both regions are stretched to the limit. Those used to thinking of the Indian Ocean merely as a transit route between the Gulf and the Strait of Malacca are going to have to adjust to Asia's fastchanging strategic equation.
Mr. Margolis is a syndicated international columnist, editor, and television commentator on foreign affairs. He is author of War at the Top of the World: The Struggle for Afghanistan and Asia (Routledge, 2002).