According to the Russian and Indian media, the Indian Navy plans to buy or lease a pair of Improved Akula I (Project 971 Shchuka-B)-class submarines. Several hulls have lain incomplete in Russian yards since the collapse of the Soviet Union, and two are to be completed in 2004 or 2005 for five-year lease to India. Two hulls were laid down at Komsomolsk-on-Amur in 1986 and 1987. One of them, the Nerpa, was 82% complete by mid-1998. Both Komsomolsk hulls were offered to India in March 1999. According to one Russian report, however, the second Indian submarine will be the Akula II-class Kuguar, the latest of the class, laid down at Severodvinsk in 1993. Russia is to train four Indian crews for the two submarines. A total price of $5 billion has been reported, presumably including weapons and training. It is not clear from Russian and Indian reports whether the leases provide for later sale. Funds from the deal would finance completion of the next-generation Severodvinsk (Project 885), laid down in December 1993 but little advanced since then.
India has an ongoing nuclear submarine program to produce the Advanced Technology Vessel (ATV), but it apparently has been much less than successful. At times the ATV was described as an Indian derivative of the Charlie (Project 670) class, one of which the Indian Navy leased from the Soviet Union in 19881991 as the INS Chakra. It is possible that the projected lease/sale is intended to fill a gap until a domestic SSN can be built. Tthe Indian press now describes the ATV as a Severodvinsk derivative. It is also possible, however, that it is part of a larger policy of adopting Russian technology where Indian development has failed. Other examples might be the decision to buy the Russian Klub missile system, which includes surface-to-surface missiles (possibly in place of the projected Indian-developed Sagarika submarine-to-shore missile) and the decision on co-production of the BraMos antiship missile, a derivative of the Russian Yakhont. The Indian Navy probably will soon buy the Russian aircraft carrier Admiral Gorshkov, and it already is buying Russian-built Talwar-class (much-improved Krivak class) frigates.
Indian newspapers reported in January that the government had just approved a 30-year submarine program. During the first decade, India would continue to build foreign classes under license, as in the past, but after that all production would be to indigenous designs. Reportedly, the navy currently favors the French Scorpene class, already in production for Chile. The alternative is the Russian Amur, a muchmodified Kilo. One consequence of a French order would be the transfer of technology similar to that embodied in the new Pakistani Agosta90B class, a subject of considerable interest to India.
Chief of Naval Staff Madhvendra Singh also said that India needed two more carriers. One would be the rebuilt Admiral Gorshkov; another would be built in India. Indian newspapers carried a report that the deal to buy the Admiral Gorshkov would be signed by 1 April, and that India also wants to lease two Backfire naval bombers. Both deals have been reported for more than a year, without having been concluded. Progress was delayed by a major Indian defense corruption scandal centered on Defense Minister George Fernandes, who had negotiated the Russian (and, incidentally, some important Israeli) arms deals. Fernandes was forced to resign, but he is now back in office.
Presumably the Indian government, which in the past showed little willingness to spend money on its navy, felt compelled to approve the new naval projects in light of increasing tension with Pakistan over Kashmir. Clearly submarines to be placed in service about 2004-2005 have little relevance to the current crisis, but Defense Minister Fernandes always has emphasized China as a greater threat than Pakistan. He has, for example, used the Chinese threat to explain Indian interest in intercontinental ballistic missiles, which are unneeded to deal with Pakistan (existing shorter-range missiles can cover the entire country). Certainly Russian accounts of the submarine sale mentioned the need to deal with China. As various Western navies have found, distant operations (e.g., off the Chinese coast) are far easier using nuclear rather than diesel power. Although an Akula I is inferior to current U.S. and British submarines, it probably is far superior to anything the Chinese can have by 2004—or, for that matter, 2010.
Will the Indian Navy get what it wants? In the past, the Indian government has preferred to spend most of its defense money on the army and the air force. Pakistan, the main enemy, faces India across a land frontier, and the main prize is the landlocked territory of Kashmir. The Indian Navy did gain considerable prestige in the 1971 war, when it raided both parts of Pakistan (as a result of the war, the eastern part became the independent country of Bangladesh). However, the carrier Vikrant was retired a few years ago without any successor, and the remaining carrier, Viraat, had to be withdrawn from service for some years for refit, leaving no carrier in service. Meanwhile, negotiations to obtain a replacement for the Vikrant, in the form of the ex-Soviet carrier Admiral Gorshkov, were allowed to drag on. That hardly showed any sense of urgency. Similarly, the planned program to build German-designed submarines in India was allowed to lapse while alternatives were considered at great length. It is entirely possible that the recent announcements of imminent submarine leases will suffer a similar fate. That is, the leases might eventually be signed—as the Admiral Gorshkov may well eventually be bought—but not for several more years. If war does break out over Kashmir, the navy's situation might deteriorate, because purchases of army weapons and air force aircraft will seem far more urgent. For example, India might want to acquire Russian long-range air defense missiles to deal with possible nuclear-armed Pakistani fighter-bombers, which can penetrate current Indian defenses relatively easily.
If the current crisis blows over, longer-term trends in Indian defense may assert themselves. The Indians may well see China as the more important long-term threat. After all, India and China are now by far the most populous countries in Asia, and it would be natural to imagine some sort of rivalry for continental dominance. Now the two countries hardly touch, but one might project a future in which each tries to assert its influence in Southeast Asia, and that a collision occurs there. In that case an Indian navy capable of ranging anywhere along the Chinese coast might be a way of relieving pressure exerted by a Chinese army operating against an Indian army in the South.
There are also current frictions. India and China share a short border, over which they fought a brief war in 1962. However, China occupies Tibet, which lies on the other side of a series of small Indian-dominated states such as Nepal. Traditionally, the Indians and the British Raj before independence considered these states a valuable buffer against possible invasion. From a Chinese point of view, India is an obstacle to stabilizing Chinese rule in Tibet, because it welcomes anti-Chinese movements such as that of the Dalai Lama. These movements in turn find ethnic and religious allies in India. The situation in Tibet has become more precarious now that oil has been discovered and the Dalai Lama seems quite ill. The Tibetans themselves are becoming more militant as Beijing pursues a policy of moving in so many Han Chinese that they will become a majority. Forty years ago the United States found Tibetan fury strong enough to justify mounting guerilla operations in Tibet. There is little reason to imagine that India could not support a similar movement now.
For that matter, China supports Pakistan, perhaps as a way of diverting Indian attention. That puts the Chinese in a somewhat awkward position relative to Islamic terrorist movements. The Pakistanis have harnessed such movements in Kashmir, to fight an insurrection against a secular Indian government. Presumably the Chinese have helped the rebels/terrorists.
On the other hand, China also is fighting an Islamic terrorist movement in nearby Sinkiang. That is why the Chinese government was so willing to sign onto the U.S.-led antiterrorist coalition. Kashmir was why the Indians wanted to sign on. The situation is complicated further in that the Pakistani-supported Kashmir rebels/terrorists sympathize with, and surely support, Pashtu tribesmen fighting for the Taliban in Afghanistan—and those fighting against Chinese rule in Sinkiang. Thus, Chinese weapons supplied to fight the war in Kashmir may well turn up in Sinkiang, used against those who supplied them in the first place.