Non-Subscriber Extract
Getting in step: India country briefing
By Rahul Bedi
04 February 2008
From an introspective, sub-continental tactical force, preoccupied with neighbouring nuclear rivals Pakistan and China, the Indian armed forces are attempting to evolve into a comprehensive, strategic power with an expanded regional role.
Backing the country's evolving economic profile, India's military has launched a diplomatic thrust overseas in addition to developing force-projection capabilities to secure growing national interests extending from the Strait of Hormuz to the Strait of Malacca, the northern Indian Ocean Region (IOR) and to Central Asia.
"India is anxious to convey to the world that it is not only an emerging economic but also a robust and proliferating military power on the march," said retired brigadier Arun Sahgal, an analyst with the United Service Institute in New Delhi.
Over the last four years, India has committed USD12 billion to acquiring materiel. Most of this is imported - a dependency expected to exponentially increase as the services strive to replace predominantly Soviet and Russian military hardware.
Defence purchases are projected to double to more than USD30 billion in the 11th Finance Plan period ending in 2012, climbing to around USD80 billion by 2022 to facilitate military modernisation. Such large purchases will also benefit domestic defence industry through joint production and technology transfers via mandatory offsets estimated between USD10 billion and USD30 billion, or a third of the value of all weapon-related imports.
An increasing military priority remains securing India's oil and gas imports, which are expected to double by 2012 to fuel its flourishing economic growth: the world's second highest after China. Since these are increasingly being sourced from locations other than the Middle East, such as North Africa, the Sakhalin Islands off Russia's east coast and Venezuela, service doctrines, operational military plans and equipping policies have been revised to cater to these changing geostrategic imperatives.
Accordingly, India has begun inducting power-projection platforms, such as aircraft carriers, nuclear-powered submarines, long-range combat aircraft with mid-air refuelling capability and landing platform dock ships for expeditionary warfare and humanitarian missions, and is also developing an intercontinental ballistic missile with a strike range in excess of 5,000 km - all with the collective aim of influencing events far from home.
The military's primary aim, however, of deploying a technology-enabled and networked force that stays abreast of the revolution in military affairs is dictated in the medium term by threats emanating from Pakistan and over the longer tenure by the need to counter China. The knife-edge tension with Pakistan has receded somewhat since 2004 following extended bilateral peace talks over several outstanding territorial, military, nuclear and cross-border terrorism issues.
Pakistan's ongoing political turmoil and mushrooming jihadist insurgency, which has necessitated its army's redeployment away from the Indian border to its western periphery, has also relieved pressure on Delhi.
Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's ostensibly successful China visit in January, meanwhile, has done little to alleviate concern among India's military and security community over the unresolved 4,075 km frontier between the neighbours and rival claims to large swathes of each other's territory. "If India's soft policies on China continue, Beijing can conveniently treat Delhi as a tactical piece in its larger design of deflecting concerns about its rise as a formidable power," said former Indian foreign secretary Kanwal Sibal. "We need to make our strategic programmes more robust."
Image: Indian Air Force Sukhoi Su-30MKI (Jamie Hunter)