Underwater challenge in Indian Ocean

C Uday Bhaskar

Director, Society for Policy Studies

RECENT submarine-related developments in the Indian Ocean Region (IOR) will have a significant tactical and strategic relevance for Indian security planners over the short and medium term. This is an issue that will have to be prioritised by the government that will assume office at the Centre in June.

India has joined a select club of nations that have acquired nuclear-propulsion design & manufacture, but air-independent propulsion (AIP) remains elusive.

In late April, the launch ceremony of the first Hangor-class submarine for the Pakistan navy was held at the Wuchang shipbuilding group’s Shuangliu base in Wuhan, China. This submarine is an export variant of the Chinese PLA Navy’s Type 039A/041 Yuan class and is expected to be inducted into the Pakistan navy by 2028. A significant feature of this submarine with a tactical bearing is that it will be capable of air-independent propulsion (AIP), thereby increasing its underwater endurance by a significant margin as compared to a conventional diesel-electric submarine. This will enhance Pakistan's underwater and sea-denial capability in the IOR.

The Indian Navy currently does not have an AIP-capable submarine, though the need for such a platform has been felt since 1999. It took more than 20 years for the Defence Acquisition Council of the Ministry of Defence to give the long-delayed green signal in June 2021 for the acquisition of six conventional submarines for the Navy as part of Project 75(I). Most of the Navy’s conventional boats (as submarines are referred to) are over 30 years old and this level of obsolescence adversely impacts the operational efficiency of a submarine. Hence, Project 75(I) is of crucial relevance for the Navy’s underwater capability.

During Modi 2.0, there has been a welcome emphasis on atmanirbharta (self-reliance) in the defence sector to reduce import dependency, but the actual implementation has been less than optimal. Four major platforms have been identified as ‘strategic partnership’ projects where Indian entities can collaborate with foreign manufacturers; the AIP-enabled submarine is one of them. The other three big-ticket items are fighter aircraft, helicopters and armoured vehicles.

The Project 75(I) submarine deal is expected to be in the vicinity of $5 billion (about

Rs 44,000 crore) — this is not an insignificant amount. Over the past three years, two foreign manufacturers have been identified — one German and the other Spanish — and the final evaluation process has begun. German conglomerate TKMS (Thyssenkrupp Marine Systems) has entered into a partnership with a public sector unit, Mazagon Docks Ltd (MDL). This partnership has the robust support of the German government.

The other contending partnership is between Indian private sector company L&T and state-owned Spanish shipbuilding yard Navantia. Indian naval teams carried out field evaluation trials of the TKMS offer in March and it is expected that the Spanish trials will be concluded in June. The Project 75(I) is a major techno-commercial deal and it is likely that there will be intense competition between the final contenders, the MDL-TKMS partnership and the L&T-Navantia team.

While the urgency of India acquiring AIP-capable boats needs little reiteration, the more recent experience in relation to major defence acquisitions is not encouraging. The Rafale fighter aircraft acquired from France is a case in point. Both the abruptness of the final decision and the lack of transparency about technology transfer did not help the atmanirbharta quest.

While there are many considerations apart from the techno-commercial one in arriving at a final decision for any major military platform, a brief review would indicate that the indigenisation trajectory of the Indian submarine programme has been chequered. India acquired its first HDW-Type 209 conventional submarine from West Germany in the mid-1980s and it was envisioned that this programme would enable an indigenous submarine production line at the MDL. However, the submarine acquisition programme was enmeshed in a bribery scandal (along with the Bofors artillery gun supplied by Sweden) and the Rajiv Gandhi government peremptorily cancelled the entire deal. This was a major setback to the indigenisation effort, apart from the fiscal loss.

The subsequent Project 75(I) with France for the Scorpene-class submarines got mired in cost increase, delays and rancour over the quantum of technology transfer.

In underwater maritime propulsion, AIP technology occupies a distinctive niche — and it is even more limited by way of proven expertise than nuclear propulsion. For the record, India has joined the select club of nations that have acquired nuclear-propulsion design and manufacture (albeit with assistance from Russia), but AIP remains elusive. An indigenous AIP developed by the Defence Research and Development Organisation is a work in progress and hopefully, will be soon certified as successful.

Currently, Germany is the global leader in AIP. India will have to balance the tactical requirement (AIP boats to be inducted in the Navy as soon as possible) with the long-term strategic objective of giving a fillip to indigenous AIP design and manufacture.

This will be a challenging task as underwater technology expertise is a zealously guarded domain and there are few instances of such collaboration. The China-Pakistan partnership apropos of the Hangor-class boat is part of the strategic cooperation that the two nations have entered into since the 1970s. This has been detrimental to Indian interests.

In the underwater domain, the IOR will soon witness a large number of Chinese-designed boats —- both in the Arabian Sea and the Bay of Bengal — with both Pakistan and Bangladesh acquiring submarines from the PLA Navy. Submarines, underwater drones and UDA (underwater domain awareness) will play a major role in the naval competition that is building up in the IOR. New Delhi will have to be more nimble and resolute in its decision-making than it has been in the past.

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