Indian Defense
China’s Naval Expansion And The Challenges For India
Sweeping reforms to an outdated military saddled with too much manpower have allowed China to allocate resources to the capital- and technology-intensive maritime and aerial domains.
China’s focus on matching the US military in the Indo-Pacific has a mixed impact on India. On the one hand, particularly in the maritime domain, even with a growing force of destroyers, cruisers and aircraft carriers, China will have to dedicate almost all its naval resources to the Western Pacific to be able to viably counter the US and its allied navies. The centrality of nuclear-powered submarines to the new AUKUS grouping only increases the attention China will have to pay to the waters east of Malacca. This means the Indian Navy should have some breathing room before the PLAN outgrows home waters and establishes a more permanent presence in the Indian Ocean Region (IOR), long considered India’s maritime ‘backyard.’
India’s Options At Sea
Most major military powers—including China—have downsized military manpower in favour of technology. Even countries facing active conflict, with border problems no less intractable than India’s, such as South Korea and Israel, have moved past land-centric military postures.
Warship production at scale is something India has never been able to achieve. Long gestation periods and slow build rates mean the Navy is forced to move to new designs after commissioning only a handful of ships of each class. This in turn puts added pressure on the already miniscule capital budget. A small but capable ship class would also allow for some decompression of the Navy’s budget, provide a regular and predictable run of work to domestic shipbuilding industries, and might finally result in an exportable warship that could begin to recoup some of its costs.
If the Indian Navy can commission one missile boat or corvette for every Chinese destroyer, it will be enough to upend any designs Beijing might have for the IOR.
In the long term, beyond getting back into operational and platform specifics, or even budgetary allocation, the most important change will be to increase the Navy’s purchasing power. The only way to do this is to move procurement in-country – and building up a strong industrial base will allow this to happen naturally. This is as true for the Navy as it is for the other services. Assuming India will not be able to resolve its military manpower issues, nor the spending skew toward the Army, there is little choice but to produce as much capital equipment as possible domestically. A rupee spent at home will buy more than a dollar or euro or rouble spent abroad – to say nothing of the indirect effects of increased domestic spending. In the past, building military capability alongside national capacity was seen as a self-contradictory endeavour. While it is true that in traditional planning and operating paradigms, the two compete directly for resources, there is no reason for that to be the case indefinitely.