INDIA’S NEW MARITIME THEATER COMMAND: A QUANTUM LEAP

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THE CONTEXT: The latest announcement about the creation of India’s first Maritime Theater Command by 2021 is a seminal development and part of the long-overdue transformation of India’s armed forces. The maritime theater command will be the first new “geographical” theater command to be created, as part of the biggest-ever military restructuring plan since India’s independence in 1947 when the Indian army, navy, and air force were initially structured under separate operational commands. This article discusses the significance, needs, and challenges related to the single Maritime Theater Command.

BASIC INFORMATION ABOUT MARITIME THEATER COMMAND

• Maritime Theatre Command, headed by a Navy vice-admiral and based in Karwar, Karnataka, responsible for the entire maritime domain. It will subsume the Navy’s current eastern and western commands, as well as the tri-Service Andaman and Nicobar Command, and include the Army’s amphibious formations.
• The Air Force’s surveillance, strike, and missile assets will be available to the Maritime Theatre Commander, but this integration will be looser than that between naval and army assets.
• The new maritime theater command commander-in-chief will exercise full operational control over extant western and eastern naval fleets.
• Operational control over maritime strike fighter jets and transport aircraft from the air force and the navy, two amphibious infantry brigades, and other assets under the Andaman and Nicobar Joint Command.
• The Maritime Theatre Commander will report to the Chiefs of Staff Committee, effectively making the Chief of Defence Staff the highest military commander.

SIGNIFICANCE

• Efficiency – This arrangement will impact overall operational planning and efficiency, particularly in matters related to a new acquisition, compatibility of equipment, drills/ procedures, training, and logistics, leading to huge wastages.
• Force multiplier– Under the maritime theater command, the integration of air force and army elements with naval assets will act as a force multiplier. For instance, a recently established Sukhoi 30 fighter squadron — the “Tigersharks” – equipped with the Brahmos missile, currently based at Thanjavur under the Southern Air Command, will now be part of the maritime theater command. With INS Vikramaditya being the sole operational aircraft carrier in the Indian navy’s arsenal, sustaining credible surveillance and dominance in the region badly required an additional punch, and the Sukhoi squadron provides that much-needed shot in the arm.
• Increased capability-Over the next few years, it is likely that the air force could position additional aircraft at other locations such as the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, overlooking the strategic Strait of Malacca. This could boost India’s maritime and air surveillance and strike capability deep into the Indian Ocean.
• Integration of the army troops with amphibious elements of the navy will help to strengthen the country’s expeditionary capabilities.

NEED OF MARITIME THEATER COMMAND

The geostrategic advantage-The central location of the Indian peninsula thrusting out into the Indian Ocean and the Andaman Nicobar Islands, overlooking crucial shipping lanes and strategic choke points, has provided India with a huge geostrategic advantage over China, which is heavily dependent on shipping for its global trade and energy needs. Up to this point, this geographical advantage seems to have worked for India in maintaining a favorable balance of power with China. But the last decade has seen a rapid growth of Chinese maritime power and economic/political influence in the Indian Ocean region.

Chinese influence-The PLA Navy’s continued deployments and activities in the region since 2009, when Chinese naval ships first entered the Indian Ocean to participate in anti-piracy patrols off Somalia, has impinged on India’s sphere of influence. In less than a decade China made quick gains in consolidating its position in the wider region by establishing its first naval base at Djibouti in 2017. Concurrently, strategic projects such as the Belt and Road Initiative have helped expand Chinese economic and political influence.

These developments have put pressure on the Indian navy and sometimes even also led to tensions. For instance, the increase in PLA Navy activities in the region including submarine deployments has forced the Indian navy to step up ship and air operations in the region. Also, in 2019, a Chinese naval vessel entered India’s exclusive economic zone without approval and was asked to leave by the Indian navy.

On the whole, these advances in China’s maritime powers have not only diluted India’s geostrategic advantage, posing a challenge to India’s leadership in the Indian Ocean region but also emboldened China to engender a conflict situation along the Line of Actual Control (LAC), at Doklam in 2017 and later in the Ladakh region this year. The new maritime theater command will further help India consolidate and strengthen its maritime power in the Indian Ocean region.

CHALLENGES

• The design of a single Maritime Theatre Command presumes that all maritime is one theatre. Yet, that is hardly the case. There are three distinct maritime geographies to the west, south, and east, making them distinct theatres.
• The adversaries, geopolitics, operational contexts, missions, and roles in the waters to India’s west, south, east, and beyond are vastly different in each of these theatres.
• The idea of a single Land Theatre Command or an Air Theatre Command is considered absurd because geography, adversary, and threats are distinctly different in the west, north, south, and east, despite the domains themselves being arguably “inseparable whole”. The maritime domain is no different, and no more a “single theatre” than land and air is.
• Our geographical and geopolitical context suggests that we need at least two maritime-focused commands, facing west and east. These should include the requisite land, air, space, and cyber components so that the theatre commander has the complete complement of assets necessary to handle the range of anticipated threats emerging in that theatre.
• The theatre commander need not always be a Navy officer but can come from any Service. Indeed, one urgent task for the CDS would be to ensure that the career track of officers is restructured such that the top echelons of the theatre command consist of officers who have cross-service experience.
• India is underinvested in sea power there is only so much you can do to move naval assets from one side of the peninsula to the other. If the pressure on defense expenditure is high, we must prioritize naval acquisitions.
• The Arabian Sea, the Persian Gulf, the Bay of Bengal, and the Straits of Malacca are all connected to the Indian Ocean but have distinct names for reasons of history, geography, and the resulting politics. The strategy should recognize this reality.

CURRENT COMMAND STRUCTURE IN INDIA

• The current structure of the armed forces includes 17 different commands. The army and Air force have 7 Commands each and 3 commands are headed by the Navy. Under the Army, the commands are the Northern, Southern, Eastern, Western, Central, South-western, Central, and Maintenance and Training.
• The Navy is divided into Western, Eastern, and Southern commands.
• Each command is headed by a 4-star rank military officer.
• India only has two tri-service commands. The first one is known as the Andaman and Nicobar Command (ANC) and was created in 2001. It is led by service chiefs on a rotational basis. The second is a functional command (not overseeing a particular geographical location) called the Strategic Forces Command established in 2006.

WAY FORWARD:

• Integrating tri-service elements seamlessly at various levels will require rigorous training and development of fresh joint doctrines and strategy, and these will probably be the next few steps in operationalizing the new command.
• India’s changed economic and fiscal trajectory had been a factor, the small Andaman and Nicobar Command to evolve into a regional power projection role, specializing in traditional “out of area” operations in deeper partnership with friendly foreign armed forces. Even so, we should not let present-day constraints permanently limit our thinking. If India has to be a major regional power in this century, we need expeditionary capacity.
• On balance, the maritime theater command will add a new dimension to India’s efforts to counter Chinese in the Indian Ocean, and once operationalized, it could even help to restore normalcy along the India-China LAC.

JUST TO ADD IN YOUR KNOWLEDGE

The post of Chief of Defence Staff was created to provide “effective leadership at the top level” to the three wings of the armed forces and to help improve coordination among them. Along with it, the Department of Military Affairs (DMA) was created as the fifth department within the Ministry of Defence.

• CDS acts as the permanent Chairman of the Chiefs of Staff Committee which will also have three service chiefs as members.
• His core function will be to foster greater operational synergy between the three service branches of the Indian military and keep inter-service frictions to a minimum.
• He will also head the newly created Department of Military Affairs (DOMA) in the Ministry of Defence.
• The CDS will be the single-point military adviser to the Defence Minister on matters involving all three services and the service chiefs will be obliged to confine their counsel to issues about their respective services.
• As the head of DoMA, CDS is vested with the authority in prioritizing inter-service procurement decisions as Permanent Chairman-Chiefs of Staff Committee.
• The CDS is also vested with the authority to provide directives to the three chiefs. However, he does not enjoy any command authority over any of the forces.
• CDS is first among equals, he enjoys the rank of Secretary within the DoD and his powers will be confined to only the revenue budget.
• He will also perform an advisory role in the Nuclear Command Authority (NCA).