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By Nitin Gokhale
Last May, just days before India’s general election results were announced, the country’s highest policy making body for security matters was convened by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. Its mandate: Find ways of enabling India’s military to take on an increasingly powerful (and belligerent) China.
The goal is to plug existing gaps in India’s preparedness along the Arunachal Pradesh-China frontier, and the two divisions, consisting of about 20,000 well-armed troops, will include a squadron of India’s armoured spearhead—Soviet-built T-90 tanks and a regiment of artillery. The Indian Air Force has over the past year deployed 36 Su-30MKI, its most advanced multi-role fighter aircraft, to Tezpur in the country’s north-east in response to the People’s Liberation Army Air Force’s seven airbases in Tibet and southern China.
Indian Navy is working to build and acquire new, varied and potent platforms including an aircraft carrier, nuclear submarines, stealth frigates and long-range maritime reconnaissance planes. By 2014, it hopes to have 160 ships in its fleet, up from its current strength of 136. But the most surprising revelation to many analysts was India’s public admission that it was inducting a Russian Akula-class Type 971 nuclear submarine into its forces, in addition to an indigenously designed and built submarine, earlier called the advanced technology vessel but now officially named the INS Arihant (The Destroyer).
In addition, in recent months, India has also successfully test fired its long range Agni-III strategic missile, capable of hitting targets deep inside China, while the head of India’s missile building programme, VK Saraswat, announced in May that India will go one step further by testing the 5,000-kilometre range, nuclear-capable Agni IV missile in 2011.
4 comments:
When China wakes up to indian abuse and agressive behaviour, then Indians will shiver. India is buying weapons that were advanced 10 years ago. India will see how China is planning to fight in the modern informationlized era. China has allies in Pakistan and can easily actively support the Maoists and freedom groups in North East India, all they need is more money to expand their operations. The rebel groups can easily buy weapons of some corrupt Indian security personal. And thankfully Nepal has a maoists dominate government and Sri Lanka
has good relations with China and Pakistan. Soon Afghnaistan will be lost again. Thanks for building roads for Pakistan.
"Indian Ocean Region (IOR) to secure its extended energy supply lines (despite its name, military planners in Beijing don’t feel India has ownership of this expanse of water)"
The assertion in this quote from the article is the stupidest thing I've ever heard. Just because it is called the "Indian" Ocean does not mean that the whole ocean belongs to "India". India can only really claim as its own a "territorial zone" of up to 12 nautical miles, they can extend this to 24 nautical miles by declaring a "contiguous zone", but this claim is not as solid as a "territorial zone" and its a bit murky on what the rights are since I believe that only the US has dared to assert a "contiguous zone" (anyone can "claim" but almost nobody has the balls to "assert" their claim except for the US). Any further than the 12-24 nautical mile territorial or contiguous zone and anyone has the right to free passage through "International Waters", military ships included. So unless China breaches India's 12 mile territorial waters, India can't really do anything about it since they don't own the entire ocean.
Militarily China has a huge advantage over India, atleast rightnow. While India is talking about inducting some MMRCA multirole aircraft by buying from other countries, China makes it's own. China makes everything from subs, planes, ships, to most of the consumer items the world uses.
The US is heavily indebted to China, and the Chinese are in a strong position. They are a nice and friendly people with no hegemonic designs, look at Pakistan - it's been fair in it's dealings with China, and China in turn has proven to be a very good neighbor.
@btl25
of course you are right and China's territorial zone includes the whole of the god damed China Sea, right? Isn't that why China thinks that it can treat this body of water as its personal swimming pool. Of course, the idea of free and unhindered passage of all naval vessels in international waters only applies to China again because otherwise why would China cry every time US warships cruised around the international waters in the China Sea? Surely you make a lot of sense.
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