The Indian Navy is vital for safeguarding India’s defence, maritime and economic interests and also as an instrument of diplomacy. The recent spate of accidents involving naval ships is a matter of deep concern as it has potential to affect India’s ability to be taken seriously in a difficult and adversarial region.
THE Indian Navy, the world’s seventh largest, is in the news for the wrong reasons at a time when it has just finished hosting a major week-long 17 nation multi-lateral exercise named MILAN and is currently engaged in a massive month-long Theatre Level Readiness and Operation Exercise (TROPEX) involving 50 ships that includes for the first time India’s nuclear-powered submarine, INS Chakra, on lease from Russia.
A series of mishaps and accidents – seven over last December and January alone – have rocked this highly expensive technology intensive service.The incidents are fraught with the probability of it causing a loss of image to not only the Navy but also to a geo-strategically importantly positioned nation that correctly considers naval power to be vital.
These incidents (see chart) have ranged from the Indian Navy’s first-ever sinking of a frontline submarine in a horrific explosion in August last year that resulted in the death of 18 personnel. This incidentally is the world’s only peace time loss of a submarine in post World War-II history while docked in harbour. A collision with a fishing boat that led to the latter’s sinking, an on board fire, damage caused while berthing, and damage to vital equipment that involves a sonar and a propeller thereby leading to grounding of two ships are among other recent mishaps involving Indian Navy ships.
At least two of these incidents have been serious enough to warrant the Navy stripping two ship captains of their command. More significantly, the Navy has lost a total four vessels – three ships and one submarine – during peacetime over the last 24 years. Two of these major mishaps have occurred in the last three years alone. In contrast, the Navy has lost only one ship in a war – INS Khukri during the 1971 India-Pakistan war.
These mishaps and accidents are being attributed to a range of factors. One such factor is the congestion of vessels around Mumbai where most of the Navy’s assets are located and where naval vessels end up having to share the entry and exit points with merchant ships in the highly busy port of the country’s financial capital. Added to this is the steady problem of silting. Since de-silting is entrusted with the Dredging Corporation which functions at its own pace, this adds to the existing congestion along the severely limited and therefore congested navigable sea lanes. But then some of the incidents have occurred near the less busy port of Vishakapatnam or on the high seas where the above does not apply. There are therefore other reasons which only the Navy can address. Firstly, direct violation of standard operating procedures by officers and sailors and secondly, possible deficiencies in the quality of recruits, training and leadership alike. The Navy further attributes the mishaps to the rapid expansion of the Navy that is inducting new and different types of vessels without a corresponding increase in manpower.
The Navy’s top brass is of the view that while the number and diversity of vessels have increased, it has not been accompanied by the necessary clearances for an increase in manpower at the technical and maintenance staff level leading to faults at dock repair yards as well as the performance levels of warships.
But this explanation given by the Navy runs contrary to observations made in an earlier Parliamentary Standing Committee of Defence report tabled in March 2011 which in fact has made some very laudatory observations about the Navy’s manpower planning policy. The Navy, the report states, has put in place ‘a scientific and logical system of manpower planning using available information technology.’ Manpower planning in the Navy is carried out on the basis of long and short term reviews of the Navy’s manpower requirement. While the long term review is carried out at a broad macro level and covers a period of approximately five to ten years, the short term review looks at a scenario of two to three years. This short term review ‘is able to take advantage of more up-to-date and reliable inputs and forecasts and is therefore useful for fine tuning.’
The Ministry of Defence, on behalf of the Navy, has thereafter significantly gone on to make the major claim that ‘no difficulty has been experienced in terms of manpower planning in the Navy.’ ‘The system of the Navy’, the report states, ‘has stood the test of time. The induction targets are being calculated accurately and the platforms established in respect of manpower have been observed to be satisfactory.’
Like in most cases, the truth lies somewhere in between. And it would be necessary for the Navy to look into the causative factors and take remedial measures. Some incidents, such as hitting a jetty while berthing, may not be considered unusual and that serious unless it results in considerable damage to the vessel.
But overall the issue is of grave concern considering that the Indian Navy today is far more advanced, powerful and operationally engaged than before. After almost two decades, the Navy has returned to being a two aircraft carrier maritime force with one of the aircraft carrier, the Russian-origin INS Vikramaditya, belonging to a class (44,500 tonnes) never operated before. This carrier has on board Russian supplied MiG-29k aircraft which again are different to operate compared to the British supplied Sea Harrier vertical/short take off and landing (V/STOL) currently operating on board the British-origin aircraft carrier, INS Viraat. Then again, the Navy operates a range of major surface combatants that includes INS Jalashwa, a Landing Platform Dock, bought from the United States, Destroyers and Frigates with stealth features, Airborne Early Warning (AEW) helicopters (Russian supplied Kamov 31), and, for the first time, maritime surveillance aircraft with strike capability (the US-made P8i Poseidon). The Navy has contracted purchase of the more advanced French Scorpene submarines and leased a Russian Akula class nuclear-powered submarine (INS Chakra). The Indian Navy is in the threshold of acquiring INS Arihant, the indigenously built nuclear powered submarine which is to be equipped with the Sagarika SLBM (submarine launched ballistic missile) considered vital for a credible nuclear triad.
The Navy is busier than before engaged as it is in a wide and unprecedented range of naval diplomacy. It has expanded its frequency, number and intensity of bilateral exercises, expanded to tripartite exercises (example with US and Japan), quadrangle exercises (example with US, Japan and Australia), multi-lateral exercises and even to regional maritime groupings such as the IBSAMAR (India, Brazil and South Africa). The Navy holds exercises with every major maritime power across the world and with almost all littoral states except Pakistan. It has reached to new countries such as China, Israel and in the Gulf region and extended its area of naval exercises to beyond the Indian Ocean to the South China Sea.
The Navy has similarly been operationally engaged such as in anti-piracy and international disaster relief and rescue operations (example Indonesia, Sri Lanka and the Maldives post the December 2004 tsunami), It has rescued foreign vessels from the high seas; assisted countries (example Sri Lanka) with maritime patrolling; patrolled geo-strategic locations such as the Malacca Strait as part of an international maritime cooperation effort and made numerous port calls to scores of countries across the world.
The Navy’s maritime responsibilities are indeed vast. With a coastline of 7,517 km, 1,197 islands located in the Arabian Sea and the Bay of Bengal, an exclusive economic zone of 2.01 million sq. km stretching across 12 nautical miles (NM) of territorial sea, a contiguous zone of a further 12 NM and a total EEZ range of 200 NM from the coast and several offshore installations to protect, the Navy has a huge area to defend. The Indian Ocean is an economic, energy, cultural and military highway and a vital transit route linking the Pacific Ocean with Asia, Africa and Europe. The Indian Navy has a major responsibility to ensure control of the sea lanes of communication (SLOC) for smooth passage of oil supply and trade across half the globe considering that the Indian Ocean is straddled by the strategically important choke points of Malacca Strait and the Bab el Mandeb across the Arabian Sea and the Malacca Strait near Singapore.
The Indian Navy, which came into existence 402 years ago in 1612 as the ‘East India Company’s Marine’, may never seek to emulate the 19th century American maritime strategist Rear Admiral Alfred Thayer Mahan who professed that national greatness was inextricably associated with the sea, with its commercial usage in peace and its control in war. But it certainly seems to have adopted the British barrister turned maritime strategist, Julian Stafford Corbett’s maxim that the object of naval warfare lies in directly or indirectly securing the command of the sea and maritime communications or to prevent the enemy from securing it. The Indian Navy certainly needs to take corrective measures to avoid such mishaps and accidents to effect Corbett’s maxims.
OTHER MAJOR INCIDENTS: 1990 - 2012
20 AUGUST 1990: INS Andaman, a 950 tonne Petya Class patrol boat, sunk 150 nautical miles off Vishakapatnam. This was the Navy’s first peace time loss.
NOVEMBER 1998: INS Jyoti, a Fleet Tanker, collided with a Panama registered Bulk Carrier ‘MV Yickwing’ in the Malacca Strait causing extensive damage to the structure.
DECEMBER 2005: INS Trishul, a stealth Frigate, rammed into a merchant vessel off Mumbai.
APRIL 2006: INS Prahar, sunk after a 450-tonne Guided Missile Corvette collided with a civilian vessel 20 nautical miles off Goa. All sailors rescued.
SEPTEMBER 2006: INS Dunagiri, a Frigate, collided with a Cypriot merchant vessel.
7TH JANUARY 2008: A merchant ship struck a submarine 140 nautical miles north west of the Mumbai coast.
1ST FEBRUARY 2008: Five sailors killed and two seriously injured in a hydrogen sulphide gas leak on board INS Jalashwa, a Landing Platform Dock, during an exercise in the Bay of Bengal.
30 JANUARY 2011: INS Vindhyagiri, a frigate, capsized after colliding with a Cyprus registered merchant ship ‘MV Novdlake’ at the entrance to Mumbai harbour.
NOVEMBER 2012: INS Tarkash, a stealth Frigate, hit against a quay near Yantar shipyard in Russia.
SOME SOLUTIONS
The Navy needs to most of all address the issue of human error which appears to be a major causative factor. This requires better recruitment, training and leadership.
Dockyards need to maintain high standards of repair and refit capability to prevent material and technical failure in vessels.
The concerned authorities must address issues such as desilting, dredging and congestion in ports and harbours and hasten the development of the naval base at Karvar.
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