By P K Ghosh
April 12, 2015
A Chinese Navy nuclear submarine takes part in an international fleet review to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the founding of the People's Liberation Army Navy in Qingdao, Shandong province April 23, 2009.
An extended deployment has sent a powerful message to the Indian Navy.
The deployment of a Chinese nuclear submarine – presumably a Type 093 Shang-class – as part of the anti-piracy patrol of two ships and a supply vessel operating off the Gulf of Aden has set alarm bells ringing loudly in the Indian Navy. The implications of such a strategically significant move are simply enormous, as analysts try to decipher the real reason behind deploying such a platform in the region.
Submarines are not appropriate platforms for dealing with pirates or with piracy. The Somali pirates are known to use small craft known as skiffs individually or as part of swarm tactics to attack ships, returning to larger mother ships nearby. This gives them large operating ranges. Such highly manoeuvrable crafts can hardly be chased by relatively slow moving submarines or torpedoed from underwater, making submarines quite superfluous to anti-piracy operations. Apart from this, in a region where the incidence of piracy has declined to negligible levels, such that other navies are scaling back their presence, China is actually increasing its patrol strength.
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