Multinational String-Of-Pearls Emerging In Southern IOR & Andaman Sea Through Algorithmic Alliance

Since mid-May, following a series of behind-the-scenes parleys and deliberations, a variety of steps have been taken toward the adoption of a multinational sea-control strategy that aims at nullifying China’s irrational assertiveness within both the South China Sea and the Indian Ocean Region (IOR). For instance, in their first virtual Summit-level meeting held in the backdrop of the COVID-19 pandemic, Australia and India on June 4, 2020 elevated their bilateral ties to a comprehensive strategic partnership (CSP) and signed seven key accords, including a mutual logistics support agreement that is expected to enable the two countries to access each other’s military bases, including Australia’s Christmas Island, located south of Indonesia’s Island of Java.

This was followed a month later by a three-day official visit to India (from July 26 to 28) of Indonesia’s Defence Minister Gen (Ret’d) Prabowo Subianto during which he and his Indian counterpart Rajnath Singh discussed various ways and means of strengthening the military-to-military and military-industrial ties between the two maritime neighbours.

In particular, India expressed her intention to financially and materially assist Indonesia in transforming the existing naval and air bases at Sabang Island (located northeast of Banda Aceh in Sumatra) into fully operational installations and in return secure access for Indian Navy seaborne and airborne assets to such installations. Indonesia also evinced interest in procuring India-developed integrated platform management systems, combat management systems and hull-mounted sonar suites for a family of shallow-water multi-purpose vessels developed by its state-owned, Surabaya-based shipbuilder PT PAL.

But, as the saying goes, the best is yet to come. And this event will take place between mid-September and end just before Indian Air Force Day (October 8) and will comprise a series of joint services exercises taking place in the Andaman Sea, with a strong emphasis being laid on sea-control being exercised through anti-submarine warfare (ASW) and maritime-strike operations (with both IAF Jaguar IMs armed with AGM-84A Harpoon ASCMs and Su-30MKIs armed with BrahMos-A ASCMs), and the enforcement of maritime exclusion zones (MEZ).

Moreover, apart from the Indian Navy (IN) and Indian Air Force (IAF), the US Navy and Japan’s Maritime Self-Defense Force (JMSDF) too are likely to be invited to take part in these exercises, with the US Navy contributing about four warships from its Yokosuka-based 7th Fleet, and the JMSDF despatching a Kawasaki P-1 LRMR-ASW platform.

Details of this multinational naval exercise will be firmed up during the three-day naval commanders’ biannual conference in New Delhi (from August 19 till 21), which will also be the first naval commanders’ conference since the institution of Department of Military Affairs (DMA) and creation of the post of Chief of Defence Staff (CDS).

And as a curtain-raiser event, three B-2 Spirit stealthy bombers recently deployed from the USAF’s 509th Bomb Wing at Whiteman Air Force Base, Missouri, to Naval Support Facility Diego Garcia in the southern Indian Ocean to support the US Pacific Air Forces’ Bomber Task Force missions. They arrived on August 12 at Diego Garcia on Wednesday after a 29-hour sortie. 

The last time a B-2 task force had deployed to the INDOPACOM region was in January 2019, when three B-2s and about 200 airmen deployed to Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam in Hawaii. Those B-2s were from Whiteman’s 393rd Bomb Squadron, and flew 27 sorties for a total of 171 hours. Their local and long-duration missions included practicing hot-pit refuelling and sorties with the USAF Hawaii Air National Guard’s F-22 Raptors.

The B-2s are always deployed overseas along with their B2SS Extra Large Deployable Aircraft Hangar System, which is a transportable semi-rigid dome structure designed to be rapidly deployed, assembled and made ready to support maintenance on B-2s at forward operating locations. Measuring 250-feet wide by 60-feet high, the structure provides a 1.1 million cubic foot environment that is air conditioned, fully environmentally isolated against chemical and biological attack, and also features a single 10-ton clamshell retractable door.

The last time the B-2s had been deployed to Diego Garcia was on October 6, 2001, when two B-2s took off from Whiteman to fly 36 hours across the Pacific Ocean and up the Indian Ocean into Afghanistan. They struck targets throughout Afghanistan, in conjunction with the Rockwell B-1B Lancer and Boeing B-52 Stratofortress bombers flying out of Diego Garcia, and then returned to the same island, making the entire trip over 40 hours. At Diego Garcia, the B-2 crews exited their aircraft, with engines running, and a fresh crew climbed on board to pilot the aircraft on their 30-hour return-flight to Missouri. By the end of the first three nights, six B-2s flew more than 420 hours, accomplished over 36 aerial refuellings, and returned to Whiteman with no incidents.

The ongoing B-2 deployment in Diego Garcia is aimed at sending a clear message to China about the vulnerabilities of its sea lanes of communications (SLOC) in the Andaman Sea, which falls within the ambit of both the IOR and the INDOPACOM region. In particular, it dashes all hopes about China overcoming its ‘Malacca Dilemma’ by establishing an overland oil/gas supply pipeline via Myanmar for its hinterland-located petrochemical processing infrastructure in the Sichuan and Yunnan provinces, which in turn are designed to provide the great bulk of the POL requirements of the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) Western, Southern and Eastern Theatre Commands in case a naval blocade is imposed against all the coastal cities of southern and eastern China.

The PLAAF, on its part, has since 2017 built new high-altitude radar stations housing the Type 609 UHF-band airspace surveillance radars at a location north-east of Walong, another near Ruili, and yet another in southern Yunnan close to the China-Laos international border.

It may be recalled that the state-owned China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) built and operates the Myanmar–China oil pipeline, which bypasses the sea route via the Malacca Strait. This pipeline and a companion natural-gas pipeline transport hydrocarbons from the Bay of Bengal across Myanmar to southwestern China. The gas and oil pipelines run in parallel and start near Kyaukphyu, run through Mandalay, Lashio, and Muse in Myanmar before entering China at the border city of Ruili in Yunnan province. The gas pipeline, the maximum capacity of which is 12 billion cubic metres/year, carries natural gas from Myanmar’s offshore A-1 and A-3 blocks.

This pipeline runs further from Kunming to Guizhou and Guangxi in China and is 2,806km-long in total. The oil pipeline, the maximum capacity of which is 0.24 million bbl/year, transports crude oil carried by tankers from the Middle East. Therefore, a large oil-import port and storage tanks have also been built as an input point of this oil pipeline. The port can receive vessels up to 300,000 deadweight tonnage (DWT) and has storage capacity of 1.2 million cubic metres. This pipeline, which eventually terminates in Kunming, capital of Yunnan Province, has a total length of 771km. The total estimated project costs are US$1.04 billion for the gas pipeline and $1.5 billion for the oil pipeline. Construction of the Myanmar–China oil pipeline and gas pipeline started in June 2010. In June 2013, CNPC announced that the Myanmar section of the gas pipeline was complete and ready for testing while the oil pipeline was 94% complete. In January 2015, Myanmar officially opened a deep-sea port off its western coast and started trial operations.  To be exact, the port and storage tanks are located on the Madae Island. There are 12 storage tanks at the port and the capacity of each tank is 100,000 cubic metres. Myanmar receives $13 million per year and a toll fee of the pipeline (US$1/tonne) from CNPC.

In March 2003, PetroChina and the Sichuan Provincial government agreed to jointly develop a petrochemical complex near Chengdu centred on a cracker producing 800,000tpa (tons per annum) of ethylene. By 2004, PetroChina had completed a feasibility study and an environmental impact assessment report. The project received final approval in 2005. Ground-breaking on the complex took place in the first quarter of 2006 and the construction was completed in December 2012. The petrochemical complex was commissioned in January 2014. The facilities are situated on the outskirts of Chengdu City, Sichuan Province, China. Along with the 800,000tpa of ethylene, the complex produces 450,000tpa of polypropylene (PP), 600,000tpa of paraxylene (PX), 380,000tpa of monoethylene glycol (MEG) and 50,000tpa of ethylene oxide (EO) PetroChina Sichuan Petrochemical Company (PSP) is owned by PetroChina, which has a 51% stake and Chengdu Petrochemicals, which owns the remaining 49%.

The projected upgradation of the IN’s and IAF’s existing air bases at Great Nicobar and Car Nicobar islands, coupled with a parallel upgradation being undertaken at Sabang and Christmas Island, will enable the IN’s P-8I LRMR/ASW platforms and the Royal Australian Air Force’s P-8A Poseidon LRMR/ASW platforms to function in a networked manner for wide-area surveillance stretching from the Ombai-Wetar Strait off Timor Leste all the way westwards via the Lombok and Sunda Straits, all of which are used by the PLA Navy when deploying from the South China Sea into the IOR.

In March 2019, the Indian and US navies had inked a loan agreement and installed two Combined Enterprise Regional Information Exchange System (CENTRIXS) kits at the IN HQ and discussions are still ongoing for more such systems to be installed at a variety of locations and platforms. These kits enable encrypted communications between networked navies, enabling a quantum increase in maritime domain awareness (MDA).

In another development, Israel’s Elbit Systems on August 17 was awarded a contract valued at approximately $27 million by the IN to supply an EHUD rangeless air-to-air combat training system, to be operated from the IN’s shore-based naval air stations along India’s eastern and western seaboards as well as on board aircraft carriers. Product deliveries will be performed over a two-year period, to be followed by three years of availability-based maintenance.

The EHUD ACMI system offers advanced air-to-air combat training capabilities, including features such as real-time hit notification and removal, real-time electronic warfare and air-to-air weapons delivery, simulation and advanced debriefing. The system supports an unlimited number of live networked participants, through Elbit Systems’ data-link protocol that also allows interoperability with existing EHUD ACMI systems operated by the IAF (the first two were procured in the late 1990s while an $18 million contract was inked in December 2010 for two additional systems).

Growing Backlog Of Pending Procurements

However, the IN continues to be devoid of its three cadet training vessels and five naval offshore patrol vessels (NOPV), which were contracted for eight years ago from the Surat-based ABG Shipyard and Pipavav-based Reliance Naval and Engineering Ltd, respectively. Both shipbuilders have filed for bankruptsy.

The IN has a projected requirement for 24 GRP-hulled minehunters (MCMV), but the first procurement exercise that began in 2005, was terminated in 2009. The IN had then sought eight MCMVs through indigenous construction, which was later revised to “acquisition of two from the foreign industrial collaborator and six from an Indian Shipyard”. In 2015, an Expression of Interest (EoI) was sent to Germany’s ThyssenKrupp, Russian Shipyards, South Korea’s Kangnam Corp, Italy’s Intermarine and Spain’s Navantia, while the MoD-owned Goa Shipyard Ltd (GSL) was subsequently nominated to construct 12 MCMVs under a Transfer of Technology (ToT) agreement with Kangnam Corp, but due to non-compliance with the ToT requirements (Kangnam itself did not develop any MCMV, but had instead licence-built Intermarine’s Lerichi-class MCMVs and was therefore not authorised to export its MCMV production know-how to anyone else) and over-pricing issues, this procurement exercise too was cancelled in January 2018.

In late 2019, Moscow sent India an unsolicited technical proposal under which the Project 12701 Alexandrite-E (Eksportniy) GRP-hulled MCMVs were offered for licenced-production by GSL. These vessels each have a displacement of 890 tonnes, are 61.6 metres long, 10.3 metres wide and have a draught of 3.1 metres.

Each of the MCMVs are powered by two diesel-engines with a power output of 2,500hp each (the IN prefers to use MTU-supplied engines), producing a speed of 16 Knots, cruise range of 1,500 nautical miles, and an endurance of 10 days. The vessel is manned by a 44-strong crew.

Pending the arrival of the GRP-hulled MCMVs, the IN in February 2019 inked a Rs.306 crore ($42 million) deal with THALES Australia for eight mine countermeasures clip-on influence sweeps. The IN is now equipping its fast interceptor craft (scheduled to be delivered between 2021 and 2022) with these suites, which have infrasonic advanced acoustic generators.

Last May the IN began inducting the four additional P-8I LRMR/AQSW platforms worth $1.1 billion, orders for which were placed in 2016. Final deliveries will be completed by January 2022. This procurement is under an option clause as part of the earlier procurement of eight P-8Is worth $2.1 billion between 2013 and 2015. Against its stated requirement for 24 P-8Is, the IN now plans to procure only six more P-8Is, whose acquisition was approved November 2019, bit now awaits contract signature. The 18 P-8Is will be serving with the 312A Naval Air Squadron, based at Arakkonam in Tamil Nadu.

In June, 2016, the MoD had sent a Letter of Request (LoR) to the US for seeking to purchase 22 MQ-9 Predator B Sea Guardian UAS platforms and related ground-control stations from General Atomics. A request for Information (RFI) was subsequently issued to the US Office of Defense Cooperation on November 14, 2017. Following the signing of the Communications Compatibility and Security Agreement (COMCASA) in September 2018, it was expected that the IN would buy only 12 MQ-9B Sea Guardians (equipped with belly-mounted Raytheon APS-148 SeaVue X-band multi-mode radars) and not 22 of them for $2 billion as planned earlier. However, this plan too has been put on hold and instead the IN is now seeking 10 shipborne BTOL-UAS platforms, for which there are only two realistic contenders.

Northrop Grumman’s MQ-8B Fire Scout’s endurance with full fuel and a baseline 55kg payload is more than 8 hours, and flight time with a 250kg payload is more than 5 hours, and to get more out of the engine the upgraded transmission is rated for 320shp continuous power from the Rolls-Royce 250-C20W turboshaft, with a 5-minute emergency rating of 340shp. The Fire Scout’s primary structure has been strengthened for a design weight of up to 1,545kg, although the maximum take-off gross weight will be 1,430kg. The AWHERO combines Italian OEM Leonardo’s experience in the development of rotary wing platforms and Sistemi Dinamici’s experience. Two modular payload bays carry sensors, including radar (such as the Gabbiano TS Ultra-Light), electro-optical (EO)/infra-red (IR) and light imaging detection and ranging (LiDAR), and communications systems. The payloads can be nose, underbelly or side-mounted. The nose bay can accommodate a 10-inch EO/IR turret or an 8-inch EO/IR turret with radar, while the underbelly and side bays can be used for heavier payloads.

The MoD in August 2017 had issued a global RFI for 123 naval multi-role helicopters and 111 naval multi-utility helicopters, collectively valued at 410 billion. The RFI for procuring the NMRHs and NMUHs were sent to Lockheed Martin (which has acquired Sikorsky) and Bell Helicopter of US, Airbus Helicopters of France, and Russian Helicopters of Russia. Both helicopter-types are required to be licence-built in India under the new Strategic Industrial Partnership policy, announced in May 2019, under which a strategic partner selected only from among domestic private-sector companies is required to tie-up with an overseas OEM. Both the OEM and strategic partner will be selected by the MoD. Since the current exercise is to select the overseas OEMs, the selection of domestic strategic partner will take place later. Domestic companies that are competing to be that strategic partner for both helicopter programmes include Kalyani Group/Bharat Forge Ltd, Reliance Defence & Engineering Ltd, Larsen & Toubro, Mahindra Aerospace, and Tata Advanced Systems Ltd. The 123 shipborne NMRHs worth $7 billion will be in the 9- to 12.5-tonne category, while the 111 NMUHs worth more than $3 billion, will be in the 4.5-tonne category. The preferred solution for the NMUH requirement is the AS-565 MBe from Airbus Helicopters.

It may be recalled that in 2011, the MoD had issued a global Request for Proposal (RFP) for the purchase of an initial 16 NMRHs (part of the then stated requirement for 44 such platforms) in which Sikorsky with its S-70B Seahawk had emerged as the winner against the NHIndustries’ NH-90. However, this procurement exercise was subsequently cancelled and it was only on May 14, 2020 that a contract inked for 24 MH-60R Seahawks after final selection in February 2020. The MH-60R’s weapons package includes Kongsberg’s Naval Strike Missile in its helicopter launched variant (NSM-HL), while the sensor package includes Telephonics’ APS-153(V) multi-mode radar and THALES/Raytheon FLASH/AQS-22 LFDS low-frequency dunking sonar.