When India’s Defence Minister Rajnath Singh and US Secretary of Defense Lloyd J Austin III met in New Delhi on June 5 this year, many were wondering what was the reason why the two had indulged in what can be termed as ‘over-hugging’ before and after the delegation-level talks. The answer came on June 15 when the Indian Ministry of Defence’s (MoD) Defence Acquisition Council approved the off-the-shelf procurement of 31 General Atomics-built MQ-9Bs (15 MQ-9B Sea Guardians for the Indian Navy and 16 Sky Guardians—eight each for the Indian Army and Indian Air Force) from the US Navy and US Army through the government-to-government Foreign Military Sales (FMS) route. And the numbers of these MALE-UAVs itself was the giveaway to another reality—India definitely will have a critical role to play in the maritime awareness domain in the event of military hostilities breaking out between the US-Japan combine on one hand and China on the other in the event of a full-scale military invasion of Taiwan by China.
This should put to rest all doubts to the contrary that were aired over the past 30 days by the likes of Ashley Tellis and Daniel Markey, which can be viewed here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JIN7stDcfmk&t=3s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OlEmF0sQ9jc&t=3s
Simply explained, India as the nett provider of security within the Indian Ocean Region (IOR) stretching from the Bab-el-Mandeb in the Red Sea right up to the Malacca Strait, will do her bit in providing persistent ISR support to the navies of not just the US, but also to those of Japan, Australia and Singapore, all of which always deploy their warships within the IOR. Hence, one can safely infer that the MQ-9B Sea Guardians will also be operating from the Indian Navy air bases at Karwar and Kochi.
Interestingly, India is the only country that has operational interactions with three US theatre commands--Indo-Pacific Command (INDOPACOM), Central Command (CENTCOM) and African Command (AFRICOM). Providing such ISR support is not new, since under OP Sagittarius between late 2001 and mid-2002 the Indian Navy’s AOPVs had escorted high-value cargo of the US Navy and Marines, which meant for sustaining military operations in Afghanistan for OP Enduring Freedom, across the Malacca Strait, known for its high density of shipping traffic and incidents of piracy.
For all the four countries of the QUAD Grouping, filling the persistent ISR void within the IOR had acquired a sense of urgency due to the widespread belief that China is expected to militarily invade Taiwan latest by 2027.
But most importantly, military-industrial
activities have commenced on a project that calls for: 1) laying of
an undersea optical fibre-optic cable from Chennai to Port Blair; and 2) the
construction of an undersea network of seabed-based surveillance sensors stretching
from the tip of Sumatra right up to Indira Point and from there to India’s southeastern
seaboard; and another similar network stretching from India’s southwestern
seaboard right up to the entrance to the Red Sea (near Socotra). Once
completed, this network will be an integral part of the existing US-Japan ‘Fish
Hook’ sound surveillance (SOSUS) network that will play a pivotal role in
constantly monitoring all submarine patrols mounted by China’s PLA Navy (PLAN)
in both the South China Sea and the IOR. This network will in turn be networked
with the Indian Navy’s high-bandwidth National Command Control and
Communications Intelligence network (NC3I), which has been set up under the
IN’s National Maritime Domain Awareness (NMDA) project at a cost of Rs.1,003
crores. At the heart of the NC3I is the Gurgaon-based, Rs.453 crore Information
Management and Analysis Centre (IMAC), whose systems integration software
packages were supplied by Raytheon and CISCO.
However, it is also a fact that if India were to play a critical role in support of a combined US-Japan counter-attack against China, the PLA’s Rocket Force’s (PLARF) DF-17 and DF-27 ballistic missiles (BM)—both equipped with hypersonic glide vehicles (HGV)—will definitely target the Indian Navy’s MALE-UAV operating bases in India’s south-eastern seaboard (INS Rajali) and air bases at Port Blair and Campbell Bay. It now remains to be seen whether the US provides assured protection against the PLARF’s HGV-armed BMs by stationing its THAAD interceptor batteries and related AN/TPY-2 fire-control radars in such operating bases of the Indian Navy.
Another area of cooperation between the US and India that can be expected s the co-development of a cheaper and scaled-down version of the X-band SBX floating radar, which, in India’s case, can be a ship-mounted X-band fire-control radar fabricated in India with US military-technical assistance.
