Making Waves: Aiding India's Next-Generation Aircraft Carrier

This is an excerpt of the external pageoriginal articlecall_made, first published on 22 April 2015 by the external pageCarnegie Endowment for International Peacecall_made.

Introduction

Ever since the conclusion of the 2005 U.S.-Indian Civilian Nuclear Cooperation Agreement, many policymakers have wondered what the next big idea to transform bilateral ties might be. Clearly, no successor initiative could ever replicate the momentous character of the nuclear accord because it implicated core national security policies in both countries and removed the singular disagreement that had kept them at odds for over thirty years. Yet there exists presently a remarkable opportunity that holds the promise of making new waves in bilateral collaboration—in the best sense—if only Washington and New Delhi are imaginative enough to grasp it: jointly developing India’s next-generation aircraft carrier. Working in concert to develop this vessel would not only substantially bolster India’s naval combat capabilities but would also cement the evolving strategic bond between the United States and India in a truly spectacular fashion for many decades to come.

No country today possesses the technical capacity to design and build aircraft carriers like the United States. And no country today would profit as much from collaborating with the United States in carrier design and construction as India at a time when its local dominance in the Indian Ocean is on the cusp of challenge from China’s People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN), which commissioned its first aircraft carrier in 2012. If the United States were to partner with India now in developing its next large-deck carrier, tentatively christened Vishal—the first in a series of standardized designs that would eventually replace both the current Russian (INS Vikramaditya) and British (INS Viraat) hand-me-downs in the fleet as well as the indigenous Vikrant scheduled to enter service in 2018—it will have contributed mightily to helping the Indian Navy meet the emerging Chinese naval threat while simultaneously becoming a net provider of security in the Indian Ocean. U.S. assistance would also send a powerful signal to China and to all the other littoral states that U.S.-Indian defense cooperation is intended to advance their highest mutual national interests, including preserving, as former U.S. secretary of state Condoleezza Rice once phrased it, an Asian “balance of power that favors freedom.” And, finally, it would convey to important—but still skeptical—Indian audiences, especially in the military, that the United States can collaborate with India on vital projects of strategic import in ways that only Russia and Israel have done thus far.

Factoring such considerations, U.S. Senator John McCain, in a September 9, 2014, address at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, challenged the U.S. and Indian governments to expand their defense cooperation to include “more ambitious joint ventures, like shipbuilding and maritime capabilities, even aircraft carriers.” This vision was realized during U.S. President Barack Obama’s January 2015 visit to India when the two nations agreed to “form a working group to explore aircraft carrier technology sharing and design.” That this accord finally came to fruition was owed largely to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi: disregarding the reservations of some of his senior advisers, and appreciating the singular proficiency of the United States in carrier design, construction, and operations, Modi chose to accept the U.S. offer of partnership and, accordingly, authorized the conclusion of deliberations that had begun during his September 2014 visit to the United States. In so doing, Modi was guided by a clear recognition of the importance of the Indian Ocean for both India’s prosperity and its security—and by his conviction that a strong navy, with the most capable afloat aviation possible, was essential for the realization of India’s strategic aims.

The door has thus been opened for genuine U.S.-Indian collaboration in developing India’s next-generation aircraft carrier. Consummating this aspiration, however, will require the two sides to think ambitiously. This implies partnering in everything from vessel design to physical construction to sea trials so that the Indian fleet may finally commission the most formidable man-o’-war possible. The Indian Navy, undoubtedly, will lead this effort, which is already under way: its Naval Design Bureau has completed the technology assessment, feasibility studies, and analysis of alternatives, and is now deeply immersed in activities relating to engineering design. At this point, there is a quickly closing window of opportunity for a comprehensive partnership with the U.S. Naval Sea Systems Command and, as appropriate, with U.S. private industry. Such an accord would bestow great dividends because the wealth of American experience in overseeing the construction of large-deck carriers cannot but benefit the Indian Navy before it finalizes its production design.

What the Indian sea service should not do is succumb to the temptation of making bilateral cooperation merely an exercise in procuring technologies, such as the electromagnetic aircraft launch system (EMALS), which it has long eyed for its future “flattops.” If this remains its only ambition, the fecund collaboration otherwise possible will degenerate into a transactional activity centered on releasing export licenses and consummating discrete procurement deals at the American and Indian ends, respectively. While even such modest interactions would undoubtedly produce a better Indian capital ship, they would constitute a huge opportunity lost in deepening the strategic partnership with the United States. Even worse, New Delhi will have foregone the potential of developing the most formidable aviation-capable vessel possible.

The Strategic Context Underlying Indian Carrier Capabilities

The Indian Navy has been one of the few fleets to deploy aircraft carriers continuously for more than fifty years. But while this ship retained pride of place in the service’s force architecture, it did not have incontrovertible utility when India was largely an inward-looking state. Until the end of the Cold War, the Indian economy enjoyed tenuous links with the global trading system, India’s local adversaries—Pakistan and China—did not constitute major naval threats, the extraregional powers operating in the Indian Ocean largely left India alone, and New Delhi’s power-political weaknesses implied that, despite the rhetoric, India’s strategic interests did not extend far beyond its subcontinent. Consequently, aircraft carrier deployment lacked the value it otherwise might have had if India’s geopolitical circumstances had been different.

Thankfully for the navy, however, India’s fortunes are changing dramatically for the better—and the emerging strategic environment promises to reward the fleet for preserving its proficiency in carrier operations over the years. Increasing Indian economic growth recently has produced greatly expanded maritime trade, and India’s rising national power has sensitized New Delhi to its larger interests throughout the vast Indo-Pacific region—from the east coast of Africa to the Persian Gulf to the Southeast Asian straits and even beyond, to the distant East Asian rimlands. As Prime Minister Modi summarized it succinctly in a March 12, 2015, external pagespeech in Mauritiuscall_made, “India is becoming more integrated globally. We will be more dependent than before on the ocean and the surrounding regions. We must also assume our responsibility to shape its future. So, [the] Indian Ocean region is at the top of our policy priorities.” Reinforcing this conviction, the United States is also eager to see India assume a larger role in this strategic space. But most important of all, the PLAN now appears poised to operate consistently in the Indian Ocean, thus giving the traditional terrestrial rivalry between China and India a new and more serious maritime twist.

The prospect of a major Chinese naval presence in the Indian Ocean challenges Indian security in novel ways, transforming a hitherto secure rear into a springboard from which coercive power can be brought to bear in new directions against the Indian landmass. Thanks to its antipiracy patrols in the Gulf of Aden, Beijing has already taken the first steps toward maintaining a near-continuous presence in the western Indian Ocean. Chinese nuclear and conventional attack submarines have recently undertaken their first operational cruises in the wider basin, and, since 2012, Chinese auxiliary general intelligence ships have systematically conducted oceanographic and bathymetric surveys, almost certainly as a prelude to major (and perhaps regular and extended) deployments of Chinese carrier battle groups (CVBGs), surface action groups, and nuclear attack submarines in the future.

In this context, perhaps no event would be more catalyzing than the appearance of a Chinese aircraft carrier and its associated escorts in the Indian Ocean. Because carriers make a qualitative difference to the kind of sea control that can be exercised by a nation in support of both gunboat diplomacy and power projection, such a Chinese vessel operating in the vicinity of the Indian peninsula would vivify the heightened naval dangers to New Delhi. The possibility of such a presence, especially during a crisis or a conflict, would justify the acquisition of various instruments intended to neutralize it—with the most obvious counters being land-based airpower, attack submarines, and of course carrier aviation itself.

India’s favorable geography makes land-based airpower a particularly potent instrument in dealing with any future Chinese aircraft carrier in the Indian Ocean. But this solution is most viable only in relative proximity to the Indian coastline. Unless India acquires a dedicated bomber contingent, its best strike fighters today (the Su-30MKI, for example) have useful operating radii of 650–1,000 kilometers (400–620 miles) from their home bases, depending on the missions and flight profiles involved. Air refueling can, depending on tactical circumstances in the Indian context, extend these ranges by some 25 to 30 percent. But it cannot compensate for the critical limitations that afflict land-based fighters in general: the increased but unproductive mission time required to reach far-flung targets compared to potentially nearby carrier airpower, not to mention the operational delays incurred when important targets have to be reattacked because of mechanical failures or successful enemy interception.

As a rule, therefore, the farther away military action occurs from the Indian peninsula, the more indispensable carrier aviation becomes (see figure 1). Preparing for such a contingency is, in fact, utterly reasonable because if a PLAN flotilla in the Indian Ocean is to be parried by force, Indian naval strategists would seek to neutralize it as far away from their homeland as possible. Furthermore, if Indian commerce from Europe, Africa, and the Far East has to be protected along the country’s sea lines of communication at great distances from the mainland, an Indian CVBG would be invaluable.