India's Super-sensitive Spaceport Faces A Chinese Privacy Invasion

[Banglar Bir]

India's Super-Sensitive Spaceport faces a Chinese privacy invasion
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Wednesday, November 02, 2016
By: Asia Times

The decision by the Sri Lankan government to sell the deep sea port in Hambantota to a Chinese state-owned company should not have come as surprise to India. Since April at least, the topic was under discussion as a measure to reduce the country’s debt burden.

Yet, the surprise lies in India’s failure to forestall the deal. Some fundamental questions arise regarding the regional policies under Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government.

A full-fledged, permanent Chinese “presence” in Hambantota cannot but affect the geopolitics of Indian Ocean region.

At its most obvious level, Hambantota becomes a hub of China’s proposed Maritime Silk Road in Indian Ocean. By the way, Colombo also proposes to hand over 6100 hecatres of land near Hambantota Port on long lease to a Chinese company as an exclusive “investment zone.”

Hambantota is located only 10 knots away from the Europe-Far East Line, one of the busiest international sea lanes.

Only 1300 kilometers separate Hambantota from each of India’s two strategic naval bases in the Bay of Bengal – Visakhapatanam and Andaman & Nicobar Islands – from where Indian Navy sets out occasionally to make its presence felt in the South China Sea.

Also, Hambantota is just 500 kms to the south of Sriharikota, India’s super-sensitive spaceport from where it launches military satellites and conducts missile tests.

In a nutshell, Chinese presence in Hambantota will end the “privacy” that India enjoyed in the Bay of Bengal as strategic backyard.

Indian diplomacy has suffered a massive setback. Coming on top of cascading tensions with Pakistan and downhill slide in relations with China, India’s security environment gets very cloudy.

The Hindu nationalist Rashtriya Sevak Sangh (RSS), which mentors Modi government, has choreographed India’s policies toward Sri Lanka and owes an explanation.

The RSS estimated that Sri Lanka could be sucked into the Indian orbit by putting rings of engagement around its elites.

RSS prompted Modi government to abandon the traditional leverage of Sri Lankan Tamil problem to exert influence on Colombo and instead deploy “soft power,” overlooking that the Sinhala narrative pits Hindu nationalism as existential threat.

Indeed, Delhi was in triumphalist mood when the “regime change” was accomplished in Colombo in January 2015. Delhi elites celebrated that the new “pro-Indian” government in Colombo would exorcise Chinese influence.

However, twenty months down the lane, the opposite happened. The RSS’s blind faith in Sri Lankan elites to act as India’s proxies proved to be naive and delusional. This tragic miscalculation – not Pakistan, not Kashmir, not Taliban – turns out to be Modi’s most disastrous foreign-policy legacy.

Yet, Colombo cannot be faulted. Sri Lanka stares at a debt trap. The debt-to-GDP ratio stands at 75% and over 95 percent of government revenue goes toward debt repayment.

On the other hand, Chinese diplomacy has outclassed India’s. China has the financial muscle to back up a robust diplomacy, whereas, India punched above its weight.

As rising global power, China will not be deterred by India’s archaic thesis of Indian Ocean being its “sphere of influence”.

China’s stated preference so far has been to work with India in the larger interests of regional stability – be it in Nepal, Sri Lanka or Bangladesh. China invited India invest in its flagship project known as Colombo Port City.

India could have taken up the intellectual challenge in a spirit of pragmatism with long-term objectives in mind. But given their zero sum mindset, Hindu nationalists insist that India cannot cooperate with China’s Belt and Road Initiative.

China probably expected Modi to see the light of reason at some point. At any rate, it so far chose to sidestep Modi government’s patently uncooperative approach.

In Nepal in July, Beijing didn’t resist the overthrow of “China-friendly” prime minister K. P. Oli, just as in January last year in Sri Lanka, it didn’t get agitated when US-Indian moves drove “pro-China” Sri president Mahinda Rajapaksa out of power.

Why is Indian diplomacy looking so disoriented in its natural habitat? Primarily, India never before descended into such an abyss of intellectual bankruptcy. The contrast with China couldn’t be sharper.

Whereas RSS and Modi count on the sayings of India’s ancient Machiavelli, Chanakya ( 4th century BC), to co-relate the country with the twenty-first century world order, China resorts to the intellectual tools of dialectical materialism.

Fundamentally, the Modi government lacks a sense of proportion. When Modi visited Ulaanbaatar in May last year, with an eye on China, he made a stunning announcement of $1 billion as low-interest credit to Mongolia.

Yet, in a bizarre, ironic turn, US$1 billion is roughly the amount China’s Red Chip company, China Merchants Port Holding Limited, will be spending to buy up strategic assets in Hambantota.

Again, only two weeks ago, India organized a BIMSTEC ‘outreach’ at Goa during the BRICS summit in an act of one-upmanship against Pakistan and China. BIMSTEC is touted as a “sub-regional grouping” bringing together Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Myanmar under Indian tutelage.

Now, hardly a fortnight later, Colombo bolts away, selling a vast swathe of land to Chinese companies.

Nonetheless, despite the latest setback, the RSS will not be shaken out of the belief that India is strongly placed to tap into the Sino-American rivalry and make a good living out of it. The RSS strategists believe that this was what China did in the Cold war era, too.

They overlook that if China could exploit the American market, it was largely because it was also willing to reform and globalize its own economy.

Equally, China could take advantage of its vast reserves of human resources, thanks to the social formation created through decades of communist rule. India is a far cry from where China stood in the eighties.

A defining moment is approaching in India-China ties. Beijing warned last week that the move by Delhi to invite the Dalai Lama to visit the disputed region of Arunachal Pradesh – hot on the heels of the US ambassador to India – “will only damage peace and stability of the border areas and bilateral relations.” Beijing “demanded” that Delhi should “adhere to its political commitments on Tibet-related issues.”

Indeed, India’s relations with China and Pakistan have lately become intertwined, bringing into the matrix, inevitably, the whole question of China’s presence in South Asia and the Indian Ocean.

Therefore, the thing to be watched closely is how China proposes to utilize the strategic assets in Hambantota.

India’s Foreign Secretary S. Jaishankar visited Colombo last week within a couple of days of the visit by Sri Lankan Prime Minister Maithripala Sirisena to Goa for the BIMSTEC outreach where he had met Modi.

The Sri Lankan Foreign Minister Mangala Samaraweera is due now to arrive in Delhi in the weekend on an unscheduled visit.

To be sure, alarm bells are ringing in Delhi. India’s hush-hush assets, which it had safely hidden away in its strategic backyard of Bay of Bengal, face the startling prospect of privacy invasion.


Indian Navy scouting for 'Next Gen Stealth Corvettes' under ‘Make in India’ banner
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Tuesday, November 01, 2016
By: Indian Express

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The Indian Navy is scouting for seven “next generation” heavily armed Corvettes that will come as a boost to the domestic industry since it will be a ‘Make in India’ project running into several thousand crore of rupees. Private shipyards like the Reliance Defence and Engineering Limited (RDEL) are likely to respond to the navy’s Request for Information (RFI) along with state-run shipyards. “We will be pitching for it strongly. We have made different types of warships in our shipyard and we are the only ones to have delivered earlier than schedule,” Chairman and Manging Director of Goa Shipyard, Rear Admiral Shekhar Mital (Retd) told PTI.

The corvettes will be capable of carrying out surface-to-surface missile attacks, anti-submarine warfare operations, and the navy wants the ships to be delivered from 2023. While the exact value of the project is yet to be determined since it all depends on the kind of weapon platform that will be on board, sources said it is safe to assume that each corvette would cost about Rs 1,500 to Rs 1,800 crore. The criteria for the new vessels are largely similar to the Khukri-class boats they will replace — 4,000 nautical mile range, maximum and sustained top speeds of 25-27 knots.

The 120-meter-long single hull corvettes, or small warships, will have low radar, acoustic, magnetic, visual and infra-red signatures. The ships should able to carry a minimum of 8 surface-to-surface missiles and engage sea-skimming missiles, flying 3-5 metres above sea level, upto maximum speed of Mach 3 (three times the speed of sound). Active towed array sonar, two light-weight torpedo launchers should be on board fitted to the corvettes, a navy document says.

There are at present at least 45 ships and submarines under construction in India. India has already built four anti-submarine warfare corvettes under Project-28, the first of which was handed over to the navy in 2014. This was built by Garden Reach Shipbuilders and Engineers Ltd.

Indian Defence News

Selling Fighter Planes to India Now Means Building the Planes in India


Tuesday, November 01, 2016
By: 24x7 Wall Street

In mid-October, the government of India kicked off a new program to attract foreign aircraft makers to build military fighter jets for the Indian Air Force in India using the foreign companies’ technology. India is dangling an initial quantity of some 200 single-engine fighter planes, with the possibility of hundreds more.

According to a report at Defense News, the Indian Ministry of Defense has invited “some overseas participants” to bid on the program. India reportedly would prefer a government-to-government transaction based on pricing and trials from invited vendors.

The United States, Sweden and Russia are allegedly the leading contenders, with Lockheed Martin Corp. (NYSE: LMT), Saab and, probably, Russia’s United Aircraft as the expected bidders.

In late September, India signed an agreement with France to acquire 36 Dassault Rafale fighter jets for a reported $8.85 billion. According to a report from Reuters, the deal with Dassault was originally supposed to include 126 of the twin-engine Rafale’s, but no agreement could be reached on the terms of production in India.

Lockheed Martin has offered to transfer the entire production of its F-16 fighter to India, making the country the exclusive producer of the single-engine F-16. Saab, makers of the Gripen single-engine fighter, has also said that it is ready and able to produce the planes in India.

Defense News reported that the new fighter program is intended to replace 11 squadrons Russian MiG 21s and MiG 27s that are being retired over the next 10 years. Each squadron consists of 18 planes each, for a total of 198 aircraft. The total could go much higher however:

The Indian Air Force is already facing shortage of combat jets as it has around 33-34 operational fighter squadrons, while officials believe they would need 45 squadrons in a hypothetical confrontation with China or Pakistan.

Forty-five squadrons equal 810 aircraft ::
The F-16, the Gripen and the Rafale are fourth-generation fighters. The U.S. Air Force’s single-engine F-35 Joint Strike Fighter is a fifth-generation aircraft, as is the twin-engine Russian Sukhoi T-50 PAK-FA that is expected to begin deliveries to the Russian Air Force next year. India and Russia signed an agreement in 2007 to develop a fifth-generation fighter based on the PAK-FA, but the deal has foundered on disagreements over technology transfer, costs and the number of aircraft to be built.