Countering China means more role for Navy and Airforce

Relevance: Countering China’s border aggression against India

Synopsis: We can face China by giving bigger roles to the navy and air force and downsizing the army by 200,000 men.

China: An aspiring world power

• Huge defence budget: China is an aspiring world power that spends $252 billion on its defence budget, as compared to the $72.9 billion that India spends. Both countries limit their budget to around 2% of their GDP, which in China’s case is five times our size.
• Formidable navy: They have downsized their army and built a navy, which is growing faster than the US navy.

Strategic weakness of China

Their only strategic weakness is 70% of their imported oil. Hence, the only guarantee of Chinese non-aggression and good behavior is a well-crafted threat to their oil tankers and a complete naval mastery of the escalation that will follow.

Strategy to counter China

Leveraging QUAD & Indian naval and Airforce capabilities: India can start by dividing the Indo-Pacific, including the South China seas and the Eastern Indian Ocean, into areas of maritime search responsibility between the QUAD. All nations operate on a common reporting communication net, centered either in Port Blair or Visakhapatnam.

The QUAD aircraft can gain information dominance over the Indo-Pacific to monitor all PLAN (People’s Liberation Army Navy) movements in Malacca Straits. This dominance can be used during the confrontation, to funnel PLAN units through the geographically constrained straits (like the Strait of Malacca, see the map above) into a killing ground. However, for this strategy to work, some changes are required:

1. Turn Car Nicobar into an airbase: Hence, it would be really beneficial to build up the Car Nicobar airfield into a full-fledged airbase and permanently station a squadron of suitable aircraft.
2. Collaborating with Oman: India can negotiate with Oman for the use of the old RAF airbase at Masirah to dominate the Gulf of Hormuz and threaten the Chinese base at Djibouti.

As it is evident, countering China with this strategy requires co-operation b/w QUAD members and is more reliant on India’s naval & Airforce power instead of being military-dominant.

Why Navy & Airforce should be given bigger roles?

• Unfavorable geography: Relying on maritime and Airforce power offers a better alternative to militarily reinforcing the unfavorable geography of the Sino-Indian border in the Himalayas.
• Expensive manpower: In the future, manpower is going to get increasingly expensive. At present, our strategic options are constrained because the army gets 61% of the defence budget and 81% of it goes into manpower and maintenance.
• Better conventional deterrence: We can achieve better conventional deterrence against China by giving bigger roles to the navy and air force and downsizing the army by 2,00,000 men over five years through retirement and reduced recruitment.
  • The reduction in manpower will save approximately Rs 30,000 crore, which can be utilized equally by the three services.

Way forward

Countering China cannot be done by throwing expensive manpower at the problem. It is only possible by shifting the battlespace to advantageous geography, by a united navy and air force effort, while a technically advanced army holds the Himalayan border.