India’s answer to China-backed Thai Canal plan is a huge military upgrade in islands
With Chinese Navy
positioning itself for dominance in the Indian Ocean through strings of
ports in Myanmar, Pakistan and Iran, India is planning rapid
infrastructure upgrade in its Island territories to ensure that there is
no restriction on navigation or a replay of the South China Sea in
Indian backyard.
According to top military officials, India will
upgrade the airstrip at INS Kohassa, Shibpur in north Andamans and at
the Campbell strip at Nicobar into full-fledged fighter bases. The
airstrip at Agatti, in Lakshadweep will also be upgraded for military
operations to secure both the Bay of Bengal upto Malacca Straits and
Arabian Sea up to Gulf of Aden.
“The two Island territories will
be like the new aircraft carriers for India, extending the navy’s reach
in the region far from the mainland. Both the Islands sit on the busiest
sea lanes of the world with more than half the world trade going
through this route,” said a tri-service commander.
Lakshadweep
sits on the Nine Degree Channel, so named because it lies on the
9-degree line of Latitude, north of the equator. The Andamans and
Nicobar Islands will allow the navy to dominate the Six Degree and Ten
Degree Channels towards Southeast Asia and North Asia.
Officials
said the infrastructure upgrade had also acquired urgency due to efforts
by China, much of it backroom, to get Thailand to start work on the
Thai Canal aka Kra Canal that has been on the drawing board for the last
70 years. The canal has been proposed to slice through the Malay
peninsula some 800 km south of Bangkok and connect the Gulf of Thailand
with the Andaman Sea.
It would let ships bypass the choked
Malacca Strait, the main shipping channel between the Indian Ocean and
the Pacific Ocean that has become the world’s busiest trade route. For
ships passing between the Indian and Pacific Oceans, it would shorten
the distance by at least 1,200 km.
There is no unanimity in
India’s strategic community on the approach to the Kra canal. One view
is that the canal, promoted by China under its Belt and Road Initiative,
would pose a risk to India’s long-term maritime security but there is
an influential section that sees the construction of the Thai Canal as
inevitable given the money China is believed to be throwing at powerful
elements in Bangkok.
Like when Thailand was to decide on setting
up an ad-hoc committee to carry out a study earlier this year, there
were raised eyebrows at how Thailand’s fragmented political class
demonstrated unprecedented unity in supporting the move. Even parties
that are known to be anti-China had ended up supporting the canal. The
Thai King, however, is still opposed to the Kra Canal.
National
security planners believe that India should capitalise on the
opportunity - bundled with its own set of challenges - that the Kra
Canal offers and offer transhipment ports to vessels bound for either
Malacca or Kra Canal. As of now, ships wait for their turn at Sri Lankan
ports, earning Colombo precious foreign exchange as well as leverage.
It
is argued that the infrastructure upgrade in the island territories
would serve twin objectives: one, enable India to maximise the economic
gains as well as raise its military presence in the Indian Ocean Region.
The
continuing focus on the infrastructure upgrade also comes against the
backdrop of China’s aggressive moves in Ladakh and its reluctance to
restore status quo ante. The Chinese aggression has not only prompted
New Delhi to reinforce force deployment along hotspots along the LAC but
also in the high seas.
The Indian Navy is on high alert from the
Persian Gulf to the Malacca Strait in the context of the standoff with
China. The instructions to the navy are clear: That they should be
prepared for military action if China mounts an attack along the Line of
Actual Control, people familiar with the matter said.
Indian
military officials stressed that the upgradation of air bases in the
Island territories would ensure that China’s People’s Liberation Army
Navy under its President and commander in chief Xi Jinping, does not
dominate the area to extract leverage from all countries in the region.
For
now, the United States earlier this month flew in its three B-2 stealth
bombers to the naval support facility in Diego Garcia in the south
Indian Ocean to support the Pacific Air Forces’ Bomber Task Force to
deter China from flexing its muscles in the region. Around the same
time, the US decided to sell 66 new American-made F-16 fighter jets in
the biggest arms sale to the island, a democracy of 24 million people
that Beijing claims to be an inseparable part of its territory.
A
few days later, the United States also moved aircraft carrier Ronald
Reagan and its strike group for maritime air defence operations to the
restive South China Sea. The US Navy said the training said the Carrier
Strike Group participated in cooperative sea drills with the Air Force’s
B-1B Lancer to improve “joint readiness response capabilities. The US
Navy said the units conducted air-to-air operations, combat search and
rescue drills and air defence exercises, according to the Navy.
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