Introduction

There is considerable irony in the fact that it took the recent Sino-Indian border confrontation on the Himalayan heights to bring focus on India’s maritime domain. Given the huge asymmetry between the two Asian giants - economic, military and technological, and the active China-Pakistan nexus, the best that India can hope for in a land conflict is a stalemate on its northern and western fronts. Therefore, many observers are turning towards the maritime domain with an expectation that India may have a better hand to play in the South.

So, what cards do we hold? Even if our civilian decision-makers are not very clear on this count, one hopes that the Indian Navy (IN) knows exactly where it stands and what it is capable of, in the Indian Ocean as well as the Indo-Pacific. The basic assumption is that India’s maritime power, perhaps on its own but certainly in partnership, can exert significant leverage vis-à-vis China. An important question, in this regard, is - how does India’s maritime strategy enable such leverage vis-à-vis China, and how should it evolve to retain the leverage?

The IN’s strategic thinking in the future will be influenced greatly by its evolution in the past and the nation’s current internal and external environment. Therefore, as India’s civilian and military leadership grapples with an increasingly expansionist and aggressive China, understanding the evolution of the IN’s strategic thinking since independence is important at this juncture. From an inherited strategy at independence, which was unsurprisingly aligned with Britain’s interests, to a document titled Ensuring Secure Seas: India’s Maritime Security Strategy (IMSS) articulated in 2015, great changes have taken place in the IN’s strategic thinking.

From an outward looking strategy involving securing trade routes at independence, the IN turned inwards and changed its focus to homeland defence. Over the decades post-independence, multiple events and factors influenced the IN’s strategic thinking and growth. That India should have a navy was never a matter of contention and, yet, no serious debate ever took place about its size, shape and roles; thus leaving us in a doctrinal void. For a long time, the Navy grappled with the dilemma “between hardware and strategy, which should come first?” Not all nations have the luxury of choice and, for many years, the IN improvised as it went along till it became necessary to create a strategy at the turn of the millennium.

Peering into the future, India’s maritime strategic thinking will need to evolve further as India will be faced with a powerful and inevitably hostile China in the maritime domain. A suitable maritime strategy to be employed across the competition continuum against a stronger adversary will become necessary in the coming decades.

An Intellectual Void

A historical void related to strategic thinking has persisted in India and, even after 73 years as a sovereign nation, we lack a clearly articulated statement of national interests, aims and objectives. This strategic vacuum denied the IN a contextual frame of reference, and the absence of a strategy impacted adversely on force planning, equipment acquisition and infrastructure development processes.

Over time, three factors compelled Naval Headquarters (NHQ) to focus on the vital issue of creating an intellectual underpinning for the Navy’s strategic thinking. First, induction of foreign hardware was never accompanied by operational expertise or doctrine, because such things are not to be had for money. Secondly, in the absence of any higher strategic direction, the IN had to draw inspiration from something as lofty as the Constitution of India or in documents such as the Raksha Mantri’s (RM) Operational Directive.1 Therefore, the hope was that the formulation of IN’s maritime strategy document would force the national security establishment to shake off its inertia and deliver a national level security directive - a hope that has yet remained unfulfilled. And, finally, globalization brought awareness of the Navy’s role as an instrument of state power as well as the fundamental link of trade and energy to the maritime domain.

There are several examples of countries amply endowed with weaponry that have come to grief for lack of doctrines. We should be clear that there is little point in accumulating military power unless there is clarity about doctrine and strategy to guide its employment. Such an intellectual void plagued the IN’s strategic thinking for several decades after independence.

The IN’s Strategic Thinking Post-Independence (1947-62)

As the end of WW II hove into sight, British planners had started reassessing the Royal Indian Navy’s (RIN) role. They considered India vulnerable to a southward push by the Soviets in their quest for a warm-water port. The British visualised the RIN as a component of a larger Commonwealth force, tasked with convoy protection, anti-submarine warfare (ASW) and joint/ amphibious operations.

On 15 August 1947, as India awoke to freedom, the civilian leadership was dealing with myriad problems, including the violent throes of partition and, understandably, had little inclination for maritime strategic thinking. Post-independence, the strategic emphasis shifted to protection of the homeland against a seaborne invasion and security of India’s maritime communications. Both demanded a navy with a strike capability and long reach.

At independence, the RIN was a very small force that consisted of less than half a dozen sloops. In 1948, NHQ drew up a grandiose 15-year expansion plan for two fleets, which envisaged four carriers, four cruisers, 16 destroyers, 16 submarines and about 400 aircraft. The ‘Naval Plans Paper 1948’ drafted by DNP is referred to until this day.2 Clearly unrealistic for an impoverished nation with meagre resources, it was superseded by a more pragmatic and spartan plan, which included one light fleet carrier, a second cruiser and eight modern frigates to be built in British yards. All of this materialized by the early 1960s.3

In 1963, soon after the Pakistan Navy inducted its first submarine, India started its own quest for submarines and modern ships. A long-term agreement was signed with the USSR in 1965 for submarines and several ships. Simultaneously, serious thought was devoted to an indigenous warship-building capability and a decision was taken in 1960 to undertake construction of Leander class frigates under license. The first keel was laid in 1966 and a ship-design office was established.4

The IN’s strategic thinking in the initial days was excessively ambitious and completely out of sync with the nation’s economic resources. On the other hand, despite exhortations of the IN’s leadership, the inexorable link between India’s prosperity and maritime power through trade and energy had not yet dawned on the civilian leadership, which almost regarded the Navy as a redundant force, a notion that manifested itself in the coming wars. Therefore, the IN’s strategic thinking did not translate into a coherent strategy nor did it result in commensurate force build up.

Quest for a Role in India’s Wars (1962-1971)

The 1962 War did not involve the IN or, regrettably, even the IAF. The 1965 War caught the IN on the wrong foot entirely for several reasons. While the carrier and other ships were in refit, the rest of the fleet had to be recalled from the Bay of Bengal. The Navy received a baffling Ministry of Defence (MoD) directive, which barred operations north of the latitude of Porbandar. The IN’s ignominy was total when the Pakistan Navy undertook night bombardment of Dwarka, 60 miles north of Porbandar, and the submarine PNS Ghazi was deployed off Bombay.

While there was undoubtedly a lack of maritime awareness at the politico-bureaucratic level, did the naval leadership communicate with the politicians - and what role did the Navy’s strategic thought process play? The conflict also exposed the absence of tri-service coordination and the IN discovered many operational voids, including the absence of submarines, poor equipment state, lack of a fleet-tanker and dedicated maritime reconnaissance aircraft effort.

Five years later when the Bangladesh crisis started brewing, the IN, still smarting from the ignominy of inaction in 1965, was determined to make ample amends. As soon as the war broke out, a bold leadership unleashed the full range of maritime capabilities - missile-warfare, carrier operations, submarine and anti-submarine warfare, shore-bombardment and mine countermeasures. The IN contribution to this successful tri-service campaign clearly demonstrated to India’s ruling elite the Navy’s potential as a powerful instrument of state policy. Sea control and blockade by a lame duck carrier, suffering from major machinery defects, and sinking of PNS Ghazi in the East brought home major lessons. In the West, lessons from Indian missile boat attacks from the high seas, and the submarine PNS Hangor torpedoing INS Khukri, were duly registered in the IN’s strategic cognition.

Soviet Influence and the ‘Chicken and Egg’ Conundrum (1970s - 80s)

For a long time, the Navy grappled with a ‘chicken and egg’ dilemma - “between hardware and strategy, which should come first?” As the IN evolved, India had very little leeway in the ‘hardware-strategy’ conundrum and we just took what we could get. Coupled with our indifferent communication strategy, this created some awkward situations.

During the 1980s, frustrated by the lack of response to his queries from our NHQ, the editor of Jane’s Fighting Ships had commented in his foreword that, “the Indian Navy is one of the few major navies which first buys hardware and then thinks about how to use it!” He was possibly referring to the flurry of acquisitions which had seen the IN inventory growing rapidly in the 1980s. These included an aircraft carrier with 27 ship borne fighters, five guided-missile destroyers, 12 diesel electric submarines, nine missile corvettes, five maritime reconnaissance aircraft and a nuclear attack-submarine on lease. This was also the period when Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi had decided to adopt a pro-active regional approach, leading to military interventions in Sri Lanka and the Maldives.

A different kind of reaction came from the Time magazine, which produced an issue carrying an imposing photograph of INS Godavari on its cover, with the caption - “Super India: the Next Military Power.”5 This was possibly meant to convey that the world had begun to take note of India as an emerging power. But this hyperbolic presentation, once again, served to cause apprehension in the neighbourhood. Critics in Australia and Singapore began to cry wolf about India’s maritime expansion and the possible existence of an ‘Indian Monroe Doctrine.’

Both these reactions were a result of poor communication on our part and created apprehension in our neighbourhood. The reality was that the accretion was not the outcome of a well-considered strategy, but the result of adhoc benevolence extended by the Soviet Admirals at ‘friendship prices’ in order to reinforce their leverage.

Under the influence of Mahanian ideas, we remained convinced that the raison d’etre of navies was only to engage the enemy in a big battle at sea and plans were shaped accordingly. However, the lessons from exercises as well as the 1971 war clearly proved that navies like ours could achieve decisive results only by conducting maritime operations with a linkage, no matter how indirect, with events on land. This ‘Corbettian’ wisdom dawned on us rather late. The Navy’s other roles namely ‘Diplomatic,’‘Benign,’ and ‘Constabulary’ were not clearly understood or articulated, even though the IN did play a significant diplomatic role in fits and starts.

An IN Military Strategy was issued to units as a classified document in 1988, but was accessible only to a few, and did not help from the communication strategy perspective.6 Therefore, despite substantial force accretion, the IN’s strategic thinking underpinnings remained inadequate in the 1980s, with the IN’s strategy and force build up aspirations being out of sync with the nation’s resources. A poor communication strategy, with respect to force accretion, only added to India’s maritime power woes.

‘Trending’ in the 1990s

Those of us who served in NHQ during the 1990s noted a few general trends in the Navy’s affairs. A major portion of time and attention in the regular morning briefings would be taken up by the Director of Naval Intelligence, who focused on the conflicts in the Middle East, the Sri Lankan civil war and the affairs of our neighbours in the Indian Ocean littoral.

From the discussions, two facts seemed obvious. First, that naval diplomacy was the Navy’s most important, if not the only, function in peacetime. It also highlighted the fact that of the three services, only the Navy had a clear-cut, ongoing and substantive role in peacetime. This paradigm was in stark contrast to the IN’s hitherto Mahanian strategic thinking alluded to earlier. The Navy’s role in implementation of the Look East Policy in 1991 and Exercise Malabar with the US Navy (USN) 1992 onwards amply proved this thought. Secondly, that naval diplomacy was a complex issue which the Directorate of Naval Intelligence was neither manned nor equipped to handle.

The second area of intense NHQ focus was with respect to low force-levels. Disintegration of the Soviet Union had impacted the spares supply-chain. In addition, age was catching up with many of our units and both issues adversely affected ship and aircraft availability. Operational logistics was an area of serious concern and indigenization remained just a catchphrase and an ever-receding mirage.

A bright spot however, was indigenous warship production. By 1988, six Leander Class and three Godavari Class frigates had been delivered. Despite the limitations of the Leanders, this British hull design provided naval architects with an invaluable opportunity for innovation and experimentation. Successful in-house integration of Soviet and Western

weapon/ sensor technologies had stunned observers. However, despite several projects being in the works, budget constraints coupled with NHQ’s planning oversights, resulted in no new ships being ordered for nearly a decade from the mid-1980s.

A flurry of indigenous productions and foreign acquisition options became available as the liberalized economy gained momentum in the late 1990s. The foreign acquisition options narrowed temporarily with Pokhran-2 and opened up again shortly after the Kargil War. Russia, however, continued to maintain intense political pressure, leaving few options for NHQ when confronted by the fait accompli of signed and sealed inter-governmental agreements and the knotty defence procurement framework.

The overall picture remained one of uncertainty because acquisition and manpower cases languished for years, as they were questioned at every stage in the Ministries of Defence and Finance, and even by the Cabinet Committee on Political Affairs. A bureaucrat or a so-called ‘Financial Adviser’ at any level could raise an objection and hold up or even stall a vital project/ case. We were caught in a vicious cycle. Since no government had ever issued a security strategy and no assurance of funding existed, we did not draw up a force-architecture design or manpower plan. Consequently, every bureaucrat felt free to question NHQ proposals at every step. Given the nature of emerging threats and the pace of technological change, it became obvious that the Navy’s strategic thinking had to create a long-term vision for itself and for the government.

Coming of Age (2000s and 2010s)

At the turn of the century, it was RAdm Raja Menon, one of India’s most cerebral military-thinkers and writers who provided the catalytic spark for the IN’s strategic thinking. He had argued in his book Maritime Strategy and Continental Wars that India, with its continental preoccupation, would face immense difficulties while crafting a maritime strategy and must, therefore, gain relevance by ensuring that it affects the national political purpose.7 He recommended the use of modern technology to “speed up the battle” and offered options that would enable smaller navies to influence land wars. The IN leadership took RAdm Menon’s advice to forget ‘ship counts’ and strive instead for capabilities. His prescriptions relating to communications satellites, special forces and aerial reconnaissance were translated into policy initiatives during 2004-06. Formulation of the 2007 Maritime Military Strategy owed much to his advice and assistance. For many years he had also been a strident advocate for a naval think-tank and, in 2005, NHQ was able to obtainMoD approval and funding for the ‘National Maritime Foundation,’ which has provided a fillip to maritime strategic thinking in India.

The IN’s sterling performance in the aftermath of the 2004 tsunami, wherein 27 ships were dispatched within 36 hours to render assistance to affected regions, including Sri Lanka, Maldives and Indonesia, established our Navy’s credentials as a credible regional force. Within a week, the navies of USA, Australia, Japan and India had come together to form Joint Task Force-536, to establish the framework for ‘quadrilateral coordination.’ Remarkably, the PLA Navy (PLAN) was conspicuous by its absence.

The IN’s actions in the aftermath of the great Asian tsunami fundamentally affected our strategic thinking in two ways. First, the Quadrilateral, which is currently witnessing a resurgence, significantly reinforced the IN’s diplomatic role. Secondly, the IN realized the importance of Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief (HADR), thus firmly adding the ‘Benign Role’ to its repertoire of peacetime roles. It has since dealt with many successive episodes of natural disasters and civilian evacuations from the Middle East and Africa.

Two events in 2007-08 led to inclusion of the ‘Constabulary Role’ to the IN’s strategic thinking as another peacetime role. The first event was the spread of piracy from the Horn of Africa in 2007, which elicited a swift response from the IN and several other navies. The IN’s Patrol of Gulf (PoG) deployments from 2008 onwards, in conjunction with other navies, successfully pushed back piracy and contained it close to the Horn of Africa. The second event was the ‘26/11’ Mumbai terrorist attack, wherein Kasab and his band of Pakistani terrorists surreptitiously entered Mumbai onboard the fishing vessel Kuber and killed scores of innocents. In its aftermath, ‘overall maritime security’ was added to the IN’s charter, thus reinforcing the constabulary role in its strategic thinking.

Despite evolution of the IN’s maritime thinking and significant maritime capabilities accretion, only tactical doctrines had been emerging sporadically from the fleets. We lacked an overall doctrine and strategy. A clear articulation of the attributes of maritime power and the roles andmissions of the Navy as an instrument of state power was seen as necessary; not just for educating India’s decision-makers and national security elite, but also for familiarizing the Navy’s own middle-ranking leadership with the arcane logic and use of maritime power.

To provide impetus to creative doctrinal thinking and place it on a sound institutional footing, two organisations were instituted in 2005. A Flag Officer Doctrines and Concepts was created in Mumbai, and a small group of cerebral officers was constituted in NHQ as the Directorate of Strategy, Concepts and Transformation, which was placed directly under the CNS to encourage ‘out of the box’ thinking.

In October 2005, NHQ issued a document titled Freedom of the Seas: India’s Maritime Strategy (IMS-2005) as a classified publication. This was followed by an unclassified version titled Freedom to use the Seas: India’s Maritime Military Strategy (IMMS-2007), which was the IN’s first strategy document to be placed in the public domain. This became the companion volume to the Indian Maritime Doctrine, which was issued in 2004, with a revised and updated version promulgated in 2009. A shift in emphasis was instantly discernible; from sea control and naval dominance to economic and energy security as well as good order at sea, EEZ security and disaster relief operations. The IMMS-2007 was succeeded by a strategy document titled Ensuring Secure Seas: Indian Maritime Security Strategy (IMSS) in 2015, indicating the Navy’s dynamic thinking and pro-active approach towards a changing environment and circumstances.

The 2005 Strategy was logically followed by a blueprint for naval force development titled Maritime Capabilities Perspective Plan (MCPP) 2005-2022, which set out the capabilities and hardware required for its execution. While figures ranging from 190 to 300 warships and submarines had been tossed around from time to time, it was decided to be as realistic as possible by using conservative figures for GDP growth rate, defence budget and the Navy’s likely share. Having worked out the ‘worst-case’ threat scenario andthe given fund availability, the IN was visualized as a ‘regional navy with limited aspirations of safeguarding national interests,’ and sought a stabilized strength of about 150-170 ships and submarines and 350-400 aircraft. The logic of the MCPP was obviously compelling and the RM accepted it in 2005.

This triad of documents has served to provide the long overdue intellectual underpinning for the planned growth of India’s maritime power and provided a clear roadmap for roles, missions, force-architecture, technology induction and an operational philosophy. As a part of the doctrinal endeavour, NHQ also decided to address the issue of foreign cooperation.

For many years, our smaller neighbours had been seeking India’s maritime security assistance, presenting a significant diplomatic opportunity. However, NHQ could not capitalize on the opportunities due to impediments created by the Ministries of Defence or External Affairs. Concerted efforts in 2005 through better coordination with ministries and a Rs. 300-550 crores (Rupees 3-5.5 billion) corpus request failed to yield results.

NHQ, therefore, decided to separate naval diplomacy from the intelligence function and place both under a new Flag officer, designated Assistant Chief of Naval Staff (Foreign Cooperation & Intelligence) or ACNS (FCI). Thus, we could expand our assistance programmes with in-house resources by undertaking training in-situ and often pulling out hardware from our own inventory. We gifted a patrol boat to Maldives, an OPV to Sri Lanka, and three Islander patrol aircraft to Myanmar, apart from sending out training teams to a few countries.

Having examined the evolution of the IN’s strategic thinking from independence to its current sound doctrinal moorings, it is necessary to now examine India’s maritime leverage against China, available options, and further evolution of strategic thinking in the emerging environment.

Maritime Leverage?

Given the current Chinese intransigence and our misreading of their imperialist-expansionist intent, Sino-Indian tensions are likely to persist. If India is not to cede ground physically or diplomatically, it must muster all elements of its ‘comprehensive national power,’ including maritime, and create a strong negotiating position. Apart from the balance of forces on land favouring China, there is also the Beijing-Islamabad axis that awaits activation. Keeping tensions confined to the Himalayan arena is, therefore, not only militarily advantageous to China but a continental focus also helps to keep India contained in a ‘South Asia box.’

Many leaders, including Hu Jintao, believe that China’s Sea Lines of Communications (SLOCs) in the Indian Ocean Region (IOR) constitute its ‘jugular,’ which India could threaten. The Chinese premier has referred to this vulnerability as the “ Malacca Dilemma.” ‘Commerce raiding’ is a feasible strategy during wartime and, once hostilities commence, belligerents may declare an ‘exclusion zone’ or naval ‘blockade’ against the enemy; denying entry and exit to all merchant shipping from the latter’s ports. Laws of naval warfare also allow belligerents to ‘visit and search’ an enemy or neutral vessel to determine the character of the ship or its cargo, and to intern it if necessary.

In peacetime, however, ‘maritime interception operations,’ or stopping and boarding of a foreign-flagged merchant ship on the high-seas, requires permission of the flag-state or the ship’s Master. A ‘non-compliant’ boarding is feasible in certain cases, including failure to comply with a warship’s directions, suspicious conduct, flying a false flag or not flying a flag. If all else fails, the ‘doctrine of necessity’ can be invoked by a warship (or submarine) to board, search, divert or capture a merchant ship.

Two aspects amongst several others would be most significant regarding trade interception leverage. The first is India’s ability to form an intelligence network to track Chinese trade through unconventional means, such as brokers from commodity markets in Geneva. This will enable India to not only use the leverage, but also to do it in a calibrated manner with targeted threats/ execution. The second aspect would be India’s strategy to deal with a quid pro quo in the South China Sea. China’s commerce, including energy, through the IOR is far greater than India’s trade through the South China Sea, and this provides India with an inherent advantage.

Maritime Options and Strategic Thinking (2020s-2030s)

The IN’s maritime strategic thinking will need to evolve substantially in the coming decades to match up to the China challenge and maintain its leverage in the maritime domain. With its naval power and central geostrategic location, India had the upper hand in the IOR, up until now, despite the presence of several extra-regional navies. Given the PLAN handicap of operating on ‘exterior lines of communication,’ the IN still retains a relative advantage in the IOR. However, it may not be long before China negates this advantage through greater/ superior force-levels and military bases in the IOR. Therefore, the IN may need to adopt innovative strategic thinking to remain inside the PLAN’s OODA loop.In a long-term perspective, two readily available options for India that need serious examination and early implementation are - first, to seek friends and partners to make common cause in the maritime domain; and secondly, to fortify itself at sea. As far as maritime partnerships are concerned, two templates are already available - Exercise Malabar and the ‘Quadrilateral Security Dialogue’ or ‘Quad.’

China’s extreme concern about Exercise Malabar as well as the Quad (and the Indo-Pacific concept) arises from the suspicion that they are precursors to ‘containment’ - the Cold War geopolitical strategy used by USA to isolate and engineer the collapse of USSR. China’s hostility has so far aroused trepidation amongst Quad members. The time for ambivalence is over and, while India will have to fight its own territorial battles with determination, this is the moment to seek external balancing. A formal revival and re-invigoration of the Quad is called for. It is also time to seek an enlargement of this grouping into a partnership of the like-minded. Other nations feeling the brunt of Chinese brawn may be willing to join a larger ‘Indo-Pacific concord,’ not as an Asian NATO, but to maintain peace and tranquillity, ensure observance of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) and render assistance in maritime emergencies.

The IN’s strategic thinking will have to take cognizance of increasing Chinese force levels in the IOR in the near future. A PLAN aircraft-carrier is unlikely to show up in the IOR till resolution of the Taiwan issue, which keeps China focused on the South China Sea and the US 7th Fleet. Bereft of integral air cover, PLAN forces in the IOR will remain vulnerable to Indian forces tasked with sea control. However, this premise may not hold good beyond 2030 or when the second and third PLAN aircraft carriers are inducted. The issue of increasing force levels is exacerbated by the Chinese acquiring bases in the IOR.

In the context of building maritime muscle in addition to force accretion, the Andaman and Nicobar (A&N) Island chain offers tremendous opportunities. Located astride the mouth of the Malacca Strait, this archipelago is an ideal base for maintaining sustained surveillance over the straits of Sunda, Lombok, Ombai and Wetar, which offer alternative exits from the South China Sea. Provided with the necessary offensive ‘punch,’ in terms of strike aircraft, submarines and missile armed warships, the ANC can form India’s ‘forward defensive line.’

Conclusion

Nature has ensured that India’s geographical configuration makes her as reliant on the seas as any island nation. Also, geopolitical imperatives have in the recent past served to confirm the importance of the maritime domain in our national security matrix. Fortunately, people of vision and foresight have ensured that we have a robust and professionally capable navy today.

However, what will matter is not how much maritime power India possesses, but her ability to wield it with strategic sense and ingenuity in national interest. Like every nation, India has a vision of its place in the world and actively seeks to play a key role in the international order. But, unfortunately, it has devoted inadequate intellectual capital to the articulation of its own vital interests, assessing possible threats, and taking measures to forestall them. This is a manifestation of the historical void in our strategic thought-process, which has resulted in us being repeatedly taken by surprise and offering knee-jerk responses to situations.

India’s maritime strategic thinking will need to evolve substantially in the coming decades to deal with a stronger adversary. The IN’s maritime strategic thought will be the determining factor, as history has shown in all cases when weaker powers have come out on top. With budgets shrinking, hardware will become even more difficult to acquire and must be substituted by ingenuity and innovation. Sound strategic thinking and corresponding build-up of combat capability, as well as operational plans for the complete spectrum of competition, will be key.

It, therefore, behooves the current generation of naval officers - stakeholders in the national security edifice to apply their minds to the future; and offer frank and forthright advice to our decision-makers, both political and military. The IN’s strategic thinking would benefit immensely from a freewheeling and frank debate on ‘out of the box’ options. Towards this end, the Indian Naval Despatch, in its new avatar, could well turn out to be the ideal forum for exchanging strategic thoughts with wide participation within the IN, and without.

Endnotes

  1. Raksha Mantri is the Defence Minister.

  2. VAdm Anup Singh, Blue Waters Ahoy (Noida: HarperCollins, 2018), 312.

  3. VAdm GM Hiranandani, Transition to Eminence (New Delhi: Lancer, 2000), 1-9.

  4. Ibid., 31-57.

  5. Time, 03 April 1989.

  6. A Maritime Military Strategy for India 1989-2014 (New Delhi: IHQ MoD(Navy), 1988).

  7. RAdm Raja Menon, Maritime Strategy and Continental Wars (London: Frank Cass, 1998).