From above, Teresa Island resembles a giant green boomerang, set atop an azure sea. Last December, the island in the Nicobar chain was a military purpose for over 100 soldiers of an elite military unit. Leaping from the back of a C-130J transport, paratroopers from the Agra-based Shatrujit Brigade practiced parachuting on the island and achieved a drop zone, simulating how India would react to an invasion of the islands. In a real-world scenario, the entire 3,000-man brigade would be parachuting and airlanding to capture key installations such as airfields before a large Allied maritime force arrived. The emblem of the brigade, a winged centaur that draws a bow, symbolizes its overall abilities. It has seen action in all conflicts of independent India – two successes in the modern era included an operation behind enemy lines in erstwhile East Pakistan in 1971 and thwarting a 1989 coup in Maldives.
Graphic by Tanmay Chakraborty
The last time the Andaman and Nicobar (A&N) islands were attacked was 80 years ago in 1942, when the Imperial Japanese Navy—then the most powerful naval force in Asia—repulsed the British and occupied the archipelago. In recent years, the PLAN (People’s Liberation Army Navy) has mimicked the rise of the Japanese Navy, growing at astonishing speed. In 2021, it added more submarines, destroyers and amphibious assault ships to its fleet than all warships of the Vizag-based Eastern Naval Command. This means it can continue to deploy an increasing number of warships in the Indian Ocean region, as it has done over the past decade. It also has bases in Gwadar in Pakistan and Djibouti on the Horn of Africa. A strong naval force helps China to show its might and overcome the ‘Malacca dilemma of Beijing’.
The rise of China and this potential maritime vulnerability have prompted New Delhi to look more closely at the ability of its island outposts to act on that vulnerability. The 572 islands in the A&N chain, of which only 32 are inhabited, form an area larger than the state of Sikkim. This group sits 1,400 km away from the Indian mainland – in fact, closer to Indonesia, Myanmar and Thailand than to India.
China is using missiles, airfields and dock-laden islands to assert its dominance over the South China Sea. India plans to do the same with Andaman and Nicobar
In a report tabled in Parliament last December, the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Defense recommended that the islands be developed as a sort of ‘aircraft carrier’. The islands were apt to ‘block and dominate entry routes’, the committee said [into the Indian Ocean], provided the runways are operational there’. The archipelago is close to three important chokepoints – Ombai Vetar, Lombok and the Sunda Straits – through which the PLAN can enter the Indian Ocean. Aircraft based on the islands will have shorter flight times to these choke points than the Indian mainland, and submarines from here can arrive in five days instead of eight, meaning they can spend more time patrolling. Currently, India is seeking rights over Australia’s Keeling Islands for its P-8I anti-submarine warplanes, which are also located near these points.
The Andaman and Nicobar Islands currently have four airstrips, which host a handful of IAF helicopters, Navy and Coast Guard surveillance helicopters and drones. Some patrol ships belonging to the Navy and Coast Guard also operate in these waters. The IAF seldom bases fighter jets here – the islands are seen more as forward operating bases than full-strength military installations. The late Chief of Defense Staff General Bipin Rawat described the islands as an “unimaginable aircraft carrier”; In an October 2021 interview with India Today, he said that fighters operating from the islands did not have any of the vulnerabilities of aircraft carriers, which were expensive, vulnerable to detection and could be targeted by an adversary. . (The concept of an ‘unimaginable aircraft carrier’ originated in World War II, when the US built a series of island air bases in the Pacific to target mainland Japan.)
This view is echoed by military analyst Rear Admiral Raja Menon, who recommends that the islands form the basis of India’s strategy to counter China’s maritime build-up and offset Beijing’s landfall pressure on New Delhi. In an independent paper submitted to the government last month, he wrote that the advanced Chinese infrastructure in Tibet—from expressways to bullet trains—allows the PLA to move a smaller number of habitual troops faster overall, making it easier for any military to move around. Time also gives the ability to overwhelm the Indian forces. point along the border. Creating an ‘eastern battlefield’ in the Straits of Malacca would give India aggressive options at sea, allowing the country to throttle Chinese maritime commerce and force incoming PLA naval units through a choke point where they can be targeted. could.
In recent years, such contingency planning has been underway in many countries threatened by the rise of a belligerent China. In September 2021 the US, UK and Australia announced a tripartite security treaty- AUKUS, to act as a force multiplier in the Indo-Pacific. On September 24, US President Joe Biden hosted the first personal security dialogue of the Quad Leaders Summit at the White House, which was hosted by PM Narendra Modi, Japan PM Yoshihide Suga and Australia PM Scott Morrison.
Emphasizing the strategic location of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Suzanne Chinoy, Director General, MP-IDSA (Manohar Parrikar Institute of Defense Studies and Analysis) recommended opening them to the navies of the Quad. In a June 2020 paper, he also noted that ‘a combination of economic and strategic factors has significantly enhanced the strategic importance of the Bay of Bengal and its littoral areas’. “The A&N Islands are at the crossroads of the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea, and further to the Pacific Ocean, an important basis of the strategic concept of the Indo-Pacific,” he says.
a slow awakening
The strategic potential of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands has been known for decades. They move to the Bay of Bengal, from where India’s growing fleet of ballistic missile-carrying nuclear-powered submarines (SSBNs) operate. The Andaman Sea is a sanctuary from where Indian SSBNs can target both their nuclear-armed adversaries in retaliation. In the late 1990s, Navy Chief Admiral Vishnu Bhagwat called for an upgrade of the command and control system of the region, to convert the Andaman Fort into a Far Eastern Command, headed by Army and Air Force deputies. A Navy flag officer will do. However, the proposal was shelved and in 2001 the island was placed under India’s only tri-service command – the Andaman and Nicobar Command (ANC). The Defense Ministry is a smaller version of what is expected to reorganize India’s armed forces—five unified theater commands reporting to a single CDS. However, the islands are poorly defended, with few radar or surface-to-air missile launchers and poor infrastructure.
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In the last five years, New Delhi has been pushing to realize the economic potential of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. They span important sea routes in Southeast and East Asia—including the Duncan Passage, Ten Degree Channel, Priparis, and Six Degree Channel. In 2017, potential development projects worth Rs 10,000 crore were identified. The government says it has connected more than 100 km of roads on these islands between 2014 and 2018. Inaugurating the first submarine optic cable to the islands in 2020, PM Modi said they will be the cornerstone of India’s blue ocean strategy.
However, building military infrastructure on islands more than a thousand kilometers from the Indian mainland will not be easy. Creating an “unimaginable aircraft carrier” required massive investments and many years of continuous infrastructure development. It will require thousands of crores for radars and missiles, maintenance and repair facilities, runways for permanently based fighters and more dock berths for long-range maritime patrol aircraft, coastal defense missiles and warships, patrol craft and submarines.
In early 2014, when the Indian Navy deployed long-range patrol aircraft to search for MH370, a Malaysia Airlines flight that went missing that year, it found that its flights were limited by fuel supplies on the island. The Tri-Services Command, which oversaw war-playing military operations from the island, clearly lacked logistics and infrastructure. Most vulnerabilities are classified, but can be inferred, including limited amounts of fuel for aircraft and warships. The Su-30MKI, a heavy fighter with a range of 3,000 km, is an ideal fighter aircraft to be based on the islands. However, each Sukhoi-30MKI requires 12,000 liters of aviation fuel for a four-hour flight. Both Port Blair and Car Nicobar lack twin runways (to ensure redundancy if any are disabled). A new IAF airfield to operate fighter aircraft is yet to be operationalized on the southern island, Great Nicobar. Since military deployment is not only about presence, but also about sustenance, the armed forces will have to build larger underground fuel storage tanks that will allow fighter jets to conduct more combat flights. Freshwater desalination plants will also be needed to supply the increased personnel. “Apart from the unilateral intervention from the mainland, the question remains – can we maintain and operate Su-30s from the Andaman Islands for long-term deployment?” asks a retired admiral who did not wish to be named. Such issues have meant that the islands remain peacock staging posts rather than permanent bases. American military historian Edward Lutvak has recommended that India take advantage of the capability of shore-based aircraft rather than aircraft carriers from World War II relics. On 3rd February, MP-IDSA’s annual K. Delivering the Subrahmanyam Memorial Lecture, he said: “The Indian Navy spends all its money on an aircraft carrier – when I look at the map, India is an aircraft carrier. The Navy needs to buy and sell aircraft all over India, the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. The Persian Gulf, the Suez Canal, the Strait of Malacca should have the right to enter with a number of missiles and aircraft, which cost approx. [same as] A single aircraft carrier, which is vulnerable and has a limited number of fighter aircraft.”
Defense analyst Rear Admiral Sudarshan Shrikhande says, “There are infrastructure issues, but they can be resolved. “Mobile batteries like BrahMos would be very useful and less vulnerable. These islands would be useful for intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR), along with their scattered air and missile launch capability. There could be new complications, as would any war-like situation.” There has always been for ages.” While the current issues will take time to resolve, the larger question of whether the Andaman and Nicobar Islands could become important military bases within this decade remains unanswered.
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