AOR: “As I said earlier, we need to develop a much larger and a better surveillance capability, because our area of operations has enlarged. Today, we are operating all the way from the Horn of Africa and Persian Gulf in the West to the South China Sea in the East. Given such a large area of operation, first and foremost we need surveillance for what I call Maritime Domain Awareness. This would require a lot of aerial and even some space-based sensors. Therefore, the priority will be to develop a good surveillance capability and to network it into our system so that the picture is available in real-time right across our area of operations. Complementary to this, our units at sea would require longer legs with sustained endurance.

Rest of the interview is pretty interesting – discussion about procuring Goshawk for training/CQ of MiG-29K pilots, possible procurement of E-2s (but shore basing them), building a “capabilities-based” navy, etc. If interested in the full inteview (partial only is up on the ‘net), drop me a note offline (steeljawscribe@gmail.com) and I will forward via email.
- SJS

–India would like to be a regional military power, much like we are pretty much everywhere else. Their higher Navy folks and public gov’t statements (some, not all) say that’s the direction they desire to go. This is at least since the late nineties, but only after 9/11 and a couple of Malabars and China’s military buildup post-1998 Taiwan Straits wakeup call did India really get cracking on figuring out how to be a regional power. One key indicator was when they started assisting us in escorting Malaca Strait traffic.

–I just spent two days in the company of very smart Sudan experts. China isn’t nation building in Sudan. They’re getting resources. The fields are populated with Chinese, not Sudanese, workers. The pipeline and roads to the fields are the only things built. The oil money the not-slightly-Islamist Khartoum government doles out for infrastructure, when they’re not buying luxury mansions in expensive exotic locales, goes to projects in the North and mainly around Khartoum. I’ve been encouraged to think of China’s involvement in places like Sudan and Guayana and such as more like Western countries in the industrial age. Which makes sense seeing as China’s sort of at that point in certain aspects.

1) Having a large Navy with CV’s and SSN’s buys them a seat at the adult table of nations. Same way having a large fleet of battleships back in the 30s’. Same goes for their Air Force.

2) Desire to be self sufficient and remain “non-aligned”

3) Be prepared to counter the US Navy if the Pakistanis “call in their marker” for support of GWOT. Remeber the US “Tilt” in favor of Pakistan in 1971?

Kick it around, I’ll chip in what I think later.