The government has approved a major National Maritime Domain Awareness (NMDA) project, even as the Navy keeps an eagle-eye on the expanding Chinese naval activities in the Indian Ocean Region (IOR) while cranking up cooperation with littoral nations in the neighbourhood, Admiral R Hari Kumar said on Saturday.
The Navy chief also said the long-standing plan for a third aircraft carrier of a much larger size has been “put on hold”, with the force now examining whether to go in for a “repeat order” of the recently commissioned and smaller 45,000-tonne INS Vikrant.
But that is in the future. The NMDA project, on its part, will provide “actionable intelligence” for tackling maritime threats, Admiral Kumar said, speaking ahead of the Navy Day on Sunday.
Sources, in turn, told TOI the Rs 250 crore NMDA project, which was recently cleared by the PM-led cabinet committee on security, will basically be an integrated intelligence grid to detect and thwart threats emanating from sea in real-time.
The NMDA project will subsume the naval Information Management and Analysis Centre (IMAC) at Gurugram, which takes feeds from multiple sources ranging from coastal radars to satellites to assess threats in the IOR.
Together with the Information Fusion Centre-Indian Ocean Region (IFC-IOR), a collaborative naval venture with like-minded nations that currently has 11 foreign liaison officers, the NMDA will bolster India’s overall maritime security, the sources said.
Towards further bolstering surveillance and precision-strike capabilities in the IOR, the long-pending procurement of armed MQ-9B Predator or Sea Guardian drones from the US is also “under process”, Admiral Kumar said, while denying the government-to-government deal has been put on hold or scrapped.
As reported by TOI earlier, the deal’s high cost at $3 billion (Rs 24,000 crore) for 30 drones has, however, ensured it has remained stuck for well over a year now. “We are discussing whether the numbers (10 drones each for Navy, IAF and Army) need to be rationalized,” Admiral Kumar said.
The threat from China, of course, is clear and present in the IOR. With the world’s largest Navy at around 350 warships and submarines, China is actively hunting for logistical facilities from the Malacca Strait to the east African coast after establishing its first overseas base at Djibouti in 2017.
China is also fast building two more aircraft carriers after inducting the first two, Liaoning and Shandong. The third carrier, the 80,000-tonne Fujian, was `launched’ earlier this year.
“There are a lot of Chinese ships which operate in the IOR. We (constantly) have about 4-6 PLA Navy warships, as well as research (survey or spy) vessels. A large number of Chinese fishing vessels also operate in the IOR,” Admiral Kumar said.
“As a resident maritime power, we keep a close watch on them. Our job is to ensure India’s maritime interests are protected and they do not indulge in any inimical activities. We also track Chinese fishing vessels to ensure they do not intrude into our EEZ for illegal activities,” he added.
On the indigenous aircraft carrier (IAC) front, the Navy has deferred the original plan for a 65,000-tonne IAC-2. “We are still working on what size it should be and what its capabilities should be. Right now, we have put a hold on IAC-2 because we have just commissioned INS Vikrant. We are quite happy with the ship. We are looking at whether the third carrier should be a repeat order (of INS Vikrant’s size),” Admiral Kumar said.
The Navy is committed to becoming fully `Atmanirbhar’ (self-reliant) in terms of warship and submarine-building, propulsion systems, weapons, maritime aircraft, helicopters and the like by 2047, he added.
