ARMED FORCES & HUMANITARIAN ASSISTANCE — STEPPING BACK IS AS CRITICAL AS STEPPING FORWARD
ARMED FORCES & HUMANITARIAN ASSISTANCE — STEPPING BACK IS AS CRITICAL AS STEPPING FORWARD
By Commodore G Prakash, NM, Retd
Visible leadership
On 12 May 21, Admiral Karambir Singh, the Chief of Naval Staff, spoke to the naval community, and naval veterans through a televised video, updating them on how the Indian Navy was continuing to excel in these challenging times, balancing operational responsibilities and humanitarian tasks forced by Covid 19. The Navy was doing all this, without taking its eyes away from the onerous task of keeping its large community safe. This reassuring address was only the latest in a series of regular updates from him from the beginning of the pandemic. The effect his calm and confident words has had on the people under his charge and the nation at large, is immense. However, that shouldn’t dull us into complacency. While the armed forces can be trusted to play their part competently, there are larger issues to be examined, course corrections to be given, questions to be asked, and analyses to be made. Much of this responsibility falls on the apex national leadership.
The effort so far
As per media reports, ‘Operation Samudra Setu II’ was set in motion in response to the catastrophic challenges India faced (and is still facing) in the second wave of Covid 19. Yet again, the armed forces had to enter the fray in support of the Government, this time, to bring in emergency medical supplies from abroad. The name Operation Samudra Setu II, came from Operation Samudra Setu I, which had been launched in 2020 to get Indian citizens stuck in foreign lands due to Covid. Media reports say, that the Navy has deployed (as of now) at least nine warships for Covid-19 relief operations, which include ferrying in Liquid Medical Oxygen and medical equipment from countries in West Asia and South-east Asia. If we are to go by past experience, the Navy may do well to prepare for more editions of Operation Samudra Setu.
Armed Forces to the rescue
The Navy has not been alone in providing Covid related support. The Indian Air Force has been doing a splendid job of flying in supplies from abroad, and also of distributing them within India. The huge Indian Army has been helping out across a wide spectrum of activities, as only they can. But the Indian armed forces coming to India’s rescue with humanitarian aid is nothing new. The future too, looks no different, as our system will forever continue to provide many opportunities. Luckily, the armed forces are capable of taking on additional responsibilities, while doing their best to ensure that their capacities for their core tasks are not affected. But for how long can they sustain it, is a moot question.
Responsible countries must have dedicated administrative systems that are competent to look after specialised areas. They must be organised, equipped, manned, trained and led appropriately for this. While all the five aspects above are important, the most important is leadership. Here the armed Forces are fortunate. They, at the Operational level, are luckily led and directed by their own. Faulty orders or instructions driven by interested politics or non-specialist bureaucracies do not affect the armed forces at the operational level. That helps.
Till now, the ability of the services to competently take on long drawn tasks for which they are not equipped, manned or trained, has held. They have managed to do this, with one basic attribute, their ability to innovate and face things as they come. Who knows it better than them, that the best of plans survive, only till the first contact with the enemy. Given a task, the armed forces step in, as no agency in India can.
However, it is the duty of the national leadership to closely examine the challenges the armed forces face when they take on additional tasks. Op readiness of the armed forces cannot be taken for granted. Any non-core activity severely compromises operational preparedness and training. Armed forces, which are organised for war, can suffer serious loss of focus if used for peacetime non-core roles beyond a limit. Operational fatigue is a too real an entity to be left unaddressed. All this is important, because no one can predict as to when the armed forces may have to let go of non-core activities and rush to concentrate on their core job, as no one else can do that job for them. They have to be ever ready for this turn of events. Galwan was one pointer. It could have gone in any direction. Stepping in to support in an emergency is easy, and stepping back, isn’t. But stepping back, is most important.
Challenges
While the three services have their own challenges with respect to manpower, budget allocation, equipment, infrastructure, organisation etc, I will deal with only a few, of relevance to the Navy in the current circumstances.
In a recent response to a question in Rajya Sabha, Minister of State for Defence Mr Shripad Naik stated that the Indian Navy currently faces a shortage of 1044 Officers and 12317 sailors. That this shortage is not something the Navy can easily manage with, can be seen from the fact that this shortage is a substantial percentage of its sanctioned strength. Fittingly, in his reply to the Lok Sabha, the Minister categorised the shortage as ‘deficiency’. Notwithstanding this deficiency, the Navy continues its Mission Based Deployment, adopted in 2017. As per this policy, ‘mission-ready ships and aircraft’ are deployed ‘along critical sea lines of communication’. This perennial presence in seven widely dispersed locations in the Indian Ocean region (IOR) is critical for developing Maritime Domain Awareness (MDA) as well as for reducing reaction time to operational requirements in the IOR. Several events of the recent past in South East Africa and the Gulf region have validated this deployment philosophy. Surely deployment policies are dynamic, and must adjust to changing circumstances. For instance, the considerable reduction that piracy off Somalia has seen, enables shedding some operational deployments.
While it is not difficult for a large Navy like the Indian Navy to sustain such permanent widespread deployment, what makes it possible is a well thought out Operations — Maintenance cycle plan for its platforms and strict adherence to this plan. Disruptions to this, will have cascading effects. Needless to say, surge capacities are worked into Op — Maint plans and this does come in handy. For instance, as I write this piece on 21 May, our ships are engaged in a massive Search and Rescue (SAR) effort in support of the hundreds of victims of Cyclone Tauktae off Mumbai. In the extremely heavy weather that prevails, only some of the heaviest ships of the Navy can undertake this task. No one else can. When it comes to physically rescuing people from the air, the 10 Ton Seaking helicopters of the Navy are the only platforms which can undertake the task far out to sea, in challenging weather, at the required scale of operations. Prolonged search of large sea areas in extreme weather is possible only by the P8Is or IL 38s of the Navy.
The extensive SAR mission is being undertaken by the Navy in addition to the ongoing Covid related tasks and other routine operational tasks. In fact some of the ships that went to the Gulf region for medical supplies did that, immediately after concluding Exercise Varuna with the French Navy. The back to back deployment from Ex Varuna to Op Samudra Setu II to SAR off Mumbai was possible because of the surge capacities worked into Ops — Maint plans. However, it is also important to remember that surge capacities are limited, by time or by quantum. There are limits to surging.
At times, undertaking non-standard tasks has sundry penalties too. For instance, huge Oxygen tanks kept on helicopter decks automatically renders the ship incapable of helicopter operations, a critical capability at sea. Another example is the danger to cargo carried on the upper decks. Unlike merchant craft which have solid arrangements for securing loads on their ships, warships can only resort to lashing the cargo, using rope, chains or belts. This is never a failproof arrangement, especially, in rough seas. Afterall, Oxygen tanks of the type seen being brought on ships weigh typically about 35 tons and the deck rings they are tethered to, are typically tested only a fraction of that load, as they are designed to share just a part of the load of helicopters weighing 10–12 Tons.
What could have been
Ideally, while the armed forces provide immediate help in an emergency, the process for sustaining the effort using non-military resources must immediately start. So, efforts to charter merchant craft like Offshore Support Vessels (OSV) should have been started by the Govt of India as soon as the requirement to sustain a logistic chain for medical equipment from different parts of the world was understood. Afterall, the world’s experience shows that no one can predict how long the current wave will last, how much will it improve or deteriorate, or as to how many more waves will hit when, and with what severity.
Here, we have both, a problem of plenty and a problem of little. What is plenty, are merchant ships, mainly OSVs in this case, available around the world for charter at rock bottom rates. The crude oil price crash of 2015 led to many oil companies curtailing their drilling plans. This led to many ship owners who had built or purchased ships being saddled with idling ships and crew. While some sold off their ships at very low prices or scrapped them, a large number of such ships are available in India, the Gulf region, and Singapore. India can utilize them at very low charter rates of about USD 10000 per day and fuel costs of about USD 10000 per day. This is much cheaper than using Naval ships, as the running costs of Naval ships are much higher. In any case, it is the Govt of India that incurs the expenditure in both the cases. The use of merchant ships have two other advantages. Firstly, they are already present in the regions from where medical equipment is coming and secondly, they are designed to carry all sorts of cargo and can therefore bring the cargo safely, in all kinds of sea conditions.
The problem of little, is with India’s own merchant fleet. It is a known fact that when in trouble, as in war, countries are forced to depend on their own ships to ply critical cargo. Here, we have a relatively small resource of our own, the left over fleet of the Shipping Corporation of India. We will do well to make maximum use of at least the remaining OSVs of the available fleet. Chartering other Indian owned OSVs too, is a practical option.
Need for study
A once in a century worldwide pandemic like Covid 19 deserves intense real time study across disciplines, as lessons that emerge can help manage the crisis as it rages. One such study, of relevance to the armed forces, titled ‘Pandemics and Armed Forces’ comes from ‘Partnership for Peace Consortium of Defense Academies and Security.’ John L Clarke, its author, concludes his excellent Paper, saying that ‘it should be clear that the armed forces represent a massive capacity for decision makers to consider when confronted by pandemic disease crises. The armed forces have a range of capabilities, many of them unique, which can make a critical difference in the ability of a state to survive such a crisis as we are now seeing with respect to Covid-19. The increasing trend to continue to add to the non-military roles of the armed forces, while of great importance, is not without costs, which, at some point, must be considered.
Questions galore
The need for serious study can never be overemphasised. Studies need to happen on many aspects. For instance, why weren’t vulnerable craft and personnel withdrawn from Mumbai High despite timely, accurate warnings? Shouldn’t the Indian Coast Guard (ICG) be brought under the Department of Military Affairs (DMA) for better Command and Control in challenging operations, including heavy duty SAR? Is the current form of split Command and Control within MoD, an efficient arrangement? Shouldn’t ICG force structure be limited to platforms which cater for only what they can be practically expected to do? Doesn’t the availability of the Navy’s Blue Water craft for use in brown waters during rare catastrophes like the current one, allow this review? How do we ensure that precious military budget expended on Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief (HADR) operations and standing stores or equipment is re-imbursed to the armed forces? Shouldn’t the DMA acquire the wherewithal to recover these costs? Speaking of utilising ground level knowledge, shouldn’t NDMA and NDRF be officered and staffed in a large measure by armed forces personnel who retire young?
There are many more. For instance, if logistic chains like Samudra Setu have to be kept up by the Navy for prolonged periods of time, shouldn’t the Navy be equipped for it? How do we progress our Landing Platform Dock (LPD) project for this? Considering the vast expanse of our oceans, can we get a Sealift Flotilla? Shouldn’t we have Hospital Ships? Ours is a large Navy. But when compared to the expanse of the Navy’s Area of Responsibility (AOR) and the exponential growth of the Chinese Navy, our Navy may not be large enough. Shouldn’t we review our force levels to ensure adequate large platforms, place shipbuilding orders and take mitigating measures against long build timelines?
Being a maritime power
India’s lack of maritime consciousness is widely lamented. That it is despite the traumatic experience of 450 years of colonisation, made possible by the seas around us, makes it even more poignant. Sadly, a real shift in consciousness looks far away, despite various initiatives by successive Governments.
Three essential attributes make a maritime power. These are, a good fighting Navy, a good merchant marine and adequate ports with good infrastructure and sound laws that facilitate efficient conduct of trade. Five hundred years ago, when Vasco da Gama landed up on our shores, we had a great ports with infrastructure and laws. Coastal states also had their own cargo craft. But the lack of a fighting Navy made us easy prey. Today, we have a great fighting Navy. It is time we put some more focus on the other two attributes. Massive crises, like the current one, are great opportunities for some long term course corrections. Several immediate actions too are critical.
In a crisis, the armed forces will work to the last man for the country. That is their DNA. It is for the country to figure out as to how non-core activities can be handed over to the best agencies for the job at the earliest, so that the armed forces can be asked to step back. There is much work to do at the apex level.
