An underutilized unsinkable carrier

In recent days following the Galwan clashes much has been written about the possibilities of India using the Andaman & Nicobar Islands as an “unsinkable carrier” and fortress to prevent the Chinese Navy from entering the Indian Ocean Region and to prevent supplies from reaching China. This rather myopic view of looking at these strategic assets in primarily military terms and totally neglecting other facets of development has over the past many decades led to a systematic neglect of these islands that in the words of former governor Lt Gen Aditya Singh is “criminal”. India needs to stop looking at the 572 islands comprising some 8250sqkm of territory as merely a nature reserve and military guardhouse sitting astride the Malacca and work to develop the region without restoring to irrecoverably changing the ecological balance. We need to start taking pages from successful island development followed by governments in the region to look at various facets and see how that can be moulded into a plan for the A&N Islands to help develop these islands into a successful self-sufficient economic and military outpost of India acting as a guardian of the Bay of Bengal.

Possible Cruise vessel route from Singapore to Yangon with Port Blair included.

The Resort islands

The A&N Islands are situated within close range of multiple cruise routes that start from Singapore. The regular cruise routes to Yangon, Colombo, Phuket, Krabi etc can be further enhanced with an extension to Port Blair if adequate infrastructure is built. The Shipping ministry can work with various cruise lines to develop infrastructure required for the vessels while the tourism ministry can work with the companies to facilitate permissions to help facilitate cruise liner visits for mutual benefit. 

Channel news Asia of Singapore put the potential long-term benefits into perspective when they in an article in March 2020 said, “The number of cruise passengers sailing in Southeast Asia is expected to grow at 4.6 %  to 6.4 % per year to hit an estimated 4.5 million passengers by 2035”. The A&N Islands in comparison got only 400,000 tourist arrivals in 2018 with only 11818 foreign tourists. An examination of both numbers presented above shows a clear requirement to boost cruise vessel visits to the Andaman Islands and it must be noted that the Chinese annexation of Hong Kong and interrelated legal hassles with respect to cruise travel to Hong Kong for people of various nationalities from Singapore could boost the success prospects of any infrastructure built in this regard as well.

On the same lines, work has already begun on building an international airport at Port Blair called the “Veer Savarkar International Airport”. With time this airport could grow into an island tourism hub on the lines of Ngurah Rai International at Bali that sees over 3Mn tourist arrivals annually if Visa on arrival and cheap flights on the lines of UDAN linking Port Blair to international aviation hubs in Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Jakarta and Bangkok can be facilitated. It is worth noting here that the A&N islands had a GSDP of only $930Mn in 2016-17 compared to approximately $18Bn for Bali. Internal transportation in the islands will have to be improved as well with better quality road infrastructure and the introduction of Sea planes and deep-water speedboat ferries as in the Maldives and Bali. This will necessitate infrastructure upgradation on a number of islands in the area.

Besides, the Government will have to liberalize laws allowing for large international tourism chains to enter and set up hotels and other facilities in the A&N islands before any major progress on the ground can be possible.

Knowledge, Finance & Research hub

One of the ways the A&N islands could actually be developed into an economy beyond tourism or shipping without resorting to rampant destruction of the long preserved natural habitat is by turning them into a hub for the knowledge, finance and research-based sector. The Islands are run by the Central government and it would be rather easy for the government to open subsidiary laboratories for a host of government owned research labs on the islands that could cater to specific research projects regarding marine industries, climate change etc. The government could also look at opening research educational hubs connected to premier institutes that could offer students the chance to live and research on the islands given their project/subject had relevance in the area. This would automatically create a new knowledge microeconomy based on researchers from different fields working together in the area. Subsequently, partnerships on research could be inked with ASEAN and BIMSTEC-based universities to make this into an international research hub as well.

The US government has just imposed sanctions on a number of financial entities in Hong Kong which could lead to a flight of capital and finance knowledge from the Asian hub now annexed by the PRC. India can work towards attracting these firms to a new greenfield finance hub in Port Blair by letting them operate with lower levels of oversight from the RBI in a sort of Special Financial zone type of arrangement. 

Shipping magnet

The same shipping routes that carry the cruise traffic spoken of above also carry most of the world’s trade goods. Thousands of large Vessels transit the Malacca straits on a yearly basis and it is this traffic that has birthed the mega port bases economies of Singapore, Kuala Lumpur and Penang on the straits. It is worth noting here that while western India has a number of large deep-water ports in operation or in construction where the large 10,000 TEU and container motherships can easily dock to unload and load goods, Eastern India as on date has only one similar deep-water port at Krishnapatnam in Andhra Pradesh. This has led to a situation wherein even today a large volume of goods destined for India comes via transhipment from Colombo, Singapore, Port Klang and others. The shipping journal Joc.com in March 2019 estimated that nearly 2mn of the 4.5Mn TEU of containerized traffic to Eastern India came via transhipment from foreign ports. Moreover, similarly large volumes of container trade to Bangladesh and Myanmar are also similarly transhipped via the same ports.

The Island of Great Nicobar is situated bang in the middle of the busiest sea trade lanes that pass via the Malaccas linking the great ports of Europe, the Middle East and Africa to that of the Far East and ASEAN. This 942sqkm island is mostly a biosphere reserve except for a small village and Naval base of some 5700 residents at Campbell bay. A simple type transhipment port development on no more than 50Sqkm (JNPT in 29.87sqkm) of this area including housing for Workers and trading firms could turn this underdeveloped region into an economic engine serving trade in the region. India could work with partners like the Singapore port trust here to help develop a sister port to the Singapore port that could focus on serving the Bay of Bengal countries. It may be noted here that as the A&N islands are a centrally administered region it would be far easier to tweak the rules to help push the creation of such an international shipping hub.

Fortress Andaman

In recent days we read about how India is boosting its tri services force structure in the Andaman Islands by building additional airfields and basing additional ships and aircraft on the islands.

India could benefit by integrating and adapting island defence infrastructure as utilized by Singapore and Taiwan to help boost the overall defence of these islands in case of a conflict.

It must be noted here that any PLAN intervention into the Indian Ocean Region in case of conflict with India will be dependent to a large scale on control over the Malacca straits. In this struggle for control the A&N Islands will play the role of a fortress and unsinkable carrier from which aircraft will be able to control the airspace over the straits. This can in all likelihood lead to a PLAN amphibious assault to try and wrest control of these islands using a missile and air bombing campaign followed by amphibious landings. India must prepare for any eventuality on this end by preparing for such an assault and here the defence preparations of both Taiwan and Singapore have much to teach us.

Taiwan in particular has prepared to deter a full scale naval and air assault by the PLAN for over 50 years now, key to the defence of Taiwan is an interconnected network of nearly 50 radars providing a bird’s eye view nearly 750nm into the PRC. Additionally, in late 2013 Taiwan activated an UHF radar based on the American AN/FPS-115 “Pave Paws” BMD radar and integrated the same into its early warning network as well and this monster radar now gives the ROCAF radar coverage over almost 3000 nautical miles stretching deep into all of the PRC and extending all the way into Eastern India as well. Coupled to these radars are an impressive array of Patriot PAC-2, PAC-3, 7 and indigenous Tien kung TK-1, TK-2, TK-3 SAM systems and nearly 400 anti-aircraft artillery pieces, the system also includes numerous ship-borne SAM and CIWS units. The entire system is integrated into a tri-service air defence network that is headquartered inside hardened tunnels designed for defence against ballistic missile strikes at Hengshan in Northern Taipei.

Apart from this formidable SAM network, Taiwan has also deployed an impressive array of coastal defence missile systems and artillery built into hardened shelters facing the Taiwan straits.

Taiwan can also be looked at as inspiration on building hardened island air bases capable of withstanding a pre-emptive strike via Ballistic or cruise missiles in conflict. A good analogue for a missile protected hardened airbase can be found at Taitung in Southern Taiwan called “Shizishan”. Colloquially, this hardened airbase can house 60-80 fighters in hardened underground tunnels protected by blast doors and up to 6 feet of concrete. This base also provides fighters with multiple lines of access to above ground runways, taxiways and civilian highways. Naval facilities have similarly been hardened with hardened submarine pens and missile boat shelters. 

Singapore has similarly built up defences against any possible hostilities by any nation since its independence and the tiny 725sqkm country has no less than 40 separate military facilities including six airfields with hardened infrastructure for fighter aircraft. An integrated Island air defence network fuses data from as many as ten ELTA 2084MMR radars along with civilian and shipborne radar to provide complete airspace coverage of the city state. These radars are coupled to shipborne and surface deployed ASTER 30 and SPYDER SAM systems for air defence purposes.

India is currently expanding its military facilities on the islands and could look at measures taken by both these island fortresses to improve upon existing military designs in the A&N islands using Coastal defence Brahmos batteries, long range air defence radars and MRSAM systems while also building hardened aircraft shelters and submarine pens capable of withstanding missile attacks.

Possible Island based surface and air defence grid with 4xMRSAM batteries (Green Circles), 2xELTA 2084 Green Pine Radar (Black Circles) & 2x Brahmos Batteries (Red circles)

Environmental costs

While measures as listed would help build the A&N islands into an economically vibrant, militarily robust guarantor of Indian presence on the Malaccas there would be a substantial cost to pay in terms of environmental degradation of areas which will need to be built up. That said this degradation could be mitigated to some extent by strictly building around and improving facilities and habitation centres already present on the Islands. Land acquisition while inevitable could be kept to a minimum by instead opting for reclamation of land from the sea wherever suitable. Energy requirements to run similarly developed A&N Island infrastructure would be vast, the Government could look at utilizing offshore wind power and tidal power to help reduce pollution due to the same.

Tourism while desirable often devolves into overconsumption of resources leading to situations where like in Bali today there are inklings of freshwater shortage amongst other things. Such factors must be considered and such a situation on the A&N islands could be mitigated by strict adherence to recycling, rainwater harvesting and ecotourism norms being applied.

In the A&N islands, India has a massively underutilized asset that if developed properly could generate substantial revenue while securing the western gates of the Malacca straits. While any development of the islands will incur huge expenditure and require a lot of time as well the rewards will be similarly great as well. It is imperative that we do not let this asset waste away for much longer and work to develop it to its full potential for the greater good of India.

Image Credits: Ministry of Tourism