(Carried by The Quint on 16 Feb 17-link below)
Golden Jubilee and
our Indian Submariners
A ring side view
The year 1969.The destination, a remote island in
Vladivostok. The era was of the grand Soviet Union. A large contingent of
Indian Naval officers and sailors, of which I was one, was conveyed by boat to
our final destination. An unusually long journey- first by an Air India
chartered flight from Mumbai to Moscow, followed by a long wait at the airport
before embarking a large turbo prop
aircraft for an even longer flight to the far eastern coast of the Soviet
Union.
A tired contingent of
the would be Killer squadron of missile boats, was received by a cheerful lot
of Indian submarine officers and sailors who had spent considerable time on the
island. They were happy to embrace their brethren after a long absence from
home. Letters from their dear ones which took over a month to reach via the
Indian Embassy at Moscow were delivered along with goodies and eats from home.
Thus started my association with the Indian Naval Submariners - a special
category of pioneers of the newly born, long awaited, third dimension of the
navy.
The Golden jubilee of the submarine arm scheduled in December
2017 is exactly an year after my commissioning date of December 1966. Not even
in my wildest dreams did I imagine that I would, soon after the 1971 war, be
sent to specialize in Anti Submarine Warfare. .
But then I was to work even closer with the submarine arm as we fed on each other's
strengths and weaknesses to hone our respective combat skills. Tactics to
encounter stealthy denizens of the deep
had to be evolved through numerous exercises at sea. Conversely, the
submarine evolved its combat procedures by analyzing numerous encounters with
her hunters from all three dimensions, i.e. surface, air and underwater.
And so it was that we graduated from the F Class
submarines to the Kilo Class from the
Soviet Union and from the HDW-SSK bought and built in India from Germany and finally to the Scorpene
Class ex France now being built at the Mazagaon docks at Mumbai.
The journey as expected has been tenuous, rewarding ,
frustrating and exhilarating all rolled into one. It would be difficult to
segregate the indigenous nuclear submarine from this saga. After all the
foundation was laid from the experience gained by our intrepid submariners who
trained and manned a soviet nuclear submarine on lease, as early as in 1988.
The transition from the conventional to nuclear is by no means an easy one, as
was the experience of a handful of proud owners of the nuclear submarines. That
the Arihant our first nuclear propelled submarine was monitored and
operationalised by the submarine arm is as vital as the participation of DRDO, BARC
,indigenous partners in production of the hull and numerous suppliers of
various parts of the platform. Most of them would never know how the parts they
manufactured fit into the complex platform. The combination of war ship
building which commenced in the late 1960's and submarine building which
commenced in 1987 and finally the nuclear submarine building has supported and
nurtured a whole range of SME/MSME segments of industry in India. Some day this
little known statistics will be compiled for us to really appreciate the laborious
process.
Were there down sides to the saga? To start with our attempts
to build two of the most advanced design of the German HDW submarines under the
buy and make concept had to be prematurely abandoned after the two submarines
supplied and two built were successfully inducted. This was triggered by the
infamous HDW scandal which surfaced at a crucial period of our development. We
now know that whenever the country is poised to acquire a state of art
platforms or equipment, a scandal surfaces
when the process is completed. It has taken decades for the procurement
procedures to be revised to address issues related to black listing and the
role of agents. Transfer of technology
and involving indigenous private sector partners to pursue the "Make in
India" concept has just been
reformulated; the success of which will be tested in due course of time.
Second, rapid modernization and acquisition has a telling
effect on the manpower constraints related to sanctions and recruitment followed by training which is a long term
process that defies instant solutions. Decommissioning old platforms to
compensate for the immediate requirement of new induction has its own
predicament of force level imperatives.
A new platform demands not just trained manpower for
operational needs but a host of administrative, logistics and repair support
facilities which are manpower-critical. Short cuts may well result in
unintended consequences of accidents and losses.
Wishing away mid- term
implications to overcome mandatory sanctions from a not too responsive
sanctioning authority, has attendant ramifications of a grave nature. Balancing
the short and long term implications on man power may well turn out to be the
biggest challenge for the navy.
