Navy knows its job, but do offshore officials?

Navy knows its job, but do offshore officials?

Admiral Sushil Kumar (retd)

It is one thing to administer a PSU such as the DRDO and quite another to handle the armed forces.

Defence Minister AK Antony recently rebuked the Indian Navy for the loss of the submarine, INS Sindhurakshak. I wonder if he even realised his faux pas. The Navy top brass had every reason to be riled when Antony proclaimed at the annual Commanders’ Conference that the Navy had frittered away national resources.

Still recovering from the tragic loss of Sindhurakshak, the unjust remark of the Defence Minister has not gone down well with the Navy and the rank and file of the armed forces.

With all on board killed in a flash and the submarine destroyed and sunk, it will be a long time before the technical Board of Inquiry is able to establish what happened to INS Sindhurakshak. When nothing is known, is it not strange that the Ministry of Defence has jumped to its own conclusions?

To ‘clear the yardarm’ is an old Navy expression that is synonymous with washing one’s hands of a responsibility. It came into being in the days of sail when Britannia ruled the waves and Lordships of the Admiralty perched ashore found it expedient to pass the buck.

It has a lot to do with the long standing need to integrate the armed forces into the Ministry of Defence. Obviously little has happened. And since the old order has not changed, it is still the old mindset of ‘we and they’.

Calling itself the Integrated Headquarters of the MoD may sound impressive, but inducing systemic changes requires much more than a cosmetic change of nomenclature. What is really needed is a change of attitude, along with a deep understanding of military ethos.

The fighting spirit of the armed forces rides on morale. And to weld together a professionally trained and highly motivated fighting force capable of defending the nation requires astute statesmanship. It is one thing to administer a civilian public sector undertaking such as the DRDO and quite another to handle the armed forces of the nation.

The political leadership would do well to take a leaf out of the Kargil report. It carries a doctrinal message on how the armed forces should be motivated and galvanised into action when the chips are down.

The need to induct the military into the national security loop was an important lesson from the Kargil conflict. It prompted the weekly meeting of the Prime Minister with the Chiefs of the Army, Navy and Air Force. The Prime Minister’s aim was simply to understand his armed forces since they are the primary instrument of state power. But it was too good to last and when the National Security Council came of age, the Prime Minister’s initiative fell by the wayside.

It has never been easy to understand the operational environment of the Navy and the risks that go with it. And many are the accounts of the life and hazards aboard a submarine. But it was the late Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi who placed it in perspective. Recording his experience under water, while embarked on the nuclear submarine INS Chakra in 1988, this is what he stated: “Thank God I was a pilot, not a submariner”.

Submariners are required to operate in the domain of danger where fire and flooding remain their greatest and constant threat. Since the year 2000, there have been 27 major submarine incidents — 10 American, six Russian, five British, two Canadian, one Australian, one Chinese, one French and one Indian (Sindhurakshak).

Moreover, being the most potent weapon of war, submarines are among the most complex war fighting machines ever developed. The experience of the Indian Navy goes back to the 1960s and having operated submarines in diverse combat conditions for more than half a century, the Navy is well geared to face the challenge that it offers.

The Russian navy went through a traumatic period after its nuclear submarine Kursk was destroyed in an underwater explosion. But the Russians came through the crisis. And so will the Indian Navy come to grips with the loss of INS Sindhurakshak. Professional navies know how to ride the storm. It is the officials ashore who need to brace themselves for the challenge.

The writer was the Navy Chief during the Kargil conflict