India's Six Aircraft Carrier Ambitions: A Calculated Strategy or Political Posturing?

Two months ago, India's defence minister made a statement proposing a fleet of five to six new aircraft carriers. This ambitious plan, if realized, would significantly enhance India's naval capabilities and project power in the Indian Ocean region. However, experts are divided on whether this is a serious strategic move or merely political posturing.

Skeptics, including former naval officer and defence analyst Abhijit Singh, believe the minister's statement may have been an offhand remark amplified by the media. They suggest it might have been intended to counter criticism of the government's perceived reluctance to build a third carrier.

Strategic considerations also fuel the debate. Some experts, like Singh, argue for a single, larger carrier equipped with catapults, citing the increasing vulnerability of India's current smaller carriers in potential future conflicts. However, India's financial limitations could necessitate building another smaller "flattop" carrier, as Singh puts it.

Despite disagreements on size and quantity, there is consensus on the importance of aircraft carriers in India's maritime strategy. Singh emphasizes their role not only in wartime dominance but also in peacetime operations, highlighting their ability to project power and influence like no other naval platform.

The future of India's aircraft carrier fleet remains uncertain. Whether the government's proposal represents a genuine strategic shift or mere political posturing is yet to be seen.

However, this debate underscores the complex challenges India faces in balancing its naval ambitions with financial constraints and evolving geopolitical realities.

 

[charminar_waale_ismail_bhai]

Nothing will happen now. All defence budget will be diverted to providing freebies which the public voted for. Congratulations to all Hindus.

 

[Anant]

There are only two reasonable possibilities in how this statement should be perceived:

1. India has a long-term vision of building six fleet carriers. This would be something of a 50-year plan.

2. Rajnath Singh ji was also alluding to the MRSV project for 3-4 LHDs, and his six carriers comes to three fleet carriers plus 3 LHDs.

If any analyst thinks that the statement made means six carriers in the next 20 years, then they probably don't deserve to be called an analyst.

 

[Sic Dalalard]

Nothing will happen for next 5 Years, everything will drag.

 

[charminar_waale_ismail_bhai]

There are only two reasonable possibilities in how this statement should be perceived:

1. India has a long-term vision of building six fleet carriers. This would be something of a 50-year plan.

2. Rajnath Singh ji was also alluding to the MRSV project for 3-4 LHDs, and his six carriers comes to three fleet carriers plus 3 LHDs.

If any analyst thinks that the statement made means six carriers in the next 20 years, then they probably don't deserve to be called an analyst.

Are so confident Anant, that 50 years from now, we will be in a position to afford/build 6 Aircraft Carriers. How do you know, that with freebies becoming the flavour of the season, we are not going the Sri Lanka way?

 

[Akshat]

Are so confident Anant, that 50 years from now, we will be in a position to afford/build 6 Aircraft Carriers. How do you know, that with freebies becoming the flavour of the season, we are not going the Sri Lanka way?

Freebies as a share of budget has been constantly going down buddy. Despite all these freebies.

 

[ASHOK CARROL]

The minister was speaking of Navy's long term plan of over 30 years whilst the Defense specialist with his limited access to future plan document was talking of the current resource constrained environment where gdp is 3.75 trillion and defense allocations especially Capital budgets is insufficient for expansion . The minister was talking of future budgets where by 2050 the GDP will be over 40-45 trillion and the nation Capable of allocating a800 billion to-one trillion $ as defense budget for building a global navy of over 350-450 ships submarines and carriers covering all five oceans .

 

[Baka007]

There are only two reasonable possibilities in how this statement should be perceived:

1. India has a long-term vision of building six fleet carriers. This would be something of a 50-year plan.

2. Rajnath Singh ji was also alluding to the MRSV project for 3-4 LHDs, and his six carriers comes to three fleet carriers plus 3 LHDs.

If any analyst thinks that the statement made means six carriers in the next 20 years, then they probably don't deserve to be called an analyst.

LHDs can be feasible

 

[Neal.B]

Nothing will happen now. All defence budget will be diverted to providing freebies which the public voted for. Congratulations to all Hindus.

They didn't increase defence budget in last 10 years significantly. I don't think they would ever do that even with full majority. Defence procurement is the most neglected part in last decade apart from atmanirbharta.

 

[Anant]

LHDs can be feasible

LHDs are very much needed. If not LHDs, we do need LPDs quickly. Jalashwa is a very useful ship when it comes to amphibious operations, HADR, etc, but she is a very old ship.

 

[Anant]

They didn't increase defence budget in last 10 years significantly. I don't think they would ever do that even with full majority. Defence procurement is the most neglected part in last decade apart from atmanirbharta.

There is more to it than just seems the case.

1. On one hand, thanks to the GDP growth, the defence budget has increased quite a lot over the last decade. For instance, in 2004-05, when UPA-I began, the defence budget was around 21 billion USD (2.9% or so of GDP). By 2009-10 (the start of UPA-II), this had come up to around 39 billion USD (3.15% of GDP). By the time NDA-I began in 2014-15, this had further risen to 51 billion USD (2.55% of GDP). NDA-II's start in 2019-20 brought it up to 71.5 billion USD (2.55% of GDP). As of this year, the budget is around 75 billion USD (1.92% of GDP).

2. While the defence budget in absolute terms has grown, the share of the defence budget as a proportion of GDP has shrunk. This is concerning, but there really aren't any viable alternatives.

3. A lot of GDP growth in India comes from the private sector. This results in a far smaller (as a proportion) increase in government revenue, which means the growth of government expenditure is slower than GDP growth. Defence spending as a proportion of government expenditure has remained quite stable over the years.

4. India still has a very low expenditure-to-GDP ratio. In fact, this ratio is just about 14% for us. As a result, even 13% of government expenditure (which is the allocation to defence) means you spend 1.9% of GDP on defence. Most developed economies have this ratio sit at 30-40% or even higher, which means that even 4% spending of GDP on defence (which is what Poland is targetting) comes to only about 10% of the government expenditure.

5. Like it or not, the only sustainable way for India to increase our defence budget is to increase the expenditure-to-GDP ratio. For that to happen, we need to bring in more taxes, which means improving infrastructure and reducing poverty. For that to happen, you need to spend money, which is what we are doing now. Give it 15-20 years, and you'll see a massive increase in defence spending.

6. In any case, with Bhikaristan and China increasingly beefing up their militaries, we may see some form of floor on defence spending being brought in (say, for instance, a lower limit of 1.75% of GDP spending on defence). Even if that baseline was to be brought in this year, it would only mean our defence budget would be unchanged for one year, and then increase again.

7. That said, defence procurement in India has almost always been a mess, so one only hopes it gets rationalised. However, I am not going to hold my breath on that.

 

[Anant]

The minister was speaking of Navy's long term plan of over 30 years whilst the Defense specialist with his limited access to future plan document was talking of the current resource constrained environment where gdp is 3.75 trillion and defense allocations especially Capital budgets is insufficient for expansion . The minister was talking of future budgets where by 2050 the GDP will be over 40-45 trillion and the nation Capable of allocating a800 billion to-one trillion $ as defense budget for building a global navy of over 350-450 ships submarines and carriers covering all five oceans .

Sir, the best case scenario for our GDP by 2047-50 would be 25-30 trillion USD, and even that is something of a stretch, atleast unless something truly massive changes. That said, even a 25 trillion USD GDP would easily translate to a 250+ billion USD defence budget (at the very least, though the actual figure could even be double that).

In any case, all those funds would be, as you pointed out, of massive help.

 

[Sandeep]

India obviously has a serious plan on our future naval ship acquisition but there will also be a battle on who gets what funds. What we should do is quickly order another Vikrant carrier which can be built within 5 years as we learned how to design and develop it. While building that India should design and develop a 80000T carrier because the threat from China is only going to increase and we need the capability to maintain our own dominance in the Indian Ocean.

 

[Tanishq Bafila]

Nothing will happen for next 5 Years, everything will drag.

IAC 2 will be soon given a green light from DAC , possibly by next year. Not sure about submarine acquisition.

Rafale Deal for navy will happen by this year end or the next meeting between the heads of both nations.

In the next DAC meeting LCH will likely be approved as reported by ANI

 

[Aditya10rr]

Sir, the best case scenario for our GDP by 2047-50 would be 25-30 trillion USD, and even that is something of a stretch, atleast unless something truly massive changes. That said, even a 25 trillion USD GDP would easily translate to a 250+ billion USD defence budget (at the very least, though the actual figure could even be double that).

In any case, all those funds would be, as you pointed out, of massive help.

I believe we will be a $30 trillion economy by 2047. I am assuming some shocks midway and a nominal growth of 10%. And a 2% to 2.5% budget for defense would be adequate to project power throughout the IOR and Western Pacific. But that doesn't mean we don't need reforms, we need to trim down the army and focus more on mechanized forces and airpower. Ideally, we could source all the equipment locally by that point.