Before getting into the specificities of the military structures in Indian Ocean, it is important to delve into the emergent contemporary concepts in relation to maritime military strategies. Despite classical naval strategist Mahan’s
21Jamshed Ayaz Khan, Asia-Search for Security Cooperation, (Islamabad: Pan Graphics, 2006), p.70.
reservations about putting emphasis on amphibious operations, some prominent contemporary naval strategists favoured amphibious and other sea borne operations. Colomb saw ‘attacks on territory from sea’ as a major dividend of ‘command of the sea’. Corbett considered ‘defence of military expeditions’ as key mode of exercising ‘command of the sea’22. Stansfield Turner appreciated the current trend of naval power to project power against the shore; always assuming, of course, a sufficient level of command of the sea23.
Indian Ocean region is divided between US Central and Pacific Command.
Both the commands are composed of highly effective and modern components of army, navy and marine with their integral air assets of overwhelming capacity and regular air power. US Central Command (USCENTCOM) is responsible for countries spanning from Egypt to Pakistan including central Asia in the north and western part of the Indian Ocean in the south starting from few hundred miles west of Maldives- Diego Garcia line. Both the Suez and Hormuz maritime bottleneck falls in the jurisdiction of USCENTCOM.
Forward HQ of USCENTCOM is in Qatar with the main HQ location in Florida in the US. This one of the two US Commands with it’s the main HQ outside its AOR. The USCENTCOM elements are also spread in Kuwait, Bahrain, UAE and some support base in Central Asia that facilitates ISAF operations in Afghanistan.
US Naval Force Central Command (USNAVCENT) of the CENTCOM is virtually unchallenged in its southern maritime Area of Responsibility (AOR).
Its HQ is in Bahrain. It is consist of, primarily, US Fifth Fleet and couple of Submarine Task Force. An US Fleet has about 70 various types of warships including an aircraft carrier and about 40000 military personnel.
US Pacific Command (USPACOM) is responsible for the eastern part of the Indian Ocean region alongside its responsibilities in the Pacific and its associated seas. The US 7thfleet normally stationed in Japan can move to Indian Ocean in a short notice. Substantial marine and army components of the USPACOM can quickly be dispatched in Indian Ocean if any urgency arises.
American strategic edge over its challengers, if any, lies not only in numbers but also on its state of the art technology that enables their supreme capacity.
In a normal situation, the US envision the possibility of only few major crisis at a time around the world where they are required to get involved and they
22Eric Grove, “Maritime Power- Concepts and Prognosis,” in Maritime Dimension of a New World Order, edited by Ravi Vohra & Devbrated Chakraborty, (New Delhi: National Maritime Foundation, 2007), p.3.
23Ibid.
are capable of concentrating appropriate volume of force at those fronts well in time. The dispositions of the Commands are flexible and military resource can quickly be moved from one to another.
Most NATO allies and many non-NATO allies of the US are likely to participate or support the US in case of a conflict. Locally powerful US allies in that part of the region like Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Egypt and most importantly Israel are supplied with modern US and NATO armaments and are expected to side the US in any escalation.
Iran, the ideological adversary of the West and many other nations in that region, has been cornered for last few years through all out Israeli and Western diplomatic pressure. The country no longer aspires to export Islamic Revolution, rather backtracked in a defensive footing. They rely more on their people’s orthodox power in support for their defence, rather than on military strength merely. Their reasonable military spending confirms the fact.
The Indian Navy with about 58,000 active personnel and a reasonably big operational fleet comprising an aircraft carrier, 08 guided missile destroyers, 15 frigates, one nuclear attack submarine, 14 conventional submarines, 24 corvettes and 155 aircrafts etc. looks to be in the rise as a naval power, regionally at the least 24. But they are yet to catch up a lot in technical capacity and in numbers in key components if compared with the USNAVCENT.
Except for aircraft carrier the Chinese Navy is actually triple in size than that of Indian navy. But their outreach in Indian Ocean is limited by their priorities in defensive postures in East and South China Sea. Chinese naval vessels and armaments are also far inferior in technology than that of the US.
Iran has its self-styled regular and Revolutionary Guard navy. But they operate mostly at their coastal belt with an eye on the Hormuz.
The US is way ahead of other major powers in the world in military capabilities. Their military spending corroborate this fact. But some interesting shifting in the trend of military expenditure can be observed.
24 <http://www.defence.pk/forums/indian-defence/163018-india-military-strength-2012-a.html>; <http://www.globalfirepower.com/country-military-strength-detail.asp?country_id
=India>
Table 2. US, China, India: Trends of Military Expenditure as per Purchasing Power Parity (in billions USD)
25* Projected.
This massive military expenditure of the US is also related to its historical and perpetual security responsibilities with regards to its allies and defence of the non-communist domain in Europe and Middle East-Indian Ocean and Asia-Pacific since the beginning of cold war period after the Second World War.
Regardless of the fall of communism and its global spectrum, as per western understandings, new adversaries like Russia and China has filled that vacuum in certain ways. But a reduction trend of US military expenditure of late and in the near future can also be observed; opposed to massive increase in military expenditure of China and to some extent India. China’s giant overhaul and expansion scheme of PLA Navy could be worrisome for the US. Yet China is unlikely to catch up with the US in terms of critical naval asset e.g. air craft carrier. The Chinese will have just two carriers even after a decade from now whereas the US will still have 11 - with most of them having state of the art technology.