The Cutting Edge With Colonel Anurag Awasthi (Retd)

With Vice Admiral Pradeep Chauhan (Retd), AVSM and Bar, VSM

Colonel Anurag Awasthi (R): Hello, and welcome to Cutting Edge, your show on defence aerospace and geopolitics. Today, we have with us Vice Admiral Pradeep Chauhan (Retd), AVSM and Bar, VSM, who's also the director general of National Maritime Foundation, one of the biggest think tanks, so far as anything maritime is concerned in India, and we're here to speak with them on the famous topic of IRIS Dena. Welcome sir. We need to we really need to speak on IRIS Dena and there's a huge amount of chatter all over the world in so far as this ship has been concerned and Pete Hegseth also made this announcement this is the first time you’re a capital ship has been sunk which apparently is a little untrue because it started with Kukri then, of course, there was something in the Falklands and then back again in Korea so this is the fourth one apparently so there's a fact check in in so far as that is concerned but sir having said that on 4th of March there's this worldwide there was a news a MK-48 torpedo of the  US Navy launched from a SSN apparently sunk IRIS Dena beyond Gal in Sri Lanka. So, while all this has happened, sir, there's a huge amount of talk known, that there's this law of armed conflict, the international humanitarian law, there's the Geneva convention too, then there's just below, and of course, then there, just at bellum, all these terminologies have kicked in. So as we speak, there is no war, so there's no formal engagement of war which has been pronounced. So, how do you look at this, sir?

Vice Admiral Pradeep Chauhan (Retd): So, first of all, thank you very much for having me on your show again and as far as the question is concerned. Very few nations, after the signing and ratification of the UN charter, which enjoins nations from declaring war as a solution to interstate difficulties or conflicts, are using the term war anymore. So the term war has then there thereafter fallen largely into disuse and is being, but people are still doing everything that a war entails them to do and therefore they call them they call these activities international armed conflicts and the current updates to existing naval law or the law of naval warfare are to be found in some in a document called the San Remo manual. And the San Remo manual is a restatement of the law of war, largely but also updates it for those weapons and sensors that didn't exist in the early part of the 21st 20th century. So to that extent, the declaration of the fact that the Geneva Convention applies equally to conditions or even outside of declared war is considered to be a fact. Now, was the declaration of war necessary? No, because we didn't declare war, for example, in 1971. And we had we went at Pakistan hammer and tongs, and we nations don't declare war very frequently anymore. They just go in for it, and then they refer to it as an international armed conflict. There are pros and cons to that, but we are not going to discuss the legal findings.

Colonel Anurag Awasthi (Retd):  So, you have to say the law of armed conflict applies here or not, sir?

Vice Admiral Pradeep Chauhan: It very much applies.

Colonel Anurag Awasthi (Retd): It does apply.

Vice Admiral Pradeep Chauhan: It does.   

Colonel Anurag Awasthi (Retd): All right. So, whatever happened, is.

Vice Admiral Pradeep Chauhan (Retd): Is within the legality of international law. Now, international law enjoins naval ships to be able to conduct conflict operations or operations of armed conflict.  anywhere outside the territorial sea of a neutral state. That means you can conduct operations unlike, say, for example, operations on the land. Operations at sea are capable of being conducted anywhere wherever the enemy's warships or the enemy's commerce if that commerce has been declared to be a military object is found or are found and that would include all the oceanic spaces leave alone the Indian Ocean alone barring of course that you cannot conduct these operations inside the territorial sea of a coastal state that has not become a belligerent.  

Colonel Anurag Awasthi (Retd): A state but has not become belligerent.

Vice Admiral Pradeep Chauhan (Retd): The belligerent means that it has taken a side. And it is in conflict either on its own or in conjunction with one or the other of the principal belligerents.

Colonel Anurag Awasthi (Retd): So, that's a very important point actually. Now there's a huge amount of chatters starting with IRIS Dena they say that they were three capital ships of Iran who were a part of the international fleet review and MILAN which is an outstanding pedestal which has been curated by the Indian Navy in so many years I think for interoperability and so many other things and after all this was over and these ships were going back there was some legality for us to escort them back and stuff like that. I don't know how it works, sir. I mean.

Pradeep Chauhan: Okay, it doesn't work in any fashion in the manner that is being imputed by various voices. And sometimes it's a good idea for voices to actually stop and think a little bit before they articulate. But who's to stop anybody from doing anything that they want in this technologically advanced age? So what actually happened was that the event took place a good 5 days to 8 days after Milan. And nobody escorts a warship out of our back to its home because warships are manifestations of the nation's fighting ability.  And so the question of the Indian Navy requiring in some hospitality-based sort of approach to escort a participating vessel back to wherever it wanted to go is inapplicable because every time a ship arrives at any port, whether it is in a port or it is participating in anything, it remains under its national command and control. and its entire rules of engagement processes are those determined by its nation. And therefore, in the particular instance, the IRIS Dena was, as soon as it finished, it proceeded in accordance with whatever orders it had received from its headquarters and was very much like any other warship at sea. Now, in that process, because Iran, the USA and Israel are engaged in armed conflict as belligerents, consequently, all belligerents must look after themselves and hopefully inflict damage on the other belligerent; otherwise, what is the purpose of being a belligerent? So there's also this belief that, in some way, the Indian philosophy of looking after guests.

Colonel Anurag Awasthi (Retd): Atithi Devo Bhava.

Vice Admiral Pradeep Chauhan (Retd): Is applicable and it is not.

Colonel Anurag Awasthi (Retd): Absolutely.

Vice Admiral Pradeep Chauhan (Retd): Not only legally, but even operationally

Colonel Anurag Awasthi (Retd): Yes, absolutely, so good to know that, and then, there's a lot of chatter as we speak from a lot of people that look, these are these capital ships which are a manifestation of a nation's fighting potential. They attended an exercise here in the Bay of Bengal, and they were unarmed this, that and the other. Now, how do you say that a frigate doesn't have the anti-submarine warfare capabilities that allow it to go to sea without them?

Vice Admiral Pradeep Chauhan (Retd): Okay, so there are two elements to this. There is, of course, a large amount of chatter. I think that's the very polite way of putting it. To say that warships would sail without being armed simply because they were going to an event such as an international fleet review. Nothing could be further from the truth. No warship of any country sails without its full stock of armament, including its ammunition. It may or may not carry all its wash stock of missiles if the missiles that it carries are liquid fuel missiles. Yes. But if they are solid-fuelled missiles, and even in the case of missiles, they will carry everything ASW. So, anti-submarine warfare is a function of two things. One is the sensor suite that you have, and one is the weapon suite that you have. And different frigates can be optimised for different purposes. So you could have, for example, an anti-aircraft optimised frigate, but that doesn't mean that it can't do anything other than shoot down aircraft. So did the  IRIS Dena have a sonar? Yes, it did. Is it a sonar suite, which is a hull-mounted sonar? Yes. Do many ships have hull-mounted sonars? Yes. And is a hull-mounted sonar as good as, say, a towed array sonar? It depends on what the ship wants to do. So, in some cases, the toad array sonar will give you better ranges of detection, but will hamper your own mobility. So navies occasionally and frequently in fact take a conscious decision to either have only hull-mounted sonars or to have hull-mounted sonars and variable depth sonars, or to have hull-mounted sonar, variable depth sonar and toad array sonar. But in that case, the frigate concerned would have to be optimised for anti-submarine warfare.  So in the case of Dena, she is a frigate. A frigate is capable of handling threats in all three dimensions, that is, on the surface, under the surface and in the air. And to that extent, I think that the ship is as competent a ship as the Republic of Iran felt that it should be. Now, should the Republic of Iran, in hindsight, have put better sensors and weapons? Who knows? And so I think that that is a decision taken by a sovereign state as it develops its navy, and every navy will be a mix of all kinds of capability which only when put together will form whatever that nation state decides to be optimal.

Colonel Anurag Awasthi (Retd):  Absolutely. So, while we speak about these three capital ships returning, one goes to Trincomalee, one goes down to Kochi, and one moves into the areas which are off Gal in Sri Lanka, away from the Sri Lankan waters, apparently. Sir, now while all of this is known sir, the whole world knows that the hostilities commenced on the 28th of February, sir, and if there's a carrier strike group led by USS Abraham Lincoln hanging around in the Arabian sea obviously the entire packaging will be there sir whether it's the destroyers or the frigates or the SSNs, the deadly SSNs. So, was it not known to Iran that such a thing would happen?

Vice Admiral Pradeep Chauhan (Retd): So if it wasn't known to Iran, then Iran has no business trying to operate at sea. Look, you're quite right in saying that the carrier strike group is called a carrier strike group because its aircraft on the carrier are optimised for conducting strikes on defended targets ashore. But the strike group is a strike group, and you cannot segregate the carrier from the rest of the group, and you never do. So it is only in some occasional peculiar arguments that people try to divide up the carrier from or segregate the carrier from its group. So, in short, what happens is that the carrier strike group, as you correctly say, comprises the group. The group will also comprise SSNs. So, SSNs, for those of our listeners who are not familiar, are simply a NATO classification for a vessel subsurface nuclear, which means that it is powered by nuclear propulsion. It doesn't say anything about what its weapons package is. In this case, I believe it was the USS Charlotte, and the USS Charlotte was indeed part of a carrier strike group. Should the Iranians have known this? I should think so. It's not that the it's not that the ship is not in communication in any fashion with its environment. It is. And therefore, could the ship not have been taking such precautions as it deemed appropriate? It certainly should. As far as this business of taking shelter here, there, and capital ships is concerned, the word capital ship is actually being used by Americans rather poorly. These are frontline combatants. So, a frigate and above are certainly frontline combatants. Whether it is called a capital ship is actually a historical throwback to battleships and stuff of that nature. Nevertheless, they are frontline. That means that they are designed for everything from offshore patrolling all the way up to high-intensity conflict, and they must be appropriately prepared. So it is difficult for me to believe that there will be a captain at sea who is in command of a ship and a flotilla of three ships which he is exercising with and is completely oblivious to the fact that there are other threats in the vicinity and not necessarily only manifesting themselves once he enters a narrow constricted water either the state of Hormuz or the Gulf of Oman before that or the Persian Gulf thereafter. So the other point here is that the other vessels, in one case, had a major engine problem. And in the case of the vessel that entered Sri Lanka,  Sri Lanka's port, the vessel there the rules of neutrality apply. Would you like me to expound upon that?

Colonel Anurag Awasthi (Retd): Sure.

Vice Admiral Pradeep Chauhan (Retd): So the rule of neutrality really indicates that if a state is a neutral which means it is not participating as a belligerent then it can accommodate a vessel from either belligerent but only for a period of 24 hours and the reasons for its being allowed in in the first place is to replenish the vessel or to repair the vessel but it cannot be repaired in a manner that will enhance its warfighting capability. The other thing is that if you do choose to keep the vessel, that means you are surrendering your status of being a neutral power, then the other belligerents who are arrayed against that particular belligerent that you have given shelter to are free to choose. They will give you a warning and say get out of here and get them out of your country. And the other option available comes from one of the Hague conventions of naval warfare, which says that you can also say all right, I'm going to keep the vessel here, but I will disembark the entire crew and keep the crew in a confined space and not allow them to take part in any further belligerent action. Now can the other belligerent in this particular case the United States or Israel should that should it have come to say we don't accept this? Yeah, they could. But would they? That depends on the circumstances prevailing. So in this particular case, to the best of my awareness, Sri Lanka has indeed disembarked all the people from the ship. So the ship is in a sort of quarantine. It's not really in quarantine, but it is ensconced in a specific location, and the crew and the officers are restricted in their ability to travel, and they're certainly not able to repatriate at the very moment. The situation seems to be that the belligerents are comfortable with that. The vessel, which came into the Indian port of Kochi, there the vessel was struck by a force majeure. It just needs repair, and so it says that I have major engineering problems. My engines have indeed packed up. The Indian Navy would have, I'm sure, sent people to investigate and found that if the reason is valid, it's okay. We will keep you here until you can repair yourself. Once you repair yourself, please get out and go and do some war fighting, or hopefully, the war will be over by then.

Vice Admiral Pradeep Chauhan (Retd): We hope they hope. everybody hopes

Colonel Anurag Awasthi  (Retd): Everybody hopes. So now let me segue you back to the Indian context. So we have lately seen INS Anjadip coming in; now these are the shallow watercraft best suited for anti-submarine warfare. Then of course we have the helos doing the anti-submarine, this is besides the suits which you have on board, and of course you have the P-8Is and all of that. We're getting a couple of more now in times to come. Do you think this is enough, sir, in this region, the way things are going, or do you need it?

Vice Admiral Pradeep Chauhan (Retd): Are you talking about Pakistan's ability to handle an induction of hang so here what happens is that the Indian navy is quite clear that its environment requires two sorts of anti-submarine capability. One is shallow water because the Arabian Sea in particular is very shallow, and the other is what do you do once you reach sufficient depths where all sorts of submarines are capable of operating. So you need both capabilities. You need ships that are optimised in their sensor suites for the reverberations that otherwise occur as sound beams travel and bounce up and down off the bottom of the sea. And so you need shallow watercraft. And to that extent, the vessels that we are now producing are high quality, low noise and very good stealth capabilities for the roles that they have been created for. Farther out to sea, you have bluer waters, which means that they are deeper waters and they are at larger distances from your coast. Here you have a combination of as you correctly said you have a combination of P-8IS. The reason why we concentrate on P-8I is that we want to do ASW.  Or area anti-submarine warfare and not tactical anti-submarine warfare alone. So the P-8I is probably the world's number one competence in terms of airborne ability for long-range anti-submarine warfare and maritime patrol. They are supplemented by helicopters operating from ships. And so these shipborne helicopters, each of these larger vessels that we have now operate two helicopters, which are again optimised for anti-submarine warfare roles. And so they sanitise areas ahead. They are also able to localise those areas that have been indicated as being submarine probability areas by the P-8I kind of platform. And then you have the ships themselves and their intrinsic suites, whether as you rightly said, they have got individual weapon sensor suites which include, as I mentioned earlier, hull hull-mounted sonar, they include variable depth sonar, and they include toad array sonars, and this entire package then presents a pretty formidable ASW suite. Now what about the differences between say an SSN and a non-nuclear power, or a conventional power or a diesel electric, or otherwise known as an SSK. So what Pakistan is acquiring are SSKs with air-independent propulsion. But remember, air-independent propulsion increases only endurance. It doesn't increase speed. In fact, it reduces speed.

Colonel Anurag Awasthi (Retd): It reduces it, actually.

Vice Admiral Pradeep Chauhan (Retd): So, patrol periods are enhanced. The ability of the submarine to remain without breaking the water with any of its masks is enhanced. Thereby, what is called the submarine's indiscretion rate, which is quite romantic as a term. The indiscretion rate is reduced much more than it would have been had the submarine been forced to surface or to push out a snorkel to get in oxygen to charge its batteries to run its diesels, which would then charge its batteries.  So, are we comfortable with the ASW capabilities that we have? We're never comfortable.  Nobody is ever comfortable with what they have. Everybody is aspiring to get more because the enemy in this particular example, perhaps Pakistan, if they have no sense at all, then they would obviously also be trying to augment their own capacities and their own capabilities. So this business of anti-submarine warfare is always first of all in Indian waters is always going to be weighted in favour of the submarine because we have negative gradients operating in our in our area and so submarines have the better of it in equal terms but we endeavour to make sure that the terms aren't equal and so to do this we establish a full layered response to anti-submarine warfare the all the part I told you about ships and their helicopters are all tactical ASW. But what we need is a continuous ability to do area ASW, which only the P-8I can deliver.

Colonel Anurag Awasthi (Retd): So the entire mosaic of ASW has to be established now. And I think the more the better, the way it looks to be.

Vice Admiral Pradeep Chauhan (Retd): That is why we are picking up additional P-8I.

Colonel Anurag Awasthi (Retd): additions. Absolutely. But then, how do you rate the Hangor class? Is it good, bad, ugly, indifferent, or all of the above? None of the above. What is it?

Vice Admiral Pradeep Chauhan (Retd): It would be nice if we could actually pigeonhole them in one of these descriptive parameters, but the truth is that the Hangor class is a competent SSK, and we have competent  ASW assets, and now it will depend upon how well we, as they say in the army, can outgeneral them?  And so are we able to outdo them? And so I think that I personally have a very large amount of faith in our training systems and our simple ability to innovate. We are probably the world's best innovators because even if you take frugal innovation and you apply that to tactical situations, you have seen in the army, we have seen in the air force, and I am familiar with the navy. The ability to actually maximise your potential is something that human skill is required for. So you can have as much AI and as much ML and as much tech, but at the end of the day, how well do you operate the tech? What is the secret? What is the secret? Is it a secret that Pakistan has a Hangor class? Is it a secret that China's hangar class has X, Y, or Z kind of weapon or sensor? No, none of that is secret. What a secret it is how good their people are! How competent are their crews? How well are they trained? How does their morale stand? When the bullets start flying, or in this case, charges and when the chips are down, then how do you react? And this is what a high level of intelligence is. To the best of our awareness, we aren't always capable of outguessing what the enemy will do, but we are certainly quite capable of determining what we will do. And we will, we are, if on a scale of 0 to 10, we're 10.

Colonel Anurag Awasthi (Retd): Oh, that's good to know, sir. Now, the pertinent question to you is, sir, now since IRIS Dena has happened, and let's say it's close to our maritime boundaries and things like that. What are the lessons that we need to derive in times to come by incidents of this kind, which are, I mean, unprecedented, one never thought of such things?

Vice Admiral Pradeep Chauhan (Retd): Okay, so this is an excellent question; it has answers at very many levels, but let me address a few of them, given the time that is available to me. First of all, we know right now that ships in the Persian Gulf, oil-carrying tankers, and gas-carrying tankers are all stuck. Why are they stuck? It's not because the IRGC is about to do something or Iran is doing something. None of that. It is stuck because insurance companies and the P&I clubs have said the risks are too high. The actuaries who work for the seven major insurance companies that provide war risk premiums.

Colonel Anurag Awasthi (Retd): The bulk of them are in London.

Vice Admiral Pradeep Chauhan (Retd): The bulk of them in London have said no. And therefore, we are stuck on how badly India was affected. I think we have something like 37 tankers that are India bound who are unable to move. Why are they unable to move? Because of this insurance and a war risk premium. You have an insurance stack. You have Holland maintenance insurance. Then you have to have PMI insurance for a third party. Then you have another set of insurance levels for the cargo. Then you have a war risk premium. Then you have extended warmth, and this is called an insurance stack. If at any point this insurance is broken, then ships cannot sail. Now, the next point of the next lesson is, so how are the Chinese managing to sail? How are they doing this? And the answer, sir, is that the Chinese are sailing their cargoes on their own flagships. So when a country has its cargo sailing under its own flag, its government can say okay baby, I'm going to ensure I am my own insurer. I don't need anybody else. I will ensure the company, the ship, the cargo, the crew, everything. But for that, you have to have your own flag.  Now, India took a commercial decision which, in my opinion, was extraordinarily shortsighted as a commercial decision to maximise the lower taxation rates that applied to other registries than India and chose to fly other countries' flags on their ships. Now, this government is bending over backwards trying to reverse this. But this lesson that emerges from not only the IRIS Dena incident but the whole business of tankers being stuck is that you better have your own flag maximised so that your critical cargo sails on your flag and your government can tell the P&I clubs, the 12 P&I clubs that otherwise rule the world, go climb a tree. I will ensure my cargo myself. And then the ship will sail, and if required, it will sail independently, and if required, it will sail under escort. But it will sail in this one. But we couldn't get there because we didn't have the maximum number of ships flying our own flag. This has been our constant refrain, and this is one very, very large lesson. So the general public seldom understands. They think that Iran is going to allow Russia or that Iran is allowing China to sail. Rubbish. The insurers are unable to stop the ship from sailing. The insurance companies are unable to stop the ship from sailing because China says I'm my own insurer. Now.

Colonel Anurag Awasthi (Retd): My ship.

Vice Admiral Pradeep Chauhan (Retd): My ship, my insurance, I will pay. And the earlier we learn this lesson, the better. The second lesson is more military, and that is that we for we very often, in fact, here I think that the wrong lessons have been learned from Op Sindoor. We are under the impression that all services fight exactly the way that all other that their sister services fight. Armies fight across a border. Navies fight wherever the enemy's warships are to be found. So if Pakistan was at conflict with India for example and we found Pakistani trade or vessels carrying Pakistani contraband which is a list that we would declare in the Atlantic of course we'll take them out in the Atlantic if it was in the Caribbean in the Caribbean and therefore the Indian Navy keeps track of every single ship of our adversaries on a 24/7 365 days basis and therefore Now the rest of it is obviously the navy is not a plenty potentiary service nor is the army nor is the air force. And therefore, we must agree that the government must be able to give instruction but the government must be informed. How does the government get informed about these matters? through your channel, through the ability of the common people to understand this, so that the common people are not taken aback or are not aghast of the fact that you're having a conflict in say for example in the northern Arabian Sea and your conflict actions are taking place in the Bengal or they're taking place in the Pacific Ocean or they're taking place elsewhere naval actions will occur wherever the enemy's forces of war or it's commerce is to be found so long as that commerce has been declared to be a military object which means it is actively engaged.

Colonel Anurag Awasthi (Retd): Engaged. Yes.

Vice Admiral Pradeep Chauhan (Retd): Yes. So that's another major lesson. The last major lesson that we learn is that you cannot say by corollary you cannot say that, oh, that what is occurring in the Persian Gulf, I'm sitting off Kochi, nothing will happen to me. Something of this nature should have happened to you means a B2B should have occurred. B2B is not business-to-business. B2B is boot to butt. So if boot had attached itself to butt a certain number of times, you wouldn't be in this situation that they find themselves in. And therefore, this is a lesson that we learn, we relearn because this is a foundational lesson of how a navy works.

Colonel Anurag Awasthi (Retd): But then I mean, kudos to this government for the way they are doing, and looking at ship building, you look at it somewhere down the line, it fails my understanding that we were a huge ship building nation. Sir, what happened to our prowess in shipbuilding somewhere down the line?

Vice Admiral Pradeep Chauhan (Retd): Exactly. So what happens is that this government in the time since it's been elected and I'm not an unbridled sort of supporter of the government come what may but in this in these areas of maritime development I cannot find anything fault to fault the government with this is a government that has said that we understand maritime issues we will maximize Indian flag shipping we will maximize ship building we will maximize shipping we will give ourselves apparently difficult targets to meet. That means by 2030, become one of the top 10 by 2047, and be one of the top five shipbuilders in the world.  And this impetus ought to have come right from 1947 onwards, and you're quite right because we frittered away all those huge advantages. Every time you neglect any domain, in this case, the shipping domain, what happens to all the guys who are making ships? They start selling mangoes, or they change their jobs, or they retire.

Colonel Anurag Awasthi (Retd):  They retire.              

Vice Admiral Pradeep Chauhan (Retd): And consequently, you lose the shipbuilding skills. And for you to lose your prowess in an area where you had global renown is pretty sad. I mean, I would like to be stronger about it, but at least it's quite tragic, and the fact that we are now forced to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps is testimony to the competence of the current government, but it is no praise to an earlier grouping.

Colonel Anurag Awasthi (Retd):  Oh, yes. So, let's hope a lot of shipbuilding effort comes our way, sir. The way we are going, and thank you so much for coming by, sir. It's been a great conversation, starting from the laws of the seas to all these Latin terms, to what has happened and Atithi Devo Bhava, and finally ending up with the three major lessons that we need to learn because the world is not the same place as it used to be.

Vice Admiral Pradeep Chauhan (Retd): So, exactly right.

Colonel Anurag Awasthi (Retd): It's not the same place, and thank you very much for dropping by, sir, and we'll have more discussions on this.

Vice Admiral Pradeep Chauhan (Retd): Thank you so much. It's always a pleasure.

Colonel Anurag Awasthi (Retd):  Thank you for watching.

Watch the full podcast: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4wU6B-RbTo&t=334s

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