Can India win two front wars?
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Can India win two front wars?
India does not have the economic wherewithal to resource its military to fight a two-front war. The smartest choice for New Delhi, therefore, is to neither fight nor prepare to fight a two-front war. Instead, India should seek durable and enduring peace with one of its adversaries.
Indian Navy is considered as the 7th most powerful navy in the world.
How strong is India military?
The Indian Armed Forces are under the management of the Ministry of Defence (MoD) of the Government of India. With strength of over 1.4 million active personnel, it is the world’s second-largest military force and has the world’s largest volunteer army. It also has the third-largest defence budget in the world.
The Indian navy will operate 17 such craft in 2020. That looks like a 4:1 deficit for New Delhi. China’s navy will also field an increasingly modern mix of 30 guided-missile destroyers (DDGs) by 2020.
For decades, the Indian Navy has been the dominant regional power in the Indian Ocean, and has even boasted a carrier aviation capability that was nearly unique in Asia.
How can India defend its regional waters against China’s PLA Navy?
The PLA Navy is far larger than India’s, but India can leverage one huge advantage in securing its regional waters: PLAN ships based in China can only efficiently transit into the Indian Ocean via the narrow chokepoints of the Strait of Malacca (adjacent Singapore, Malaysia, and Sumatra) or the Sunda Strait (between Sumatra and Java).
The Indian navy has always maintained a regular presence in Indian Ocean waters. Until recent years the PLA navy tended to stay in port a lot, getting underway only intermittently. That is less and less true of late. China has kept a squadron on station in the Gulf of Aden for pushing a decade now.