Royal Day Dreaming By The British Navy
By
Colonel Awadhesh Kumar, Special Forces
Admiral Sir Philip Jones, still going around with a high sounding appointment of FIRST SEA LORD, must be day dreaming in a royal way when he recently hinted at the possibility of basing a British Naval Frigate in India. He made this strange statement during a visit from the head of the Indian Navy to HMS Queen Elizabeth in Portsmouth.
A Navy which is trying to count its ships and not finding many, hinting at a more permanent presence of all the places in India when the Type 31 frigate becomes operational and seeing a sizeable part of its future in the east – the Indo-Pacific region, is quite strange.
Aircraft carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth is scheduled to head to the Indian Ocean as part of her maiden deployment in 2021. The Admiral said that India could become home for one of the Royal Navy’s new Type 31 frigates, the First Sea Lord has suggested. “We have not yet decided where we base those ships – there are many decisions to be made. But whether it is actually physically based in India, or whether it is just spending a lot more time working with the Indian Navy, I think there is a rich opportunity there for forward-basing.”
Type 23 frigate HMS Monmouth is the first to be forward-based in the UK’s Bahrain facility. The First Sea Lord explained how that forward-basing trial will progress: “We are going to look at the potential to extend Forward Presence with more of our fleet being forward-based.
It is a hugely efficient and productive way to generate effect from our ships. We will try that initially, perhaps, with some more Type 23 general purpose frigates, then look at doing it with the new Batch 2 River-class offshore patrol vessels – the first of those is now in Portsmouth.”
Admiral Sunil Lanba, Head of India’s Navy, welcomed the UK’s intention to spend more time in the Indian Ocean. In fact being polite he even added “the increased focus of the Royal Navy to the Indian Ocean region is indeed a welcome step, and we hope to partner the RN in leveraging our collective strength to ensure safety and security of the region.”
However stark reality is that British Navy cannot function in Indian Ocean or the Pacific without the support of the US Navy or the Indian Navy. Secondly India will never permit any foreign Navy to base its Ship in any of its civil Ports, forget in its Naval bases. How can we forget those lowly British traders who had come to India to pay respect in the Court of Emperor Akbar.
And now Indian Navy, how will it tolerate a British Ship based permanently in India? In fact now time has come for India to ask Britain to vacate Chagos archipelago lock stock and barrel,just like it is leaving European Union.
