BY S VENKAT NARAYAN

Our Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI, December 17:

The Karwar naval base in coastal in Karnataka in southern India will be the headquarters for the country’s first Maritime Theatre Command (MTC). Set to take concrete shape by next year, its commander-in-chief will have full operational control over the western and eastern naval fleets, maritime strike fighter jets and transport aircraft, two amphibious infantry brigades and coastal patrol vessels.

The MTC will be the first new “geographical” theatre command to be created as part of the biggest-ever military restructuring plan to build an integrated land-air-sea war-fighting machinery for greater combat punch in a more cost-effective manner.

The Times of India has quoted top defence sources as saying that the final MTC plan will be submitted to the government for approval “within the next few days”. It will be headed by a senior three-star naval officer (vice admiral).

“Once approved, the MTC can come up within a year. It will look after the country’s 7,516-km coastline and 1,382 islands as well as the entire Indian Ocean Region (IOR) and beyond. With two sub-theatres for west and east, the MTC will bolster joint operations and application of force in the maritime domain,” said a source.

This becomes crucial in face of China’s ever-expanding naval footprint in the IOR. China already has the world’s largest Navy with 350 warships and submarines, and plans to reach a force-level of 420 by the end of this decade.

Presentations on the MTC and the other proposed integrated “functional” Air Defence Command have already been made to the Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) General Bipin Rawat and the three Service chiefs, Admiral Karambir Singh, General M M Naravane and Air Chief Marshal R K S Bhadauria.

As per the plan prepared by a group led by Navy vice chief Vice Admiral G Ashok Kumar, the MTC will subsume the Western Naval Command (Mumbai), Eastern Naval Command (Vizag), the tri-Service Andaman and Nicobar Command (Port Blair) and the Southern Air Command (Thiruvananthapuram).

The Army’s two amphibious assault formations, the 91 Brigade at Thiruvananthapuram and 108 Brigade at Port Blair (each with over 3,000 soldiers), will bring the requisite “expeditionary reaction capability” of land forces to the MTC.

Similarly, the East and West regions of the Coast Guard, with their patrol boats, aircraft and helicopters, will be responsible for coastal security under the MTC.

There will be “service-specific verticals” within the MTC. The Sukhoi-30MKI fighters armed with BrahMos supersonic cruise missiles at Thanjavur, the maritime-strike Jaguar fighters at Jamnagar and other “air assets”, for instance, will be under the C-in-C of the Southern Air Command, who will in turn will report to the C-in-C of the MTC.

“Andaman & Nicobar will no longer have a C-in-C-level post. It will be headed by a fortress commander who will report to C-in-C of the Eastern Naval Command,” said the source.

The theatre commander will report to the joint chiefs of staff committee led by the CDS. Similar will be the case when the theatre commands for the land borders with China and Pakistan come up subsequently.

At present, India has as many as 17 single-service commands (Army 7, IAF 7 and Navy 3), with very little synergy in planning and operations as well as disjointed command-and-control structures.

The only two existing tri-Service commands came up after the 1999 Kargil conflict. The Andaman & Nicobar Command was set up as a “geographical” command in October 2001, while the “functional” Strategic Forces Command to handle the country’s nuclear arsenal came up in January 2003.