VEREM: The non-state actors like Houthis can pose considerable threat in the high seas by using low cost offensive weapon systems such as drones, Commandant of Naval War College (NWC) in Goa, Rear Admiral Arjun Dev Nair said here.
NWC is a premier institution of higher learning in the faculties of training, warfare, wargaming, academics, leadership development and quality research in conformity with organisational aspirations with global benchmarking standards.
Speaking on the changing nature of maritime challenges, RAdm Nair said, “We have dedicated capsules on emerging technologies, asymmetric and warfare in the grey zone. We are constantly learning from the conflicts happening around us and factor them in our curriculum. A lot of effort is spent to discuss these issues.”
“In fact our Chief of Naval Staff, Admiral R Hari Kumar recently spoke about the lessons we can learn from the incidents happening in the Indian Ocean. Some of them are that it is not necessarily required that a country or a state actor to have a navy. For example, what the Houthis are doing today, shows that even a non-state actor can pose considerable threats in the maritime domain,” RAdm Nair said.
The other aspect is the increasing cost differential between offensive and defensive weapons.
“The offensive weapons are becoming cheaper as they are available off-the-shelf and the defensive weapons, which have been prepared and produced developed through the legacy procedures, are quite expensive. So in order to shoot down say a drone which costs $100,000 or so, you have to spend a million plus dollars on a surface-to-air missile,” the NWC Commandant said.
“So, those sorts of asymmetries in even financial aspects is something that are being factored in and being discussed here in the college. We are also looking at how we need to address those threats,” he said.
According to him, the cost factor has led to democratisation of capability, in the sense that in the past, one needed to invest a certain amount of money to develop a navy to influence matters in the sea and that required some amount of financial backing.
“But now with these commercial off-the-shelf drones, which we are seeing increasingly being used non-state actors, have started using them on land and now they’re using them on sea. So, for them, the cost for influencing the maritime domain has become low,” RAdm Nair said.
The Commandant however asserted that they can be handled.
“At the end of the day, whatever weapons they are using our systems are designed to cater for those weapons. But, there is a cost differential and if I am shooting down a drone with a weapon which is much more expensive, then obviously I need to use weapons which cost as low as the drones,” the senior naval officer said.