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 NAVAL
MODERNISATION
IN SOUTHEAST ASIA
Problems and
Prospects for Small
and Medium Navies
Geoffrey Till
Ristian Atriandi Supriyanto
Naval Modernisation in Southeast Asia
Geoffrey Till · Ristian Atriandi Supriyanto
Editors

Naval Modernisation
in Southeast Asia
Problems and Prospects for Small
and Medium Navies
Editors
Geoffrey Till Ristian Atriandi Supriyanto
Defence Studies Department Strategic and Defence Studies Centre
King’s College London Australian National University
Swindon, UK Canberra, ACT, Australia

ISBN 978-3-319-58405-8 ISBN 978-3-319-58406-5 (eBook)

DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-58406-5

Library of Congress Control Number: 2017943482

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018

This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the
Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights
of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction
on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and
retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology
now known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this
publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are
exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and
information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication.
Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied,
with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have
been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published
maps and institutional affiliations.

Cover illustration: © John Rawsterne/patternhead.com

Printed on acid-free paper

This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by Springer Nature

The registered company is Springer International Publishing AG
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
 Contents

1 Growing a Navy: Problems and Prospects. An

Introduction 1
Geoffrey Till

2 Naval Modernisation Versus Naval Development:

Implications for Strategic Stability in Southeast Asia 15
Bernard Fook Weng Loo

3 A Common Setting for Naval Planning in Southeast Asia?

Two Case Studies in Divergence 33
YingHui Lee and Collin Koh Swee Lean

4 Naval Development in Singapore 47

Collin Koh Swee Lean

5 Naval Development in Indonesia 61

Ristian Atriandi Supriyanto

6 Naval Development in Malaysia 77

Geoffrey Till and Henrick Z. Tsjeng

v
vi Contents

7 Naval Development in Vietnam 93

Truong-Minh Vu and Nguyen The Phuong

8 Conclusions 107
Ristian Atriandi Supriyanto and Geoffrey Till

Index 121
 About the Editors

Geoffrey Till is Emeritus Professor of Maritime Studies at King’s

College London and Chairman of the Corbett Centre for Maritime
Policy Studies. Since 2009, he has also been a Visiting Professor and
Senior Research Fellow at the Rajaratnam School of International
Studies, Singapore. His Understanding Victory: Naval Operations from
Trafalgar to the Falklands was published by ABC Clio in 2014 and he
is currently working on a fourth edition of his Seapower: A Guide for the
21st Century.
Ristian Atriandi Supriyanto is an Indonesian Presidential Ph.D.
Scholar with the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre at the Australian
National University. He is also a former associate research fellow with
the Maritime Security Programme at the S. Rajaratnam School of
International Studies at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.

vii
 Abbreviations

AFP Armed Forces of the Philippines

AIP Air Independent Propulsion (of submarines)
ASEAN Association of South-East Asia Nations
ASG Abu Sayyaf Group
ASW Anti Submarine Warfare
AUV Autonomous Underwater Vehicle
BAKAMLA Indonesia’s Maritime Safety Agency
C4ISR Command, Control, Communications, Intelligence, Surveillance
and Reconnaissance
COC Code of Conduct for the South China Sea
CSCAP Council for Security Cooperation in the Asia Pacific
CTF Combined Task Force
DIB Defence-Industrial Base
DOC Declaration of Conduct in the South China Sea
EEZ Exclusive Economic Zone
ESSZONE Malaysia’s Eastern Sabah Security Zone
EU European Union
FAC Fast Attack Craft
GDP Gross Domestic Product
IMSS Integrated Maritime Surveillance System
IONS Indian Ocean Naval Symposium
ISIS Malaysia’s Institute of Strategic and International Studies
ISR Intelligence, Surveillance, Reconnaissance
IUU Illegal, Unregulated and Unreported (fishing)
JDA Joint Development Area
JMMS Joint Multi-Mission Ship

ix
x Abbreviations

KEMHAN Indonesia’s Ministry of Defence

LMU Littoral Mission Ship
LPD Landing Platform, Dock
LST Landing Ship Tank
MBT Main Battle Tank
MEF Indonesia’s ‘Minimum Essential Force’
MEMA Malaysian Maritime Enforcement Agency
MIMA Maritime Institute of Malaya
MPRA Maritime Patrol and Reconnaissance Aircraft
MSP Malacca Strait Patrol
NGO Non Governmental Organisation
NSC National Security Council
NTS Non Traditional Security
PA Philippine Armed Forces
PAP People’s Action Party (of Singapore)
PMD Poros Maritim Dunia—Indonesia’s ‘Global Maritime Axis’
PN Philippine Navy
RIMPAC (US Hosted) Rim of the Pacific Naval Exercise
RMN Royal Malaysian Navy
RSN Republic of Singapore Navy
RTN Royal Thai Navy
SAF Singapore Armed Forces
SCS South China Sea
SIPRI Stockholm International Peace Research Institute
SLOCS Sea Lines of Communication
SOMS Straits of Malacca and Singapore
SPKB Russian Northern Project Design Bureau
SSV Strategic Sealift Vessel
TNI Indonesia’s National Defence Force
UAV Unmanned Aerial Vehicle
UNCLOS UN Convention on the Law of the Sea
 List of Figures

Fig. 5.1 The concept of Poros Maritim Dunia  63

Fig. 5.2 Southeast Asia’s defence expenditures in real terms   68
Fig. 5.3 Southeast Asia’s defence expenditures in GDP terms   69

xi
 List of Tables

Table 2.1 Defence Expenditure in Southeast Asia  18

Table 2.2 Elements of Southeast Asian Navies  20

xiii
 CHAPTER 1

Growing a Navy: Problems and Prospects.

An Introduction

Geoffrey Till

Abstract In this chapter the main editor for the two volumes will iden-
tify the general problems and challenges faced by the small and medium
nations of Southeast Asia in growing their navies. The chapter will estab-
lish a general model of naval development.

Keywords Naval modernisation · Southeast Asia · Problems

Strategic consequences · South China Sea

There can be little doubt that a substantial process of naval modernisa-

tion is taking place throughout the Asia-Pacific Region in general and in
Southeast Asia in particular. Most analysis of this phenomenon, though,
concentrates on its extent and nature and especially on its likely conse-
quences for peace and stability in the area. There is, in particular, a focus on
whether we are seeing the beginnings of a potentially de-stabilising naval
arms race in the region. This is perfectly valid and indeed an important line
of enquiry and will be discussed in the next and also subsequent chapters.

G. Till (*)
Defence Studies Department, King’s College London,
Swindon, Wiltshire, UK
e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s) 2018 1

G. Till (ed.), Naval Modernisation in Southeast Asia,
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-58406-5_1
2 G. TILL

The focus of this chapter, though, is rather different. Instead it will

look at the processes of naval modernisation—how, in effect, countries
‘grow,’ or maybe maintain a navy and the special problems and chal-
lenges that they often face in doing so.
Looking at the problem theoretically the task of becoming ‘a maritime
power’ and growing a navy would appear to be fairly straight forwards—
in principle at least. It would seem to be largely a matter of reconciling
ends, ways and means at a series of cascading decision-making levels that
range from the grand strategic policy-making at the top of the govern-
mental hierarchy to the tactical details of implementation at the bottom.
The devil, though, is in the practical details. It is these that make the task
so difficult. For each country, the practical details are different, in conse-
quence of their geography, political and strategic culture, economic state
and general circumstances.
While their experience may therefore seem very different, there do,
however, appear to be a number of common factors that determine the
relative coherence, success or failure of a country’s naval development.
Particular cases are useful in illustrating general points. To a degree, this
chapter takes the process of modernisation in India as a point of refer-
ence, not because it is better or worse than anywhere else but simply
because as a regional power India has been ‘growing its navy’ for several
decades and its experience provides pointers to the challenges that other
countries in the Indo-Pacific region will face as they follow suit, if they
do. Perhaps, also, that experience will tell us something about the extent
to which we should worry about the consequences of naval modernisa-
tion for the region’s stability.
In responding to the challenges of naval modernisation, four broad
tiers of decision-making seem particularly important, namely the levels of

• Policy-making at the level of Grand Strategy

• Implementing and Resourcing Grand Strategy
• Military Policy and Strategy-Making
• Naval Policy and Strategy-Making

Of course the distinctions between these four tiers of decision are fuzzy,
but their hierarchy represents a process of identifying national objectives
at the top and implementing the naval means of helping secure them at
the bottom. At every stage, though, the relevant decision-makers have
to reconcile ends (objectives), ways (methods) and means (tools and
 1 GROWING A NAVY: PROBLEMS AND PROSPECTS. AN INTRODUCTION 3

procedures). Major problems at any level can cascade down causing fur-
ther difficulties lower in the hierarchy—inevitably, a feedback system can
work its way up the hierarchy too. After all, it’s a poor strategist who
does not take at least some account of his likely means when deciding his
operational objectives and course of action.
We must also be wary the danger of building apparently ‘western’
assumptions about both process and product into the analysis. 1 All the
same, the following hierarchy of decision in the acquisition of defence
capability is considered universal, even unavoidable, though the manner
in which, and the instruments by which, it is conducted may vary widely
from country to country.

Tier 1: Deciding Grand Strategy or National

Security Policy
At this rarified level at the very top of the decision-making hierarchy, the
task is to identify national objectives and to decide their relative impor-
tance and priority. This is a matter of policy, not strategy-making. This
has to be done before those lower in the hierarchy can address the strate-
gic issues of deciding how those objectives should be met.
One particularly important set of considerations at this level are related
to what the Germans call Aussenpolitik, namely the view that the coun-
try’s top decision-makers take of the international context in which their
country operates and what they deduce they should do about it. The
international context, in short does much to shape the way in which a
country’s policy-makers conceive their maritime vulnerabilities and needs.
Inevitably such perceptions and their policy consequences will in turn
shape the perceptions and policy responses of others—hence the narrative
of action–reaction cycles and, potentially, destabilising arms races.
Even here, though, perceptions of the outer world are likely to
be influenced if not shaped by factors internal to the state—which the
Germans call by contrast Innenpolitik. In any case, the manner in which
a country grows a navy, the process rather than the product will reflect
its domestic circumstances as well as its international context. This may
extend to a near independence of that context—a process of growing a
navy that, to twist an analogy ‘marches to the sound of its own drum,’
that is supported by perceptions of the outside world rather than driven
by them. In essence, naval policy is driven more by internal than exter-
nal dynamics. Accordingly many of the incentives for naval development
4 G. TILL

may have little to do with what is happening abroad, and logically, little
impact on it.
Both the external and the internal challenges facing decision-makers
are clearly comprehensive in that they include all aspects of a country’s
activity and interests—the political, social, economic, legal and mili-
tary. For this reason, decision-making in national security policy likewise
requires a comprehensive approach in which all aspects of a country’s
interests are represented and effectively integrated. One increasingly
common way of doing this is the formation of some sort of National
Security Council system which represents all stakeholders at this level. A
sense of urgency can also be developed by the periodic issue of formal
and public statements of National Security Policy which are intended to
inform the public and to guide policy-makers lower down in the system.
Two problems that affect prospects for maritime development often
characterise this level of policy decision-making. The first is the problem
of sea-blindness as it is often called. Sea-blindness is a condition which
leads sufferers either vastly to underrate the relative importance of the
maritime domain or which leads them to acknowledge this in theory
but to delay or postpone measures to protect their maritime interests to
some later and sometimes unspecified date after more apparently urgent
national requirements are met. For this reason, such ‘maritime interests’
are not handed down for further urgent consideration lower in the pol-
icy and strategy-making hierarchy. India has certainly suffered from this
because of its focus on territorial disputes with its neighbours and on its
internal security.
One way of seeking to correct sea-blindness has been recently exem-
plified by the recent policy statements of China’s President Xi Jinping
and Indonesia’s President Jokowi, both of whom seek to elevate the
development of their country’s maritime attributes to a very high
national priority. Whether this delivers what they seek or not, will of
course depend on consequential decisions about implementation to be
made lower down the system and for that they, and we, will have to wait.
The Indian equivalent of this would seem to be its ‘Maritime Agenda,
2010–2020’ which aims, particularly in creating the kind of maritime
infrastructure (in shipping, ports and related industrial capacity) that his-
torically has been associated with naval growth.2
Another common problem in designing a national policy for the sea is
that of having to ‘see through a glass darkly.’ It is uniformly and intrinsi-
cally difficult for foreign ministries or treasuries to predict the future or
 1 GROWING A NAVY: PROBLEMS AND PROSPECTS. AN INTRODUCTION 5

to gauge its requirements. Wide consultation with non-military sources

of expertise may help articulate policy alternatives here but for that to
happen there needs to be an informed ‘commentariat’ (derived essen-
tially from the university sector and national think-tanks) and a willing-
ness for policy-makers to engage with them openly. Perhaps because of a
tendency to overclassify potentially sensitive issues in India there is argu-
ably a lack of informed debate and ‘the security discourse is dominated
by former military officers or bureaucrats who…base their arguments on
opinions and claimed experience’.3
Another way forwards is for the military and other policy stakeholders
to base their own recommendations on rigorous and objective internal
studies. The failure of the Indian military to conduct such a reappraisal
of the operational lessons of the 1999 Kargil campaign has raised doubts
about the extent to which this kind of analysis is regularly done or has
much effect even if it is done.4
Without such internal and external debate, policy statements will
tend to be bland enough to cope with the variety of consequences of
their being unable to predict what is likely to happen when and what
their country will need to do about it in defence of national interests.
Options are maintained rather than prioritised. There is talk of balanced
approaches towards the future, which in practical terms offer very little
real guidance to decision-makers lower down in the system. This being
the case, they also either follow the same line and preserve options rather
than decide priorities, or, more insidiously, they decide their own way
forward in the light of decisions which they think the policy-makers
should have made, but did not. Amongst the consequences of this are
political, economic or military decisions made largely for narrow sec-
tional reasons. Russian experience shows that a likely result of this is a
sequence of unplanned shifts over time that makes it hard for a navy
to chart a consistent course.5 Paradoxically, smaller navies with fewer
options, may be better placed in this regard.
India, like most countries, suffers from all of this to some extent. In
the military dimension of its maritime aspirations it also has a residual
problem in less than perfect Civil-Military Co-operation since critics
allege that the Indian Administrative Service is generalist rather than
specialist and to some extent sees its purpose to be more a question of
controlling the military, rather than helping it take its proper position
in national defence policy decision-making. While it is surely possible to
argue that so firmly entrenched is India’s democracy after nearly 70 years
6 G. TILL

that the relative importance of this implicit task has much declined,
doubts remain.
Finally, in countries like India, deficiencies in the national maritime
defence industrial base (DIB) limit the country’s economic development,
restrict governmental revenue and act on a brake on its naval aspirations.
Despite India’s high levels of reliance on sea-borne trade, only 11% of
the total is carried in Indian ships, there is a lack of adequate port han-
dling capacity and its commercial ship building industry if anything is
declining, now producing barely 1% of total world ship building.6 This
limits what can be produced for the Navy and helps explains why India
has become the world’s largest arms importer despite its emphasis on
self-reliance.
There are questions about the relative priority of investing in the
maritime DIB when compared to other sectors of the economy, and to
the balance to be struck between the interests of the DIB and the navy,
where these diverge. The government’s particular aspirations are crucial
here. It may seek to produce a DIB that will allow the country to act as
an independent national player on the global stage. Alternately its aspira-
tions may be more modest—to support a national DIB that can act as a
global value-added supplier of niche capabilities, working in conjunction
with its equivalents in other countries. From this derive some obvious
questions, such as: What are the key industrial capabilities the govern-
ment wishes to foster? How successful will the maritime programme be?
More specifically, to what extent will maritime development focus on and
benefit the navy and the coastguard, as opposed to the civilian/commer-
cial sectors? As we shall see, this is a question of particular relevance for
Indonesia’s President Jokowi.

Tier 2: Implementing and Resourcing Grand Strategy

This decision-making tier is largely a matter of identifying the ways and
means by which policy objectives are to be achieved and of providing
the resources needed for their accomplishment. Here, general policy
directions get translated into practical action across the whole front
of government activity. In this, the maritime dimension takes its place
alongside all the others (education, health, social care and so forth) in
the consequent jostling for resources and budgetary priority. Here again
the requirement is to identify the extent to which the various levers of
 1 GROWING A NAVY: PROBLEMS AND PROSPECTS. AN INTRODUCTION 7

national power can most effectively contribute to the general policy

objectives identified earlier and to ensure that each ‘lever’ is provided
with the resources necessary for the task, whether that be to build the
infrastructure, support the development or survival of a DIB or develop
a navy and/or coastguard.
Since government resources anywhere are never the equal of possible
commitments this is likely to be an essentially competitive process and the
political standing of the advocates of each dimension of national policy
is likely to be critical to their success. The maritime interest’s capacity to
‘get its case heard’ depends on the attitudes of the political class. In India
there is something of a problem in this regard, when it comes to naval
development. For a variety of reasons, not least residual concerns about
the politicians ‘meddling’ in operational matters widely held to have con-
tributed, for example, to the deficiencies of the 1962 campaign against
China, the political class have tended to steer clear of involvement in the
major defence issues confronting India, being content, it would seem, to
leave that to the professional judgement of the individual services. The
result is something of a lack of political ‘ownership’ of defence and insuf-
ficient dialogue between the political class and the military.

Tier 3: Military Policy and Strategy-Making

at the Ministry of Defence Level

At this third, (‘Ministry’) level, the broader decisions taken higher up

have to be implemented, within the constraints of the resources allo-
cated. Each section of the maritime community, the industrial, the navy
and the coastguard, have to identify their policy ‘ends’ or objectives,
deduce their strategy and decide their ‘ways’ and allocate their ‘means.’
For the Navy and the Coastguard, there will undoubtedly be issues
about the extent to which the administrative procedures and institu-
tions within their respective ministries actually work in translating gen-
eral ideas and aspirations into concrete and practical programmes. The
Indian navy suffers here from the less than perfect relationship between
the service headquarters and the Ministry of Defence and the defec-
tive division of labour that results from this. This state of affairs pro-
duces long bureaucratic delays and over the years has resulted in the
Navy being unable actually to spend the budget it has been allocated.
The problem is aggravated by the quality and attitudinal problems of the
8 G. TILL

Indian Administrative Service already referred to and, additionally by a

relatively low level of interservice cooperation, which results in both seri-
ous capability gaps and wasteful duplication. None of these problems are,
of course, unique to India.

Tier 4: Naval Policy and Strategy-Making

The ways, ends and means approach applies just as much at the fourth
level, the Navy department (and its industrial and coastguard equiva-
lents) where the maritime capabilities required to sustain the naval con-
tribution towards the conduct of actual or potential military operations
in support of national policy are developed. This task requires the iden-
tification and prioritisation of naval roles and the development of the
capabilities to perform them to the required degree. All of the poten-
tial constraints noted above will apply at this level of decision as well,
but there are some additional complications that especially apply to naval
development.
First, the maritime scene incorporates and represents industrial, ship-
ping and fishing interests as well as the navy and the coastguard. It will
require the navy to work alongside the coast guard and other agencies of
safety and law enforcement at sea. In all probability this will require close
cooperation with other like-minded navies as well. The Indian Navy, for
example participates in a large number of such multinational exercise and
togetherness programmes such as IONS, Milan, RIMPAC and so forth.
Accordingly, this will require the navy to develop a nexus of connections
and procedures to enable multinational maritime cooperation across the
whole security spectrum in addition to, but largely separate from, its
connections with the other two Indian military services. There may well
be tensions between these two demands.
Second, to the extent that the procurement and acquisition of mate-
riel is handled at the navy department level, then a series of non-military
industrial considerations are likely to come into play. The acquisition of
naval materiel is intrinsically difficult since both the lead times normally
required to produce sophisticated naval weapons, sensors and platforms
and their probable service life are likely to be very long. As one expert
group have recently concluded, ‘it is a truth universally acknowledged’
that ‘defence equipment acquisition is one of the most challenging of
human activities. …a uniquely demanding bureaucratic morass littered
with military, technological, economic and political pitfalls.’7 The very
 1 GROWING A NAVY: PROBLEMS AND PROSPECTS. AN INTRODUCTION 9

long lead times normally required to produce sophisticated naval weap-

ons, sensors and platforms and their lengthy probable service life makes
them peculiarly susceptible to developmental risk because conditions
change.
The US Navy’s Rear Admiral Thomas Rowden dramatically illus-
trated the point recently by pointing out that most ships of the US Fleet
of 2034 are either already at sea or in advanced design stages.8 Building
modern ships of submarines is especially complicated and expensive, with
defence inflation in steel, equipment and sensors running at 6% per year,
a rate that exceeds the inflation escalators that most countries build into
their budgets. This will bear down on platform numbers and increase
incentives for levels of individual platform versatility that are in any case
justified by the unpredictability of the future operating environment.
Canada’s Halifax replacement programme, for example is expected to
deliver a ship capable of operating on the open ocean and in the littorals,
at home and abroad, independently, in a national task force or as part of
an international coalition force. It will need to cope with great distances,
and be Arctic capable. Not surprisingly, the currently planned programme
of 15 ships will come in two variants, a general-purpose type and a more
specialist Area Air Defence and Command and Control version.9
Such future-oriented procurement strategies tend to suffer quite badly
from the unpredictability of the future economic, budgetary and strate-
gic environment. All too frequently, this produces cycles of boom-and-
bust which make sustained planning over, say, a 30-year period, almost
impossible for manufacturers. Typically, this will result in constant delays,
cost increases and iterative tinkering with the original specification; and
eventually in the failure or chronic delay of the programme in ways
which means that the navy tends to acquire new materiel in an piece-
meal, opportunistic way rather than as part of an overall strategic plan
and in a manner which may undermine its capacity to perform its present
roles, let alone its future ones. No navy has shown itself immune to such
pressures and constraints.
The Indian Navy—and the whole Indian defence effort—has been
a victim of such unavoidable problems in the acquisition of platforms,
weapons and sensors. Over the past 7 years, $9 billion worth of tenders
have been cancelled halfway through procurement, half a dozen foreign
companies have been black-listed on charges of alleged corruption, and
more than 50 complaints against various defence deals have been sent to
the country’s anti-fraud agency.10
10 G. TILL

Nor can the problem of corruption, in which procurement deci-

sions are made for entirely the wrong kind of reasons, be safely ignored.
Countries vary in their vulnerability to this problem and it is one of the
clearest ways in which a navy can reflect the nature of the state it seeks
to protect. Corruption can not only result in naval acquisition that does
not properly match a country’s naval needs but can also breed amongst
the wider population considerable scepticism about the validity of those
needs in the first place. It can be a truly corrosive problem, both malign,
in its effects and difficult to eradicate.
Additionally, there could well be problems in the industrial capacity of
the country to produce the equipment the navy needs in terms of time,
number and quality. Here there might well also be a conflict of interest
between the navy in getting what it needs when it needs it, and indus-
try in developing the research, development and production sustainabil-
ity that is so much easier to provide if demand is predictable and so can
be planned for in advance. Finally if government policy is to develop a
defence industrial sector not just for strategic reasons, but to help encour-
age the kind of industrial and technological skills needed for a modern
developed economy or in response to its wider economic interests (such
as employment opportunities, balance of trade or regional development
policies11) then there might well be conflict between government policies
and the immediate needs of the navy. Recent Australian investigation sug-
gests that for all these reasons the cost of naval technology may be 20%
higher than buying the same technology off the shelf from a foreign sup-
plier—at least when narrowly measured in the short term.12
Coping with all these defence management problems while deliver-
ing the kind of equipment needed requires personnel in sufficient num-
ber that have the experience, skill sets and authority necessary to ensure
that naval defence acquisition system is ‘smart.’ For this to happen they
need to be familiar with industrial processes, able to articulate a convinc-
ing case, to defend it where necessary (for this is inevitably a competitive
process too) and to follow a project through to completion of the par-
ticular stages for which they are responsible. Producing the kind of peo-
ple in the numbers required to make a material contribution to the naval
policy and decision-making system and indeed very likely to help shape
policy at the Ministry level as well demands heavy investment in profes-
sional military education and training.
Bearing in mind the many challenges the Indian navy faces, it is pos-
sible to argue that it has been remarkably successful. In accordance with
 1 GROWING A NAVY: PROBLEMS AND PROSPECTS. AN INTRODUCTION 11

the Maritime Capability Perspective Plan, 2012–2017, the fleet will

steadily expand in size and capability through the period, and its share
of the defence budget rise from 18% at the moment to 30% in a dec-
ade’s time. The extent to which this happens is however, because of the
general and the specifically naval decision- and policymaking apparatus
remains an open question, however.
All this may be particularly difficult for smaller navies which cannot
generate the economies of scale in either platforms or personnel that
make such problems more manageable. In that at least the Indian navy is
better off than most of its smaller equivalents.

Conclusions
When analysts look at the naval modernisation process, especially when it
takes on the characteristics of an actual or potential naval arms race, they
often make one set of assumptions about motivation which depend on
a second set of assumptions about whether the process itself is a careful
one or not. Is the naval force that drops out of the bottom of a coun-
try’s decision-making process the result of a considered and deliber-
ate policy at the grand strategic level together with a coherent overall
plan of implementation? Or, on the other hand, is it the near accidental
product of a whole variety of conflicting interests and perspectives that
neither tells us very much about the overall intent of the programme,
nor provides other countries with much guidance as to how they should
rationally react. Most navies exhibit the symptoms of a mix of both these
approaches!
In trying to understand the various ways in which the countries of
Southeast Asia are growing their navies, some obvious questions seem
naturally to emerge, and which may serve as topics for analysis in the
chapters that follow. Does the country in question have a grand strate-
gic vision of its overall security objectives, a clear sense of its maritime
interests and the role that it navy (or coastguard) can play in securing
them? Does it even have the apparatus for grand strategic thinking? Are
its security policy objectives identified with sufficient clarity to guide oth-
ers lower down the hierarchy, and is the maritime case given due weight
in this process? Does the machinery of government effectively turn such
objectives into a coherent strategy through the provision of priority and
resources? Is the Ministry of Defence fit for purpose in driving guid-
ing naval development within a joint service perspective? And finally, to
12 G. TILL

what extent are the Navy’s troubles (assuming it has some!) due to its
own institutional deficiencies rather than to malign circumstances? Is its
success the consequence of institutionalised ‘muddling through’ or the
result of a coherent policy and strategy-making process?
Implicit in this is the complex issue of the source of the conceptions
which drive policy and strategy-making. Do they derive in the main from
the nature of the state or from an objective appraisal of the challenges
posed by the international context. In this regard how the naval mod-
ernisation processes of other countries are seen and interpreted may well
be crucial in framing a particular country’s perception of strategic need.
Inevitably tackling this issue slides us back into an investigation into the
consequences of naval modernisation rather than into its processes. But
this is clearly a determinant in naval policy-making, even if indirectly, and
so this book will move on to a review of the overall possible results of
naval modernisation in Southeast Asia, before returning in subsequent
chapters to the narrower issue of the manner in which naval modernisa-
tion is being pursued in the region.

Notes
1. Bettina Renz, ‘Russian Military Capabilities after 20 years of Reform,’
Survival 56, No 3—June—July 2014, 61–84.
2. Shyam Saran, ‘Enhancing India’s Maritime Security,’ The Tribune,
(Chandigarth), 25 Feb 2014.
3. Anit Mukherjee, ‘Tell it like it is,’ Times of India, 9 June 2010.
4. Anit, Mukherjee, ‘Facing Future Challenges: A transformational roadmap
for India’s Military Strategy,’ IDSA Paper no p 3, also ‘Facing Future
Challenges: Defence Reform in India,’ RUSI Journal October/Nov
2011.
5. Nicholas Papstratigakis, Russian Imperialism and Naval Power: Military
Strategy and the Build-Up to the Russo-Japanese War (London: I.B.
Taurus, 2011).
6. Shyam Saran, op cit.
7. Ken Hambleton, Ian holder and David Kirpatrick ‘Ten chronic challenges
in UK defence acquisition,’ Defence studies, 2013, Vol 13, No 3, 361–371.
8. RAdm Thomas Rowden, ‘Building the Surface Fleet of Tomorrow,’
USNIP, Jan 2014.
9. Ian Wood (ed.) National Shipbuilding Procurement Strategy: Charting the
Course (Halifax: Dalhousie University, June 2014), pp 38, 48.
 1 GROWING A NAVY: PROBLEMS AND PROSPECTS. AN INTRODUCTION 13

10. Vivek Raghuvaneshi, ‘Procurement problems Await Next Indian Gov’t,’

Defense News, 14 April 2014.
11. Hambleton et al., op cit, p. 369.
12. Julian Kerr, ‘Report on Australian ship-building finds 30–40% cost pre-
mium,’ Jane’s Defence Weekly, 22 April 2015.

Author Biography
Geoffrey Till is Emeritus Professor of Maritime Studies at King’s College
London and Chairman of the Corbett Centre for Maritime Policy Studies. Since
2009, he has also been a Visiting Professor and Senior Research Fellow at the
Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Singapore. His Understanding
Victory: Naval Operations from Trafalgar to the Falklands was published by ABC
Clio in 2014 and he is currently working on a fourth edition of his Seapower: A
Guide for the 21st Century.
 CHAPTER 2

Naval Modernisation Versus Naval

Development: Implications for Strategic
Stability in Southeast Asia

Bernard Fook Weng Loo

Abstract The chapter reviews naval development in Southeast Asia as a

whole and finds that it is less than a naval arms race but more than a pro-
cess of normal naval modernisation. It then identifies some of the possi-
ble consequences for international stability in Southeast Asia.

Keywords Naval modernisation · Southeast Asia · Problems · Strategic

consequences · South China Sea

Since the 1980s, navies in Southeast Asia have been experiencing a sig-
nificant increase in the allocation of resources. This study focuses on
six countries who have significant maritime—Indonesia, Malaysia,
the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. According to data
derived from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, total
spending on naval platforms by the countries in this study increased by
approximately $US one billion each decade between 1970 and 1999
(see “Appendix”). This increase in spending has resulted in a significant

B.F.W. Loo (*)

Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, Singapore
e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s) 2018 15

G. Till (ed.), Naval Modernisation in Southeast Asia,
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-58406-5_2
16 B.F.W. LOO

increase in naval platforms, allowing these navies to move from primar-

ily brown water-capable platforms to green water-capable platforms, and
most recently, platforms capable of performing limited blue water mis-
sions. In the second decade of the twenty-first century, most of these
countries have either espoused interest in, or have acquired, sub-surface
warfighting capabilities as well. Clearly, the trend of dedicating resources
to growing naval capabilities has not shown any signs of abating.
How should this increase in naval platforms and capabilities be under-
stood? Is it a case of obsolete capabilities simply being replaced—in other
words a straightforward modernisation programme? Or is it a rather
more complicated phenomenon? Are these recent acquisitions changing
the balance between offensive and defensive capabilities? Are they chang-
ing the regional balance of naval power? Stemming from this last ques-
tion, are these acquisitions suggestive at the very least of a potential naval
arms race? If so, what are the follow-on consequences for strategic stabil-
ity in Southeast Asia, and indeed the larger Indo–Pacific region?
This study rejects two arguments that have attempted to explain these
processes: one argument suggests that these processes represent a naval
arms race in Southeast Asia1; another argument suggests that these pro-
cesses represent a modernisation programme, anchoring in what Buzan
and Herring refer to as maintaining the status quo.2 Instead, this study
argues that recent developments in naval acquisitions in Southeast Asia
ought to be understood differently, that these represent a slow-motion
development of fully fledged navies, at least in terms of how each state in
the region understands a fully fledged navy that corresponds to how each
state perceives its respective strategic environment and the security mis-
sions that accrue thereafter.

Deconstructing the Naval Arms Race Argument

Depicting arms acquisition processes in Southeast Asia as potentially
destabilising at the very least, if not as an arms race in the offing, has
been something of a cottage industry since the 1990s, when military
spending in the region began to garner international attention. The idea
that arms acquisitions in Southeast Asia had potentially destabilising con-
sequences is strengthened when comments by particular political leaders
painted these processes in a negative light.3
Admittedly, there are elements of arms acquisitions by Southeast Asian
countries that at least partially fulfill the arms race argument. Outside
 2 NAVAL MODERNISATION VERSUS NAVAL DEVELOPMENT … 17

the domain of naval acquisitions, for instance, Malaysia’s acquisition of

F/A-18s and MiG-29s was announced by then-Minister for Defence
Najib Abdul Razak, now Malaysia’s Prime Minister, to state that the
Malaysian air force was back on par with Malaysia’s neighbours.4
Indeed, Malaysia’s reconfiguration of its armed forces from counter-
insurgency doctrines to a conventional warfighting doctrine was almost
certainly driven by the growing conventional warfighting capabilities of
the Singapore armed forces.5 Singapore unveiled its Ah-64D Apache-
Longbows shortly after Malaysia’s Defence Ministry announced the
acquisition of PT-91 main battle tanks. Myanmar’s attempt to develop
a conventional land warfighting capability in the late 1990s was almost
certainly motivated by Thailand’s growing military capabilities.6 At face
value, these patterns at least partially resemble the action–reaction ele-
ment intrinsic to any arms race.
But how accurate are these arguments? As Richard Bitzinger argued
recently, the portrayal of these Southeast Asian acquisitions as an arms
race is problematic.7 To begin with, although political relationships
within Southeast Asia are not entirely positive, the idea of armed conflict
between Southeast Asian states is nevertheless almost certainly almost
unthinkable, at least for the foreseeable future. Certainly, it would be
a mistake to characterise political relationships within Southeast Asia as
openly mutually adversarial and hostile. Second, while there is almost
certainly an element of one-upmanship in how specific weapons capabili-
ties are either acquired or announced, this does not qualify as the action–
reaction acquisition patterns that arms races demand.8 Finally, there
has been no significant increases in defence expenditures in Southeast
Asia throughout and since the 1990s. Indeed, defence expenditures in
Southeast Asia have remained remarkably consistent when seen as a per-
centage of national gross domestic products or national budgets.
It is true that spending on naval platforms experienced a fairly signifi-
cant increase for at least some Southeast Asian countries in the 1990s (see
Table 2.1). Furthermore, individual acquisitions can appear to parallel at
least certain aspects of arms race models. For instance, Singapore ordered
six missile corvettes in 1983. Ostensibly this was to assist the Singapore
Navy in its stated mission of protecting the sea lines of communica-
tion upon which Singapore’s economy was so dependent. At the time,
the strike component of the Singapore Navy comprised smaller brown
water-capable missile gunboats, whereas their immediate neighbours had
larger (and presumably more prestigious) green water-capable vessels.
18 B.F.W. LOO

Table 2.1 Defence Expenditure in Southeast Asia

1960– 1970– 1980– 1990– 2000– 2010– Total

1969 1979 1989 1999 2009 2013
Indonesia
Aircraft 1784 485 1178 617 656 921 5641
Armoured 311 48 141 110 31 42 683
vehicles
Artillery 40 10 111 23 24 40 248
Ships 1270 361 1596 1075 1021 110 5433
Malaysia
Aircraft 299 566 485 1369 1117 60 3896
Armoured 12 109 281 28 241 51 722
vehicles
Artillery 2 89 38 8 51 23 211
Ships 261 680 877 720 1218 350 4106
The Philippines
Aircraft 246 558 248 223 100 35 1410
Armoured 11 67 35 43 5 3 164
vehicles
Artillery 8 66 6 78
Ships 109 481 14 156 19 108 887
Singapore
Aircraft 20 887 1348 1720 2288 1562 7822
Armoured 20 308 154 62 126 400 1070
vehicles
Artillery 92 71 17 20 200
Ships 20 377 699 2018 198 3311
Thailand
Aircraft 609 1183 1127 1546 581 468 5514
Armoured 142 63 522 346 26 146 1245
vehicles
Artillery 38 61 200 206 31 41 577
Ships 114 460 554 1781 22 115 3046
Vietnam
Aircraft 1006 2031 2829 606 355 1124 7951
Armoured 239 2178 240 18 2675
vehicles
Artillery 519 396 34 949
Ships 250 280 574 300 314 760 2478

Expenditure on major combat systems, calculated at constant 1990 USD, millions; data accessed from
http://www.sipri.org/databases, accessed 20 November 2014
 2 NAVAL MODERNISATION VERSUS NAVAL DEVELOPMENT … 19

Granted, the missile corvettes gave Singapore’s navy an anti-submarine

warfare capability, but only Indonesia possessed submarines—and old,
no longer seaworthy vessels at that. Arguably, acquiring a modern mine
counter-measures capability might have been a more pressing require-
ment, given the Singapore Navy’s mission of protecting shipping lanes.
It is possible to conclude that it was the politics of envy that drove this
Singapore decision. More recently, regional navies have been focusing
on acquiring submarines—Singapore first, then Malaysia, Indonesia and
Vietnam, and even Thailand has now espoused interest in acquiring sub-
marines. Robert Kaplan cited this author as describing these submarines
as “bling”.9 In other words, there is the element of these platforms as
flashy and ostentatious statements; but there is potentially also an under-
lying statement of “having made it”, of now being a more rounded naval
force with both surface and sub-surface warfighting capabilities. Intrinsic
to the acquisition of “bling” is therefore an element of “keeping up with
the Joneses”.10
It is possible to argue that “keeping up with the Joneses” implies a
pattern of competitive, if not outright adversarial, relationships between
the states of the region. Southeast Asia is certainly not a security com-
munity; there are some lingering suspicions and points of contention
in specific bilateral relationships.11 Nevertheless, the absence of adver-
sarial relationships and action–reaction acquisition patterns identified
earlier still applies in this case, and consequently undermines—if not
invalidates—the arms race argument. Furthermore, as the subsequent
section will argue, naval spending in the 1990s can be—indeed it ought
to be—understood through a longer term historical lens that will begin
to suggest a non-arms race explanation for this increase in spending on
naval platforms.

Naval Modernisation in Southeast Asia: A Long-Term

Perspective
To begin with, looking at the patterns of defence expenditure across
the maritime states of Southeast Asia, the general trend is that up till
the 1990s, the respective navies of these states were not receiving very
much in terms of their shares of their respective states’ defence budg-
ets. This trend of relative neglect becomes apparent by examining the
number of principal surface combatants that the respective navies had
(see Table 2.2).12 Singapore’s navy is the starkest manifestation of this
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