India’s sole aircraft carrier, INS Viraat, is now a high-maintenance vessel undergoing overhaul to extend its sea life. Viraat was not available to India during Kargil, and is expected to last at best till 2011. Therefore, India needs another aircraft carrier for several reasons. First, the necessity of a blue-water navy capable of influencing events in the Indian Ocean. Second, the strategic shift of the Chinese military from land to sea-based doctrine, coupled with its investments in aircraft carriers and nuclear submarines to acquire long legs reaching into the Indian Ocean. Third, the increased vulnerability of global sea lines carrying oil in India’s backyard, as well as threats along our long coastline. Fourth, our sad experience with indigenisation — India’s indigenous air defence ship is still a work in progress and may not be ready before 2014-15. Naval aviation is a highly specialised field and needs big aircraft carriers. Thus, India will have to buy the Gorshkov, and pay up in order to do so.

The Gorshkov saga should be a learning experience for India. The defence establishment will have to come out of its Cold War-era, single-source mindset, which anyway belies other big and dependable partnerships, most notably with Israel. It’s time to analyse hardware defence procurement from Russia as a whole, which supplies the same equipment to China, which uses Indian money to subsidise its decrepit shipyards, and which withheld critical technology for the T90s and is the cause of our bigger problem of spare parts. Defence is often a sellers’ market, and the Gorshkov deal was perhaps inevitable at the time. But the larger point is, defence deals mean cold and hard bargaining, not redundant emotional ties. India must watch its step as it goes shopping. The path to national security and strategic edge is one of careful and considered negotiation through available options.