Is India planning to spy on Chinese submarines from the Andamans, with a little help from Japan?

Long considered an underutilised security asset, the Andaman and Nicobar Islands have come into sharper focus amid rising India-China tensions and Beijing’s increased maritime assertiveness

The islands have long been off limits to foreign navies for fear of spooking India’s neighbours, but analysts say recent moves with Japan hint at them opening up more to friendly nations

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An aerial view of some of the 524 islands that make up the Andaman and Nicobar archipelago in the Bay of Bengal. Photo: AFP

Published: 7:30pm, 13 Apr 2021Updated: 9:03pm, 14 Apr 2021

India’s move, with a little help from Japan, to develop a strategically located island chain near the mouth of Southeast Asia’s main shipping lane is part of a broader plan by New Delhi to keep a closer watch on China’s naval assets, say analysts and former Indian officials – especially its submarines.

The Andaman and Nicobar archipelago of 572 islands, only 38 of which are inhabited, stretches across some 1,000km (620 miles) of Indian Ocean by the western entrance to the Malacca Strait, through which an estimated 80 per cent or more of China’s seaborne trade passes.

“It is like a [permanent] aircraft carrier,” Kanwal Sibal, a former foreign secretary of India, told This Week In Asia, “that gives India very extensive control over maritime space and sea lanes of communication to monitor shipping and naval vessels.”

Container and cargo ships are seen passing through the Malacca Strait, the main shipping channel between the Indian Ocean and the Pacific Ocean, in 2019. Photo: Roy Issa

Long considered an underutilised security asset, the islands have come into sharper focus amid rising India-China tensions following last year’s deadly flare-up at the two countries’ disputed border, and the fact that “China is [becoming] increasingly active in the Indian Ocean as part of its Maritime Silk Road strategy,” Sibal said, in reference to the sea route section of Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative plan to grow global trade.

As part of that plan, China has acquired numerous footholds around the Indian Ocean in recent years, Sibal noted, with Chinese companies taking control of commercial ports in Sri Lanka and Pakistan, and the country acquiring its first overseas military base in Djibouti in 2016. Rumours that Beijing will establish a second offshore naval base at Gwadar, the Pakistani port operated by China’s Cosco Shipping Holdings Co, have circulated for years, and Sibal said Chinese submarines now enter the Indian Ocean on a regular basis.

Against this backdrop, India has in recent months expedited plans to base additional military forces on the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, including facilities for additional warships, aircraft, missile batteries and soldiers, according to Abhijit Singh, a senior fellow and head of the Maritime Policy Initiative at the Delhi-based Observer Research Foundation think tank.

The retired naval officer said runways at Indian naval air stations in the far north and south of the island chain had been extended to accommodate larger aircraft, while a 10-year infrastructure development plan for the islands has also been fast-tracked.