What next for the Indonesian Navy? Challenges and prospects for attaining the Minimum Essential Force by 2024.

AuthorCollin, Koh Swee Lean

As the world's largest archipelagic nation-state stretching from the eastern Indian Ocean to the Western Pacific rim, home to some of the world's critical sea lines of communications and endowed with considerable marine resources, the development of Indonesia's maritime power has both regional and global consequences. Indonesian President Joko "Jokowi" Widodo's Global Maritime Fulcrum (GMF) vision has invited much discussion ever since it was first announced in November 2014. (1) The GMF comprises five pillars: first, rebuilding the country's maritime culture in order to raise awareness among Indonesians that their identity, prosperity and future will be determined by how they manage the oceans; second, maintaining and managing national marine resources, with a particular emphasis on fisheries; third, the development of maritime infrastructure and connectivity; fourth, maritime diplomacy; and fifth, building maritime defence. In short, the GMF represents Indonesia's newfound aspirations towards becoming a "medium maritime power", broadly defined as a medium power that seeks to utilize the seas to enhance its ability to preserve the country's strategic autonomy.

Several new policy developments in Indonesia pertain to some of the GMF pillars, including, for instance, efforts undertaken by the Jokowi government to tackle illegal fishing in its exclusive economic zone (EEZ). However, except for occasional press reports, the modernization of the Indonesian Navy (Tentara Nasional Indonesia --Angkatan Laut, TNI-AL) has elicited little attention in scholarly circles. This is reflective of the dearth of scholarship on Southeast Asian navies in general despite some recent scholarship. (2) Hence, the focus of this article is on the fifth GMF pillar--building maritime defence--and, in particular, the navy's modernization efforts, especially its quest to achieve, by 2024, a Minimum Essential Force (MEF) which allows for a minimum capacity to cover selected geographical areas of interests across the Indonesian archipelago while projecting limited force beyond it. Given Indonesia's extensive maritime interests, this article does not question Indonesia's quest for a greenwater navy. But such ambitions warrant attention because the navy has been plagued by chronic deficiencies while being saddled with enormous maritime responsibilities. Yet, at the same time, despite those constraints, the Indonesian political leadership has called for the country's armed forces to be strengthened beyond the MEF level. (3)

This article first examines Indonesia's maritime interests, especially how the GMF may define its aspirations towards "maritime medium-ness". It then highlights the constraints faced by the navy given the country's vast maritime expanse and diverse maritime interests, which then gives rise to the MEF blueprint as part of its long-term greenwater ambitions. It is pertinent to ask whether the TNI-AL will be able to achieve its MEF goals by 2024 given the ongoing capacity-building efforts including equipment modernization. To address this question, the article models the navy's MEF projections up to 2024. It shows that the MEF targets cannot be attained across all categories by 2024. Therefore, this article proposes recalibrating the navy's MEF specifications to overcome persistent budgetary constraints and to minimize the risks of project overruns commonly associated with complex naval systems.

"Maritime Medium-ness" and a Greenwater Navy

The GMF's aim is for Indonesia to achieve medium maritime power status. This "medium" status, according to John Richard Hill, "lies in between the insufficient (small states generally) and self-sufficient (great powers generally)" capacity and where a state has more national power at its disposal compared to small states, thus permitting it a modicum of strategic autonomy. (4) Hill goes on to explain that "if a medium power is a state that prizes autonomy and is able to manipulate power in order to preserve it, then a medium maritime power will aim to use the sea in order to enhance this ability". (5) Sam Bateman expounds this concept thus:

medium-ness implies a certain level of development and size (economy, population, geographical area, military strength, etc.), as well as the state's self-perception. Meanwhile, maritime-ness is based on the state's dependence on the sea which may be seen as an amalgamation of factors such as maritime tradition, size of navy and merchant fleet, dependence on seaborne trade, size of the EEZ, value of offshore resources, and the capabilities of domestic shipbuilding industry. (6) What Dewi Fortuna Anwar, then Deputy for Political Affairs at the Vice Presidential Office, said in September 2011--three years before the GMF was first mooted--is instructive: "Indonesia is the [sic] middle power country right now meaning that we are in the moderate position between major powers; traditionally, Indonesia does keep distance from major powers and doesn't let herself to be co-opted by one side." (7) The GMF imbues this "medium power" self-consciousness with a maritime flavour. Consequently, this "maritime medium-ness" makes it imperative to build a greenwater navy by 2024, an ambition that was outlined in a ten-year naval development plan, entitled Cetak Biru TNI-AL 2013 [Navy Blueprint for 2013] released in 2002. This was not just motivated by the necessity of modernizing an antiquated navy, but also to attain a level of naval power commensurate with Indonesia's stature as a medium maritime power. According to then Navy Chief-of-Staff Admiral Slamet Soebijanto, the greenwater navy represented a level of sea power higher than that of a brownwater (coastal) navy, but below that of a fully operational, ocean-going bluewater navy. (8) As such, one may observe the connection between "maritime medium-ness" and greenwater navy within the Indonesian discourse. But what exactly is a greenwater navy? Navies may be classified into global, bluewater, greenwater and brownwater categories. (9) As the name suggests, global navies have a worldwide presence and can operate independently on a continuous basis in more than one regional ocean basin. Bluewater navies possess open-ocean capability (beyond the EEZ) and external support (for short durations), and they are capable of extra-regional deployments. Brownwater navies (excluding riverine forces) are essentially coastal defence forces largely limited to operations in a state's territorial waters.

A greenwater navy falls in between bluewater and brownwater, and is primarily oriented towards operating within the EEZ while possessing a limited, secondary ability to conduct "out-of-area" operations. Seen through this lens, Indonesia's greenwater navy aspiration is two-fold: effective EEZ policing and limited regional, and occasionally even international, force projection capabilities. The TNI-AL presently exhibits some greenwater characteristics because of its "out-of-area" experience, most notably as part of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon since 2009. But it has yet to attain true greenwater stature. For one, being effective within the EEZ requires the TNI-AL to effectively safeguard the Indonesian archipelago--totalling 93,000 square kilometres of water and 54,716 kilometres of coastline (10)--in accordance with the country's Archipelagic Sea Defence Strategy (Strategi Pertahanan Laut Nusantara or SPLN). However, it does not help that the State Defence Policy 2014 outlined such a diverse array of traditional and non-traditional maritime challenges, ranging from military conflict (especially over disputes in West Kalimantan and the South China Sea) to illegal fishing. (11) This broad range of maritime challenges, and hence responsibilities, consequently overstretches the navy's available capacity.

The TNI-AL's envisioned force structure revolves around a three-dimensional Integrated Navy Fleet System [Sistem Armada Terpadu or SSAT) concept--comprising vessels as the basic asset, together with aircraft, marines and naval bases. (12) To this end, in October 2011, the navy considered creating a third fleet, to be known as Central Fleet Command, to complement the existing Western and Eastern Fleet Commands so as to effectively safeguard the three strategic sea corridors through the Indonesian archipelago and existing conflict-prone areas which come under each fleet's responsibility. (13) But the required size of an effective greenwater navy has long been a matter of discussion. Since the early 1990s, Indonesian policymakers have estimated the "ideal" fleet size to be between 300 and 600 vessels, (14) plus 75 maritime patrol aircraft. (15) But the navy's effectiveness in projecting power throughout the archipelago, while performing limited overseas missions, depends on its flexibility. This "flexibility" can be defined as the navy's ability to conduct multiple missions simultaneously in more than one geographical area; the greater the number of ships and aircraft it possesses, the greater its ability to undertake varied missions concurrently in dispersed areas. (16) In view of budgetary and resource realities, the navy does not have surplus ships and aircraft. It could only economize its limited capacity by conceiving of a MEF that can plausibly cover selected geographical areas of interests across the archipelago while projecting limited force beyond. The navy's MEF blueprint for 2024 envisages 274 vessels and 137 aircraft (including 35 maritime patrol aircraft and 30 helicopters), three Marine Corps (Korps Marinir, or KORMAR) forces adding up to a division-sized formation, 890 marine combat vehicles and 11 primary naval bases. (17) The vessels are divided into: Combat Strike Force (110 vessels), including 10-12 submarines, 56 frigates/corvettes and 26 fast attack craft; Patrol Force (66 vessels); and Support Force (98 vessels) including 18 mine countermeasures vessels, 45 large amphibious assault landing...

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