178 notes to pages 77–84
are poor. Ships take a long time to build (the record is seventeen years for an oil
tanker) and obsolete features are retained, too often accompanied by poor quality.
Local designs have been problematic as well. Historically, the Indians have tried
to overarm their ships, resulting in overstressed hull structures made worse by the
Indian preference for very large crews (Slade 1991 ).
- The Indian navy is also currently trying to build indigenously designed
nuclear submarines. - The first third- world submarine battle took place in the 1971 India- Pakistan
War. A Pakistani submarine failed to sink the Indian carrier Viraat, but another
managed to sink the Indian frigate Khukri, killing 191 of its crew of 288 (Wallace
and Meconis 1995 ). In a survey of submarine forces in the Indian Ocean, Dowdy
notes that Indian submarine imports were the biggest change to regional naval
balance. The Indian navy was the first navy to lease nuclear submarines. Yet the
Russian submarines proved so problematic that the Indians chose not to extend
the lease, and the submarines returned to Russian hands (Dowdy 1990 ). - The Montreux convention of 1936 bans the passage of aircraft carriers
through the Dardanelles. The Soviet and Russian navies therefore tend to refer to
their carriers as heavy- aircraft- carrying cruisers, which are not officially banned by
the treaty (Cigar 1992 ). - Wattaanayagorn ( 1998 ) identifies an increase in the importance of mari-
time security among Thai military elite in the post – Cold War years. However, as
he notes, “The RTN has not identified any specific potential threat to justify its
procurement plans” ( 220 ). - Other nonmilitary influences that are mentioned by Bitzinger include the
desire to acquire showpieces that encourage national pride, corruption, effective
marketing by arms sellers, and the temptations of good deals generated by the
international arms “buyers’ market.” - The folly of using a carrier for constabulary missions was demonstrated by
the relative failure of the American carrier force to protect civilian vessels in the
Persian Gulf during the lengthy Iran- Iraq War. Two to three carrier groups were
patrolling the gulf at any given time between November 1979 and October 1981.
By 1987 the American deployment in the Persian Gulf was costing $ 1. 7 million
a day. Yet this enhanced presence did not stop more than four hundred attacks
against civilian vessels during this period of time. A carrier group, even an Ameri-
can carrier group, is incapable of stopping or monitoring sporadic movements of
small, fast motor boats (Cable 1989 , 5765 ). The Thai carrier group is far inferior
to the American groups; its ability to achieve a better record at such missions is
questionable. - An editorial in the Bangkok Siam Rat questions the need for such pur-
chases (in this case a canceled purchase of American F- 18 planes) and uses the
logic of conspicuous consumption to make its case: “The planes could have been
bought (provided there was money to buy them), or they did not have to be bought