India, May 3 -- Even though the tri-service Andamans and Nicobar Command was set-up by the Vajpayee government quarter of century ago, India's military doctrine has been land centric with primacy to the Indian Army with other two services unfortunately being seen as force multipliers.

While India's main adversary China changed its military doctrine from land to sea-centric in early 2000s, New Delhi started seriously looking at its maritime security post-2014 with PLA Navy surveillance ships, ballistic missile trackers, warships and submarines making forays into Indian Ocean Region (IOR) with logistics facilities in Cambodia, Sri Lanka, Maldives, Iran and the eastern seaboard of Africa. Today, an average of six-to-seven PLA ships are in t...