Sri Lanka’s national security and defence posture remains vulnerable to evolving threats despite the continued high expenditure on the subject by the Government.
As Sri Lanka moves through an unprecedented crisis to a recovery stage, there is a need for an enlightened security conscience not only at the policymaking, implementation, and enforcement levels, but among the citizenry as well.
Over the last four decades, the term ‘national security’ has been seriously devalued and tainted by successive governments and political parties, which have hijacked it for their political advantage, causing generational damage by distorting the national consciousness on the subject. The political distortion of what national security entails and how it is enacted in a democratic environment may take decades to undo.
Meanwhile, Sri Lanka needs to urgently review its security and defence posture, formulating a robust long-term national security policy which can then frame a national defence policy that can set goals and the future trajectory for the Sri Lankan armed forces in the form of doctrine, strategies, and tactics.
Such an approach is imperative if Sri Lanka is serious about ‘right-sizing’ its large military apparatus into a more ‘lean and mean’ force structure that is efficient and projects a strong deterrent value to the nation. Such a course of action may also be the best approach to reprioritise and reduce State expenditure on defence and national security, which at current levels is unsustainable.
Defence 2030
While there have been multiple attempts at formulating an overarching national security policy and a defence strategy in the last decade, change of governments, leadership at the minister of defence and command level, and egotism have scuttled such efforts in the past, a senior defence official told The Sunday Morning on terms of anonymity.
However, the Government has now initiated a high-level review of Sri Lanka’s defence establishment, termed ‘Defence 2030’.
Last week, responding to a question by The Sunday Morning, the State Minister of Defence declined to comment on a timeline of the review, but said that any restructuring and right-sizing of the military would take place based on the recommendations made by the report.
Attempts to contact the Ministry of Defence, the President’s National Security Advisor, and the President’s Secretariat regarding the Defence 2030 process failed.
The Sunday Morning reliably learns that ‘Defence 2030’ is expected to be concluded by the end of March 2023 and a version of the report is earmarked to be tabled in Parliament.
Threat spectrum – near-term
According to a senior intelligence official, Sri Lanka faces multiple domestic and international threats, both in the form of traditional defence and non-traditional.
However, when asked what the most imminent issue was, the official said that the apex national security threat Sri Lanka faced today and in the near term was maintaining economic and sociopolitical stability in 2023 and preventing the nation from sliding into anarchy or to a situation where the world perceived Sri Lanka as a failed state.
“Sri Lanka needs to quickly address the political shortcomings and socioeconomic issues that led to the political upheaval and civil disobedience which crippled the country earlier this year. We cannot afford to let the situation deteriorate to that level again. Here, economic stability is critical; without it, all areas of national security are impacted.
“Sri Lanka has many fault lines, and in this era of geopolitical competition in the Indian Ocean, we leave the door open for external powers to gain a foothold and manipulate local issues if we don’t get our act together. If the State doesn’t move to restore public faith in our governance mechanism, we will find ourselves sliding back into a domestic conflict again, and this time it may be more complex to resolve.”
Commenting on the threat spectrum Sri Lanka faces, the official said that countering extremism and violent extremist ideologies, cybersecurity, trafficking, countering foreign influence operations, improving climate change resilience, and the protection of critical infrastructure – both physical and digital – were serious security concerns for Sri Lanka.
When asked about the defence establishment’s continued focus on the remnants of the LTTE and its ideology, the intelligence officer stated that while the ideology was still active and remained a security concern, if the State were to better engage the Sri Lankan diaspora communities and address long-term grievances of the people in the north and the east, the threat would be minimised.
“The steady growth of Wahhabism remains a serious concern; we have noticed growth during the Covid-19 period. Countering it needs to be done sensitively and constructively. We need community outreach and support, which will only come with trust, to nip any violent extremist agendas in the bud. The same goes for any form of extremism. This is a 24/7, 365-day task, which is largely thankless. Politics should be kept out of counter-extremism and counter-terrorism,” the official said.
He stated that Sri Lanka was gradually building its cybersecurity framework but required more funding and capacity building. “Most of our economy and trade is now dependent on the internet and most of our youth are online, so we need to focus on cybersecurity, not building grandiose officers’ messes or giving every general a Prado.”
Commenting on critical infrastructure security, he noted: “What if some external party or a local actor tried to disrupt the Norochcholai Power Plant? Sri Lanka is dependent on it functioning; it’s a critical asset. Today, countries use non-state actors armed with drones and missiles. Look at what is happening in Yemen and the Strait of Hormuz. Asymmetric warfare has evolved. What if someone launches a drone attack or cyber attack on the Norochcholai plant? Our economy will grind to a halt; there will be riots. It’s only one of the easiest ways to destabilise a country – hit the power sector,” the intelligence officer opined.
Former Commandant of the Defence Services Command and Staff College (DSCSC) and former Deputy High Commissioner in Malaysia Maj. Gen. (Retd) Udaya Perera told The Sunday Morning that Sri Lanka’s internal security concerns could only be addressed by strengthening the liberal democracy of the country and by restoring public faith in the State and in State institutions. “If that can be done, most of the legacy internal threats can melt away or be brought to a level where it can be better managed through dialogue.”
Commenting on external threats, Maj. Gen. Perera said that Sri Lanka should be proactive in initiating and formulating a wide intelligence-sharing regional framework. “For this, Sri Lanka must clearly indicate its national security policy.”
Paper elephants and real-world gaps
According to former Navy Chief of Staff Rear Admiral (Retd) Y.N. Jayarathna, the Sri Lankan defence apparatus faces significant challenges to respond to threats despite the large defence budget.
According to Jayarathna, a majority of the combat equipment and systems in the Sri Lankan military inventory are more than 20 years old and as such, need modernisation as they are less suitable to address emerging and traditional threats.
Though governments have continued to spend heavily on defence in the last post-war decade, not much has been done to modernise the armed forces, leaving them less effective and reducing their primary role of being a deterrent.
“If we look at mobility, there is a significant gap in our land, air, and sea capability,” he pointed out.
While the Sri Lanka Army may be large on paper, its ability to mobilise and deploy large formations for the traditional role remains weak. According to sources, some brigades and even battalions lack organic transport assets to deploy troops, thus reducing their reaction time and efficiency. Most of the Army’s mechanised and armoured formations remain under-equipped and lack spare parts to keep vehicle fleets operational.
The military also lacks modern sensors for surveillance, target acquisition, and battlespace awareness. This is particularly acute in the Sri Lanka Navy and Air Force, which are tasked with monitoring Sri Lanka’s vast maritime and air domains. While the Navy may have acquired ships to conduct deep sea patrols, it lacks robust sensor and communication systems to be effectively integrated.
A senior Air Force officer The Sunday Morning spoke to stated that although Sri Lanka had been donated a maritime patrol aircraft by India recently, which was welcomed, the Sri Lanka Air Force (SLAF) and the Navy still did not have a robust real-time information sharing system to best utilise air-sea coordination – a crucial necessity for any island nation’s security.
Further, commenting on air power capability, he said: “We only have a few helicopters and aircraft in airworthy conditions; we have dozens of helicopters unserviced and needing overhaul. We have little or no maritime strike capability to ensure our shipping lanes remain protected. Most of our jets are grounded and our strike capacity has dropped to pre-’90s levels.”
Responding to a question, R.Adm. Jayarathna pointed out that the Navy needed better sensors and modern weaponry not only to perform its classic role of seaward defence, but also to gather evidence on trafficking, pollution, and IUU fishing, which is vital for successful prosecution in local and overseas jurisdictions.
He argued that a fleet of unmanned air systems, which could be both operated from land and the OPVs of the Navy, would be a cost-effective solution to bridge the gaps in air-naval surveillance of Sri Lanka’s Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) and Search and Rescue Region.
“We need to invest in technology, new systems, and drones to maintain our operational capabilities. As a nation we are also blind to our underwater domain,” Jayarathna stated. The Sunday Morning last week reported on the delays in introducing new legislation to protect critical submarine data cables that keep Sri Lanka connected to the world.
According to another senior defence official, the lack of a performance measurement system for the armed forces makes it virtually impossible to assess their operational readiness and effectiveness. The lack of such KPIs leaves policymakers and defence planners ill-equipped to prioritise defence spending.
Special Forces
A Senior Special Forces and Commando Officer The Sunday Morning spoke to highlighted shortcomings and capability gaps that affected the organisation, which is usually the ‘first responder’ on counter-terrorism.
According to him, Sri Lanka’s elite forces are struggling to maintain the high degree of competency they are required to sustain due to lack of equipment and ammunition for training and intervention.
“Despite a massive budget, we are struggling to find blank ammunition [used for training] to train our boys on even the most basic weapons like the T-56 [standard rifle of the Sri Lankan military]. Most of the small arms we use are decades old. Some have run through their barrel life and are no longer accurate. How can we deploy such weapons when surgical accuracy is needed in urban operations?” the officer questioned.
He also said that the Sri Lankan armed forces were under-equipped with night vision, modern communications systems, and the ability to coordinate troop movements effectively.
“We need to train consistently to keep our proficiency up, but we lack the weapons, ammunition, and equipment to be ready for what tomorrow brings. We need to be able to respond quickly and strike quietly with surgical precision, but we are lacking in those areas. We are gradually slipping back to the ceremonial military level we were at in the 1970s. If this continues, we will just be a job bank, a labour force, and the next time a threat manifests and needs to be faced, we will have to re-learn painful lessons from the past,” the Special Forces Officer said.