US Military Surge in Afghanistan

After months of agonizing, the decades most long awaited decision has finally been made. It is a military surge of 30,000 additional troops to chart out a dignified exit for

India and its Neighbours

It is considered almost axiomatic that management of relations with neighbours should be the first priority of any country’s foreign policy. The stakes are always high as conditions in its immediate

India-Iran Defence Cooperation

As Asian Nations work towards integrating familiar areas of mutual interests, defence cooperation by and large, serves as a significant tool that complements diplomatic enterprise. Collaboration in the realm of defence is widely considered a visible manifestation of a strategic relationship thereby fostering bilateral ties including political and economic relations and specific national security interests, [...]

Combating ‘Red Terror’

The Indian ‘Red Brigade’ is the Indian brand of Taliban. It assumes different aliases, the current favourite being ‘Maoists’.

CHINA 2010

The Indian media recently reported that a government agency admitted that: “the area along Line of Actual Control with China has ’shrunk’ over a period of time and India has lost ’substantial’ amount of land in the last two decades”1.

The Way to Regional Power Status

The Sin that is Committed by Killing One, Who Does Not Deserve to Be Killed, Is As Great as the Sin, of Not Killing One Who Deserves to Be Killed.
Mahabharat Udyoga Parva. Chapter 72, Verse 18
Introduction
We entered the 21st century with Y2K bust. Visionaries who predicted doomsday had to redeem their stature and come up [...]

Facing the Dragon: is India prepared?

The contours of India’s relationship with China have been tumultuous over the last six decades. From periods of great bonhomie in the mid fifties – the ‘Hindi-Chini Bhai Bhai’ years to hitting rock bottom in 1962 when both nations went to war over the boundary dispute, the relationship has seen great turbulence marked by venomous [...]

Demystifying the New ‘Buy & Make (Indian)’ Procedure

As recommended by the group of ministers constituted in the wake of the Kargil Conflict, the Ministry of Defence (MoD) issued a comprehensive defence procurement procedure in December 2002. The procedure has undergone periodic reviews and its scope has been considerably enlarged. Although Defence Procurement Procedure – 2008 (DPP-2008) is the current applicable version, a [...]

Asian Security Environment: India’s Options

Asian security environment is in a state of deep turmoil. The single event which has occasioned it, is the giant rise of China during the past couple of decades, reaching higher and higher levels of economic and military strength. All neighbors of China, as also some others, are engaged in working out strategies to cope [...]

Pitfalls in Arms Procurement Process

Modernization of armed forces is a very capital intensive and long drawn process wherein the armed forces first identify their needs and then acquire the same through some rather complex procedures.

Design Review of Naval Platforms

The existing system of naval platform (ship or submarine) design involves various iterations and stages with comprehensive inbuilt checks and balances in the entire design process. The specifications, drawings and mock-ups are all approved with due consultations of the ultimate user-operator and upkeep professionals so that there are no issues later during the exploitation and [...]

Kargil: An IAF Perspective

Lt Gen Harwant’s article “Kargil Controversy : Sorry State of Higher Defence Management”, published in October-December 2009 issue of the Indian Defence Review is laudable for its comprehensive and all encompassing critique. Though written with an advantage of hindsight after a long span of ten years, he somehow ends up making the issue still more [...]

Future Trends in Aviation

Birth and Growth of Aviation
Since the Wright Brothers took their first hesitant hop just over a century ago, aeronautical science has advanced at a phenomenal pace seemingly defying all limits of imagination and giving unprecedented mastery of the air to mankind. Having landed on the moon within seven decades of the historic first manned powered [...]

Indian Shipbuilding: key to maritime and economic security

The first anniversary of 26/11 brings to mind the profound statement of Jawaharlal Nehru ‘To be secure on land we must be supreme at sea’. While Pandit Nehru’s views would have been formed in the wake of the colonization of the subcontinent, his words are a timeless truth which holds good to this day. Post [...]

Army’s Capability Accretion

The challenges that the army is expected to face in the next decade are not likely to be any less formidable. An appraisal of the emerging threats in fact indicates an increasing complexity of the missions that the army may be expected to execute.

India and the US: haunting past and beckoning future

The US will continue to be a pre-eminent power of the world. Despite its growing economic and military strength, China will not be able to challenge the pre-eminence of the US. The pre-eminence of a nation is not derived only from its GDP growth rate, foreign trade and military modernization. It is also derived from [...]

Aerospace and Defence News

MILITARY AVIATION
Northrop Grumman and EADS Unveil Euro Hawk UAV 14 October 2009
On October 08, US aerospace major Northrop Grumman and Germany’s EADS Defence & Security together unveiled Germany’s first unmanned reconnaissance aircraft – the Euro Hawk, which resembles the US UAV Global Hawk. Equipped with signal intelligence mission system developed by EADS Defence & Security, [...]

IDR Interview: Admiral Nirmal Verma, Chief of the Naval Staff

 “The Indian Navy has been designated as the authority responsible for overall maritime security”
Arihant and Sea based Nuclear Deterrent
One of the most significant events in the recent times has been the commissioning of India’s nuclear submarine in July this year, even if she has a way to go before attaining op status. India has declared [...]

Women in the Armed Forces: misconceptions and facts

The recent debate about the induction of women in the armed forces has been highly skewed and shallow. An issue that critically affects the fighting potential of the armed forces has been reduced to ‘equality of sexes’ and ‘women’s liberation’. Many ill-informed observers have trifled such a sensitive matter by terming it as ‘conquering the [...]

Unprepared and Unwilling

The creeping invasion by authoritarian regimes will engulf Asia by 2020 as democracies continue to retreat. India is unprepared and unwilling to safeguard the Asian democratic space.
The growing clout of totalitarian regimes coupled with the non-state actors is set to shrink the democratic space in Asia. If the onslaught is not reversed, by end of [...]