Interviews/Spotlights
IAF: Meeting the Challenges - I
By: Air Marshal BK Pandey | Issue: Book Excerpt: Indian Armed Forces | Date: 02 Nov , 2011
Planning for Modernization of the IAF Festivity during the 75th anniversary of the Indian Air Force in October 2005 was overshadowed by the concern over its depleting combat power. Obsolescence...
The communication gap in Defence Procurement
By: Maj Gen Mrinal Suman | Issue: Vol. 26.3 July - Sept 2011 | Date: 27 Oct , 2011
Despite repeated assertions of the Government that the huge potential of the private sector must be tapped to achieve self sufficiency in defence production, little progress has been achieved on...
Impact of Offset Policy on India's Military Industrial Capability - II
By: Prof (Dr) SN Misra | Issue: Vol 26.2 Apr-Jun 2011 | Date: 25 Oct , 2011
The Highlights of Offset Contracts: Steady increase from $ 48.6M in 2007 to $519.5M in 2008, $974M in 2009 to around $ 700 M during 2010. The Aerospace sector accounts for 65% and balance by...
Impact of Offset Policy on India's Military Industrial Capability - I
By: Prof (Dr) SN Misra | Issue: Vol. 26.3 July - Sept 2011 | Date: 24 Oct , 2011
The Indian Ministry of Defence introduced offset provisions in its Defence Procurement Procedure 2005 (DPP-2005)1 for capital acquisition schemes exceeding an estimated cost of Rs. 300 crores...
The Indian Army: The first challenge - I
By: Major K.C. Praval | Issue: Book Excerpt: Indian Army After Independence | Date: 22 Oct , 2011
Field Marshal Wavell was no prophet. But he was unquestionably a great soldier who admired the Indian Army. Indian troops had fought under him while he was Commander-in-Chief, Middle East, during...
Limited War : A Flawed Concept
By: Lt Gen Harwant Singh | Issue: Net Edition | Date: 20 Oct , 2011
It is not clear as to when the idea or perhaps the concept of a limited war was first evolved and articulated in the Indian military. May be it was the fallout from the procrastination, dithering...
Indian Army: Demilitarisation and Civilianisation I
By: Lt Gen Gautam Banerjee | Issue: Vol. 26.3 July - Sept 2011 | Date: 04 Oct , 2011
A Case of Sleep-walk? Recently, the ‘Ajay Vikram Singh Committee (AVSC) Report Part II’ was implemented in the armed forces amidst much satisfaction among the military hierarchy. Thus a large...
Extended South Asian Region - II
By: Col Harjeet Singh | Issue: Vol 22.2 Apr-Jun 2007 | Date: 02 Oct , 2011
The Indian Ocean Region The Indian Ocean is the third largest body of water on the globe, covering 20% of the earth’s surface. They are the waters of wealth as well as conflict, depending on...
Extended South Asian Region - I
By: Col Harjeet Singh | Issue: Vol 22.2 Apr-Jun 2007 | Date: 01 Oct , 2011
Till the early 20th century Asia was referred to as one entity – the Orient. Subdivision of its regions changed the nomenclatures to Near East, East (the Indian subcontinent) and the Far East....
Ethnic Armies Revisited
By: Dr Sanjay Badri-Maharaj | Issue: Net Edition | Date: 30 Sep , 2011
The article Ethnic Armies was first printed in the Indian Defence Review – April-June 2000 Eleven years ago, following a coup in Fiji, leading to the overthrow of the democratically elected...
US-Pakistan: Search for Mutually Face-Saving Option Continues
By: B Raman | Issue: Net Edition | Date: 26 Sep , 2011
The search for a mutually face-saving option in the dramatic turn of events in the relations between the US and Pakistan has continued over the week-end. The dramatic turn came following the...
Is Nazi China emerging?
By: Rajinder Puri | Issue: Net Edition | Date: 25 Sep , 2011
For years I have maintained that China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) is a government within a government. I have repeatedly pointed out that the actions of the Beijing government betray...
How Pakistan's Proxy War Began - II
By: B Raman | Issue: Book Excerpts: A Terrorist State as a Frontline Ally | Date: 23 Sep , 2011
The HUM: The Harkat-ul-Ansar (HUA) of Pakistan was started in central Punjab in Pakistan in the early 1980s by certain religious elements under the name the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HUM) with...
How Pakistan's Proxy War Began - III
By: B Raman | Issue: Book Excerpts: A Terrorist State as a Frontline Ally | Date: 22 Sep , 2011
The Markaz and its Lashkar: The Markaz Oawa al Irshad (MOI) was founded in 1987, at the inspiration of Osama bin Laden, by Zafar Iqbal and Hafiz Mohammed Saeed of the University of Engineering...
Develop Cutting Edge Defense Industries
By: Bharat Verma | Issue: Vol 24.2 Apr-Jun 2009 | Date: 18 Sep , 2011
< !DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd"> To develop cutting edge defense industries, New Delhi must eschew the inherent divisive tendencies. Instead of consolidating Aero India 2009 as the foremost Asian aerospace show, we reduced its...
China: Checkmating India in Afghanistan
By: B Raman | Issue: Net Edition | Date: 18 Sep , 2011
China has shown interest in the construction of two railway lines—-one in Pakistan via the Gilgit-Baltistan region and the other in Afghanistan. While the railway line through Gilgit-Baltistan,...
The Af-Pak boundary is not a border
By: Lt Gen JFR Jacob | Issue: Net Edition | Date: 18 Sep , 2011
There has been a heated debate on the validity and legality of Sir Henry Mortimer Durand’s line, a line some 2,640 kilometres long between former British India and Afghanistan, which now...
India's Strategic Engagement of the East
By: SD Muni | Issue: Vol 20.4 Oct-Dec 2005 | Date: 14 Sep , 2011
India’s ‘Look-East Policy’, initiated during the early 1990s as a part of India’s attempts to cope with the post-Cold War shifts in world and Asian politics, has picked up the threads,...
IAF: Meeting the Challenges - II
By: Air Marshal BK Pandey | Issue: Book Excerpt: Indian Armed Forces | Date: 10 Sep , 2011
Strategic & Tactical Strike Capability To develop a credible deterrent as also meet with its commitments of power projection in the region, the IAF would have to have a fleet of potent, long...
Osama's Death: Affect on US Policy towards Pak & Afghan - III
By: Ramtanu Maitra | Issue: Courtesy: Aakrosh | Date: 02 Sep , 2011
U.S.-Pakistan Relations: What to Expect It is likely that the killing of Osama bin Laden, which may trigger other developments within Pakistan and beyond, will allow Washington to set in place an...