Indian Military

Images of China's new Jin-class SSBN. The Pentagon says there are significant problems with its Julang-2 missiles






(This is the concluding article of a four-part series on India's critical, yet significantly delayed, submarine programme)
by Ajai ShuklaBusiness Standard, 2nd Sept 10
An increasingly apparent reason for the Ministry of Defence’s slow decision-making on a second submarine production line for the Indian Navy is: the deep divisions within the navy over India’s submarine force. A debate rages between the submarine arm and the surface navy — particularly the dominant aviation wing — on whether the future lies in submarines or aircraft carriers.

Photo: Courtesy The New York Times: China's Jiaolong submersible, which planted China's flag recently at the bottom of the South China Sea

Article reproduced from: The New York Times
By WILLIAM J. BROADPublished: September 11, 2010
When three Chinese scientists plunged to the bottom of the South China Sea in a tiny submarine early this summer, they did more than simply plant their nation’s flag on the dark seabed
The men, who descended more than two miles in a craft the size of a small truck, also signaled Beijing’s intention to take the lead in exploring remote and inaccessible parts of the ocean floor, which are rich in oil, minerals and other resources that the Chinese would like to mine. And many of those resources happen to lie in areas where China has clashed repeatedly with its neighbors over territorial claims.

The 650-metre dry dock at the Pipavav shipyard in Gujarat. This dry dock can take two aircraft carriers simultaneously and still have space left over for the odd destroyer

by Ajai ShuklaBusiness Standard, 21st Sept 10
I was taken aback last week to receive an invitation from BAE Systems, the world’s third-richest arms corporation, for a four-day media tour to the UK. What surprised me was not the invitation. The rate at which India is buying up foreign weaponry, global arms merchants, eager for publicity, would happily pay for our small defence journalist community to globetrot through the year. What was remarkable in the BAE invitation was the company’s proposal to fly us to Glasgow for the launch of a new Royal Navy destroyer and a tour of other warships. Why, I wondered, was British shipbuilding being showcased to India in the absence of a plan to buy a warship from the UK?
A few phone calls later I had my answer! A cash-strapped UK defence ministry, unable to pay for the two aircraft carriers on order with BAE Systems, had offered one of them to New Delhi.

Defence Minister AK Antony releasing the Defence Production Policy last month, which talks about building up Indian defence industry. The Procurement Policy (DPP-2011), released the same day, undermines that aim by diluting offsets.
by Ajai ShuklaBusiness Standard, 8th Feb 11
Defence Minister AK Antony’s apparent probity is set to naught by his dismal lack of judgement. In a heated internal debate on offsets that has polarised his ministry, Antony has backed a group of bureaucrats that argue exactly what foreign arms vendors have lobbied for since offsets were instituted in 2005. They agree that India’s nascent defence industry is incapable of executing the offset projects that would arise from our weapons purchases. Consequently, the 30% plough back that foreign vendors were required to make into the Indian defence industry, on all contracts above Rs 300 crore, has now been permitted in civil aviation, internal security and aviation.

A test pilot of the National Flight Test Centre (NFTC) readies for a test flight. The NFTC is one of the important aerospace organisations established during the Tejas programme.
by Ajai ShuklaBusiness Standard, 22nd Feb 11
The recently concluded Aero India 2011 air show in Bangalore highlighted the growing success of the Tejas Light Combat Aircraft, or LCA. Stuck for years in a quagmire of funding shortages, international sanctions and the painful accumulation of technologies and infrastructure needed for building a modern fighter, the success of the Tejas provides a positive occasion to reflect on what needs to be done to take India forward towards self-sufficiency in building its combat aircraft.
This is especially so, given the mind-boggling cost of next-generation fighters and India’s growing requirement for more. Adding together the impending purchases of 200-odd medium fighters (the initial tender is for 126 aircraft) for some US $18 billion; another 250 fifth-generation fighter aircraft (FGFA) that will be co-developed with Russia and built in India for US $30-35 billion; the fabrication by Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) of 200 or so Tejas for US $ 8-10 billion; and the indigenous design and fabrication of another 200 Advanced Medium Combat Aircraft (AMCA) for a roughly estimated US $12-15 billion, India will buy an unaffordable US $75-80 billion (Rs 360,000 crores) worth of fighters over the next couple of decades.

Right: Attending a Sino-Indian border meeting at the Spanggur Gap near ChushulBelow: Flying back to Leh in an IAF Cheetah past the Panggong Lake
Both our defence budgets reveal only part of what we actually spend
By Ajai Shukla
The announcement of a country’s annual defence expenditure is as much about geo-political signalling as about budgeting. From New Delhi, where the government announced a 12% increase in defence spending last Monday, here is the big message: notwithstanding our focus on development and social justice; and despite the still uncertain international economic climate, India will spend what is needed for an acceptable level of security.
Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee, while presenting the union budget in parliament, allocated Rs 164,415 crore (US $36.

In a project that is called the Modernisation of Airfield Infrastructure (MAFI), Tata Power SED will be paid Rs 1094 crore to upgrade 30 strategic airfields like this one on the Sino-Indian border
by Ajai ShuklaBusiness Standard, 11th Apr 11
A Tata company has won the largest-ever defence contract awarded to an Indian private sector company through a competitive global tender. On March 16, the Ministry of Defence signed a Rs 1,094-crore contract with Tata Power’s Strategic Electronics Division (Tata Power SED) for modernising 30 Indian Air Force (IAF) airbases across the country. Tata Power SED has 42 months to execute this strategically vital contract, officially called Modernization of Airfield Infrastructure, or MAFI.
Starting with the Bathinda airbase in Punjab, Tata Power SED will refurbish and modernise airfield infrastructure so that the IAF can operate its next generation of modern combat aircraft from there.

Right: The track that is being upgraded into the Thingbu-Mago-Chuna road.Below: A view of Mago village, the first inhabited Indian village after crossing into India from Tulung La
By Ajai ShuklaBusiness Standard, 8th May 11
The grounding of helicopter operator Pawan Hans’ fleet after two shocking accidents in a fortnight near Tawang in Arunachal Pradesh, has claimed another casualty: Border Roads Organisation’s strategic road building programme along the Sino-Indian border. With Pawan Hans helicopters no longer available to ferry bulldozers and materials to road building sites in remote areas, this crucial programme is experiencing further delays.
On 19th April, a Pawan Hans Mi-172 helicopter had crashed near Tawang, killing 17 passengers and crewpersons and grievously injuring five more.

The belly of a Kolkata class destroyer at Mazagon Dock Ltd, awaiting the fitment of a propulsion train that has been sourced from overseas
by Ajai ShuklaBusiness Standard, 31st May 11
Defence indigenisation has long been more a MoD slogan than reality. Minister Antony pays regular lip service to reversing the 70:30 ratio: i.e. reducing the foreign component of Indian defence from 70% to 30%. In practice, indigenisation has been, with apologies to Greta Garbo, an illusion, wrapped in a fallacy, cloaked in deception.
The empirical reality of “indigenisation” is evident in the Indian Navy, the only service that pursues indigenisation systematically (the Indian Air Force and the army talk the talk but oppose indigenisation in practice, demanding aircraft, tanks and guns now, not ten years down the line). The navy takes justifiable pride in building most of its warships in Indian shipyards, but a closer examination reveals that indigenisation is only skin deep.

It is time for India to open a dialogue track with the Quetta Shoora of the Taliban, which increasingly chafes at restraints and controls imposed upon it by Pakistan
by Ajai ShuklaBusiness Standard, 14th June 11
After a decade of deft manoeuvring in Afghanistan with its successful aid policy, New Delhi has taken its eye off the ball. While Washington tries hard to nudge Mullah Omar into sharing power in Afghanistan – a political watershed in a decade-long war – our mandarins have chosen to pooh-pooh the process. Taking cover behind the Mullah Akhtar Mansour fiasco – when a “senior Taliban leader” was flown by the Royal Air Force from Pakistan to Kabul last November for peace talks, but turned out to be a money-seeking impostor – Indian officials dismiss any thought of opening their own track to the Taliban with the toss-off: “Who knows who we would end up talking to?”
But, as I discovered during a recent visit to Kabul, the dialogue with the Taliban is being seriously pursued and it is captivating everyone who matters: the insurgents, the Afghan polity and government, the Americans, the United Nations and practically every Afghan who has time left over from scrabbling together a livelihood
Lutfullah Mashal from the National Directorate of Security, Afghanistan’s key intelligence agency, told me that American negotiators have met Mullah Omar’s representatives, including Syed Taib Agha, a Taliban ambassador-at-large.