Indian Military

New Delhi — The prestigious $10.2 billion contract to sell India 126 medium multi-role combat aircraft (MMRCA) will undoubtedly heat up during the forthcoming Aero-India Show 2011 in Bangalore. The main contenders for the MMRCA race will be highlighting the salient features of their aircraft in full-flight displays at the show during the second week of February.

While the main MMRCA contenders have confirmed their participation at the Aero-India show, only the Russian MiG-35 which is in the MMRCA race will not be showcasing its fighter craft. The Indian defence ministry is currently persuading the Russian contender to make its presence felt at the airshow. While the MiG-35 may not make it to the airshow, a Russian delegation is surely expected in India for Aero-India 2011.

The other five contenders for the MMRCA include Boeing’s F/A-18 Super Hornet, Lockheed Martin’s F-16 Super Viper, Eurofighter’s Typhoon, Dassault Aviation’s Rafale and Saab’s Gripen. Barring Russia, each contender is bringing in two to three aircraft along with elaborate teams and flight simulators for displays since India will make a choice in July this year.

A new nervousness about nuclear energy has gripped the globe even as Fukushima nuclear power plant's reactor No 3 had an explosion on Monday and reactor No 2 was going into a meltdown of the dangerous uranium-plutonium fuel. Governments of nuclear powers across the world went into damage control mode as thousands took to streets in Europe in protest against nuclear power plants.
Following its civilian nuclear deal with the US, India plans to set up 22 new reactors. Currently, there are 20 operational reactors with another 6 under construction. Government has indicated that in the coming decades up to 18 more reactors could be built. In Jaitapur in Maharashtra the local people are opposing a plant on safety and displacement fears.
Workldwide, there are 443 nuclear reactors supplying electricity to 30 countries. In recent years, there has been a nuclear renaissance of sorts with an additional 17 countries wanting to join the nuclear energy bandwagon. In all, 62 new reactors are under construction, 158 have been ordered and as many as 342 more are proposed.

SOMA (Japan): A third explosion in four days rocked the earthquake-damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in northeast Japan early Tuesday, the country's nuclear safety agency said.
The blast at Daiichi Unit 2 followed two hydrogen explosions at the plant — the latest on Monday — as authorities struggle to prevent the catastrophic release of radiation in the area devastated by a tsunami.
The troubles at the Daiichi complex began when Friday's massive quake and tsunami in Japan's northeast knocked out power, crippling cooling systems needed to keep nuclear fuel from melting down.
The latest explosion was heard at 6:10 am on Tuesday (2110 GMT Monday), a spokesman for the Nuclear Safety Agency said at a news conference. The plant's owner, Tokyo Electric Power Co, said the explosion occurred near the suppression pool in the reactor's containment vessel. The pool was later found to have a defect.
International scientists have said there are serious dangers but not at the level of the 1986 blast in Chernobyl.

JAIPUR: A MiG-21 combat aircraft of the IAF on Friday crashed near Uttarlai airport in Rajasthan's Barmer district but the pilot ejected safely.
The plane was on a routine sortie and the incident occurred at around 11.30am when the pilot was preparing for landing, he said.
The pilot, flying officer Amit, ejected safely, defence PRO S D Goswami said.
A court of inquiry has been ordered, he said. This is the sixth air crash involving IAF's fighter aircraft this year and the fifth belonging to the MiG-21 series warplane.
In view of the increasing number of accidents involving the MiG-21 aircraft type, the IAF has decided to phase them out by 2017.
The force is also planning to allow only experienced fighter pilots to fly the plane from next year.
Of the total 976 MiG-21s inducted in the service since 1960s, over half of them have been lost in air crashes.

New Delhi –The Indian Air Force (IAF) has finally equipped 55 of the Jaguar fighter aircraft with autopilots after the Indian Defence Ministry was criticised for delays in the upgradation. Defence Minister AK Anthony has assured that it will soon be issuing a tender for procuring additional sets of autopilots for the remaining Jaguars in the IAF fleet.

The Comptroller and Auditor General had raised the issue of delay in the induction of autopilot in its report of 2008-09 and the Indian Defence Ministry was blamed for this delay. The Indian Defence Ministry agreed with the audit conclusions and will be issuing a Request for Proposal (RFP) for new sets of autopilots for the Jaguar fighters.

The Jaguar fighters have always been a trusted war horse since they first came to the IAF almost three decades ago. At the time of induction, the Jaguar was considered to be the fastest aircraft and added a new dimension to air operations in the Indian sub-continent. Under an agreement with the Indian Air Force, Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) has been entrusted with the upgradation of Jaguars that would extend their life by another 15 years, through the year 2020.

BAGHDAD: A new US military tally puts the death toll of Iraqi civilians and security forces in the bloodiest years of the war thousands below Iraqi government figures.

The little-noticed body count is the most extensive data on Iraqi war casualties ever released by the American military. It tallied deaths of almost 77,000 Iraqis between January 2004 and August 2008 the darkest chapter of Iraq's sectarian warfare and the US troop surge to quell it.

But the tally falls short of the estimated 85,694 deaths of civilians and security officials between January 2004 to October 31, 2008, as counted last year by the Iraqi Human Rights Ministry.

Casualty figures in the US-led war in Iraq have been hotly disputed because of the high political stakes in a conflict opposed by many countries and a large portion of the American public.

Critics on each side of the divide accuse the other of manipulating the death toll to sway opinion.

"Even casualty rates are a political issue in Iraq," said Samer Muscati, a Middle East and North Africa researcher for New York-based Human Rights Watch.

[NDTV] It was a misfire that killed Anil Kumar Pradhan, a young sailor with the Western Naval Command. Official versions put it as a rarest of rare incident, but sources indicate a big operational faux pas on one of India’s finest warships. On March 12, Pradhan, onboard the INS Delhi in Visakhapatnam, came under fire from an anti-aircraft gun on another warship. The 12.5 mm bullet killed him on the spot. More alarmingly, the mishap occurred on one of the Indian Navy’s finest warships, INS Mumbai. “It’s unbelievable that the incident took place on INS Mumbai. It is the finest warship with a battle hardened crew which simply can not commit any mistake,” said a naval officer on the condition of anonymity.

A disturbing spat between IAF and HAL has been detailed in a new public document. A new report by India's national audit watchdog, the Comptroller & Auditor General (CAG) has thrown fresh and damning light on how HAL dealt with a flight control phenomenon that has given its chopper division real nightmares over the last few years -- cyclic saturation. The phenomenon caused two crashes of the Dhruv -- the first, in February 2007 at Yelahanka and the second in October 2009 in Ecuador. Troublingly, the report reveals, it was this "limitation of control saturation" that caused Chile to pull out of a near final contract in July 2007.

Now, the really damning stuff. Revealed in the report, for the first time, is how the Indian Air Force reacted to the February 2007 crash, in which it lost two helicopter display pilots. According to the report, the IAF observed that (i) HAL has referred to this problem in the flight manual which is brief and lacks clarity; (ii) HAL has been reluctant to address this problem in totality as it feared disruption of ALH production process; (iii) This approach of HAL to safeguard its business even at the cost of a professional approach to solving the problem has serious flight safety and operational implications for the Indian Air Force (v) HAL, as an industry, has rarely looked to exploiting its aircraft.