Tuesday, 21 September 2010
Written by Editor
New Delhi — The Indian Navy is currently participating in a trilateral naval exercise as part of the India-Brazil-South Africa Maritime (IBSAMAR 2010) exercise being conducted in the Indian Ocean region off Durban. IBSAMAR is conceptualised by the Joint Work Group for Defence, which is one of 16 Joint Working Groups of the three nations looking into various cooperation initiatives.
This second edition of the IBSAMAR is a two-week nautical exercise which will conclude on September 27th. IBSAMAR is being held around the South African coast and there would be visits to Durban, Cape Town, Simon’s Town and Port Elizabeth as part of the nautical exercise. This maritime exercise involves 11 ships of the navies of South Africa, which is the host country, India which is the lead country and Brazil which is the support country. Four warships including a destroyer and two frigates from the Indian Navy’s Western Fleet are participating in the biennial India-Brazil-South Africa Maritime (IBSAMAR) exercise.
Friday, 04 March 2011
Written by Editor
New Delhi – In the Indian Union Budget for the year 2011-2012, the Indian Finance Ministry has given special attention to defence by increasing the defence outlay whilst keeping India’s strategic goals at par by facilitating capital for the big-ticket purchases in the current fiscal year.
As per the defence budget for the fiscal 2011-12, the Indian Finance Ministry has given a 11.6 per cent hike which amounts to $34 billion. The hike of 11.6 per cent in defence budgetary allocations is a positive step compared to a mere 4 per cent last year. There has been 9 per cent jump in revenue expenditure and the Finance Ministry has also scaled up capital expenditure by providing more impetus to the modernization plans of the Indian Armed Forces. The defence capital acquisition for the financial year 2011-12 has been hiked to $12.22 billion, while capital expenditure for the same has been raised by about 12 percent to $15.38 billion.
As for the break-up of the total budgetary allocation, the Indian Army has been granted $14.
Wednesday, 04 August 2010
Written by Editor
[ Shiv Aroor/Livefist]  India's national audit watchdog agency, the Comptroller & Auditor General (CAG) has severely criticised the Indian Navy's upgrade of 14 Sea Harriers. The Navy embarked on the upgrade -- called the Limited Upgrade Sea Harrier (LUSH) programme -- in March 2005. The new CAG union audit report on the Indian Navy, tabled in Parliament yesterday, observes, "The contract for limited upgradation was concluded but only in March 2005. The delay was mainly on account of finalising technical requirements, issuing the Request for Proposal, conducting Technical Evaluation for the missile and associated radar. Not only did this delay defeat the very purpose of execution of the project on fast track basis but the Navy would also be able to exploit the upgraded Sea Harrier aircraft for a very limited period only, i.e about three years or less. Even subsequently, there were delays in the execution of the programme by Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) and the first milestone of handing over two prototypes to Navy by February 2007 could not be achieved.
Thursday, 15 July 2010
Written by Editor
[ Shiv Aroor/Livefist]
 The following is the full text of the speech that was delivered by LCA-Navy programme director COMMODORE CD BALAJI on 06 July 2010 at the roll-out ceremony of the aircraft's first prototype, NP-1.
In 2003, based on the progress made on the Air Force LCA Programme the Govt approved Phase-1 development of 2 LCA Navy Prototypes that would operate from an aircraft carrier with the concept of Ski-jump Take-off and Arrested Recovery (STOBAR). Navy actively supported this Challenging programme to design, develop, build and flight test a carrier borne aircraft for the first time in the country. The two prototypes under development would be used to demonstrate that the aircraft is capable of operating from a ship, i.e., carrier compatible.
The question often asked is ‘what are the changes in LCA(Navy) in comparison to the Air Force version?’ Typically the aircraft will get airborne in about 200m over the ski-jump on the ship as against a land based take-off run of about 800m.
Wednesday, 21 July 2010
Written by Editor
[ Shiv Aroor/Livefist]  BAE Systems has not only managed to fend off a low-intensity war with HAL over a host of problems with the Hawk advanced jet trainer license build programme, including a damages claim, but is on the threshold of receiving a fat follow-on order for 57 more Hawks to add to 66 already contracted for. All 57 will be manufactured by HAL in country. With this new development, India's RFI last year for 57 new jet trainers -- sent out when things had really soured between BAE and HAL -- is null and void, and the Hawk prevails after all. As was the plan earlier, 40 of the new order will be for the air force and 17 for the Indian Navy. HAL chairman Ashok Nayak told Hindustan Times correspondent Rahul Singh in Farnborough yesterday, "We have ironed out all niggles with BAE Systems. The deal is going to be signed soon." Just how both sides ironed out those niggles would be supremely interesting.
Thursday, 29 July 2010
Written by Editor
[ Shiv Aroor/Livefist]  Here goes BAE's statement today (without the fluff): BAE Systems has secured a new order, worth over £500 million, with Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL), to supply products and services to enable a further 57 Hawk Advanced Jet Trainer (AJT) aircraft to be built under licence in India for the Indian Air Force (40 aircraft) and Indian Navy (17 aircraft). The final terms and conditions for the contract were signed by Guy Griffiths, Group Managing Director International, BAE Systems, in the presence of British Prime Minister, David Cameron on his visit to India and BAE Systems' Chairman Dick Olver.
Sunday, 18 July 2010
Written by Editor
[ Shiv Aroor/Livefist]
 An unreliable nav system that pilots refused to rely on. Zero precision attack capability. Very limited night attack capability. Execrable airborne LRU reliability levels. Degradation of auto weapon delivery. That was the Indian Air Force fleet of MiG-27s towards the end of the 1990s -- one of the world's best strike aircraft in the 1970s, but utterly obsolete two decades later. A proposal was put up to organise a comprehensive upgrade of the fleet to transform the aircraft into a potent, accurate, all weather, day or night interdictor. Fortunately, foreseeing the government stalling the proposal, the IAF began discussing the possibility of a fully Indian upgrade programme involving HAL and the Defence Avionics Research Establishment (DARE). As you can imagine, the Russians weren't pleased, but they'd already given the Indian government reason to keep them out of main part of the programme.
Monday, 02 August 2010
Written by Editor
[ Shiv Aroor/Livefist]  Two days ago, I received a mysterious phone-call from a Russian journalist who claimed to have very reliable information that the Indian Air Force and the Defence Ministry had chosen the MiG-35 in the $12-billion medium multirole combat aicraft (MMRCA) competition, and had communicated as much to both MiG chief Mikhail Pogosyan as well as UAC president Alexey Fedorov. Cut. A well-known senior Indian defence analyst, who junketed off to Farnborough this month, assured me just before he left, that the Typhoon was going to sail through to the finish line -- I'd stopped listening by this time, but he said something about "knowing people in the know". Cut. There's a lot of stuff swimming around out there about the MMRCA, and it's all tantalizing. Rumours of first blood. At this point in the game, it's common for vendors to pick journalists' brains about what they're hearing.
Friday, 06 August 2010
Written by Editor
[ Shiv Aroor/Livefist]  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.
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