The saga of the Indian Army’s acquisition programme for small arms and assault rifles is a scam wrapped within a farce. The indigenously produced Indian National Small Arms System (INSAS) has been systematically denigrated and successive governments forced to sanction ad hoc acquisitions to meet urgent demands to deal with the perennial threats from Pakistan and China and the internal insurgencies. The result is that the Indian Army and paramilitary, central and State police forces… Read More »Small arms

India is increasingly being confronted by a two-front war situation compounded by a Fifth Column of Pakistani trained jihadis operating behind Indian lines in the Jammu and Kashmir/Gurdaspur (Punjab) salient where lie India’s main lines of road and rail communications that maintain logistics to the forward areas. The capture of two Pakistani nationals with full terrorist regalia is just the tip of a larger, undetected, workforce that has been infiltrated into the country which is… Read More »Heavy-lift capability

As modern battlefields get more and more complex, lethal, diverse and multidimensional, the fighting infantry soldiers need to be armed accordingly to face the challenge of operating across the entire spectrum of conflict. Today’s battlefield scene may not appear in the classic sense, and in today’s world the soldiers may have to think of any urban area as battlefield and face the wrath of a few non state actor, who are much more committed than… Read More »Hi-tech soldier

Missiles in their surface-to-air configuration are dependent on their efficacy on range and a multi-layered nature of their deployment. Thus shoulder-fired man-portable (MANPADS) and fixed-launch “point-defence” missiles are considered the last shield against low-flying aircraft and, in the case of the latter, against surface-skimming projectiles. Missiles tend to shape the battlefields in which they are deployed. Two famous examples can be quoted: The first was the shooting down of the American U-2 spy plane by… Read More »Air defence shield

There is evidence of a heartening improvement in maritime surveillance as seen in the pre-emptive interception of suspected Pakistani surface vessels to penetrate Indian territorial waters or indulge in criminal activity on the high seas. But true Indian maritime security lies in a capability to be able to find, track and, if necessary, attack and destroy inimical elements on the high seas and closer inshore in the 200 nautical mile Exclusive Economic Zone and the… Read More »Naval patrol

Battlefield transparency under all types of conditions will hold the key to success of a military operation in the 21st Century. Militaries will need critical technologies and weapons which can provide the ability to overpower the adversary when he is most prone, and that is night. The Night Vision Devices (NVDs) have proved to be force multipliers during the Iraq and Afghanistan operations. NVDs greatly aid the infantry in carrying out tasks such as identification… Read More »Combating darkness

Anti-submarine warfare is a multilayered operation involving all elements ranging from the air, surface to the sub-surface domains. India’s dwindling anti-submarine infrastructure has been well-documented but there is little to show that any large-scale rectification is underway. From insufficient numbers of conventional hunter-killer submarines and surface fighting ships bereft of even the required number of anti-submarine warfare helicopters with vacant hangar space on board, to the still-to-arrive naval nuclear deterrent INS Arihant there are wide… Read More »ASW capability

The saga of the indigenous creation of an ab initio propeller driven trainer aircraft and an initial jet trainer (IJT) aircraft for the Indian Air Force and the Indian Navy by the Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd reads like the script of a farce. HAL started the process of “indigenization” of these two types of trainer aircraft with the Pushpak propeller-driven trainer and the Kiran jet trainer. A young flyer learned the basics of flying on the… Read More »Trainer aircraft

The Indian armored regiment’s modernization is not as pathetic as the Indian artillery regiments, which has not seen the induction of single Howitzer gun since 1988. However, the modernization program of the armored regiments cannot be said to be satisfactory. The Indian Army has placed its full reliance on the Russian T-90-S tanks, which are now under assembly in the Heavy Vehicles Factory in Avadi. However the Arjun Mk-2 has emerged as the main competitor… Read More »Tank upgradation

Though the sanction for 814 artillery guns worth Rs 15,750 crore ( US$ 2.56 billion) was cleared last November, by the Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar headed Defence Acquisition Council, the MoD is yet to issue a Request for Proposal. These guns would be acquired under the Buy and Make procedure, under which 100 guns would be purchased off the shelf while 714 would be made in India. The Defence Acquisition Council was set up in… Read More »Artillery guns