India has been working on setting up an anti-missile defence (ABM) shield against nuclear-tipped missiles for several decades. In its Integrated Guided Missile Development Programme the Defence Research and Development Organisation has achieved success in a series of surface-to-surface missiles with ranges that now cover all of Pakistan and most (including Beijing and Shanghai) of its mentor China. With the failure of the Trishul short-range, quick reaction surface-to-air missile for ship point defence India turned… Read More »Anti missile defence

With both its conventional as well as nuclear powered submarine production lines well on stream India will have to decide what percentage of the entire Indian Navy fleet will have to be either diesel electric/air-independent propulsion and which types of surface vessels will have to be converted to nuclear propulsion. This factor will dictate the extent of its regional footprint and hence its power-projection capability. The true worth of the Indian Navy will be judged… Read More »Modernising submarine fleet

Whatever else that is happening to the elite Special Forces of India one hears a lot about ‘restructuring’ and ‘reorganisation’ even as signs of modernisation are apparent in the acquisition of a specialist aircraft for the kinds of jobs they have to do. The surgical strike conducted by Indian Special Forces against facilities in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, used as forming up areas and launch pads for terrorists, has drawn attention to the unique capabilities that are… Read More »Capabilities of Special Forces

The tactic that helped the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance gain political ascendancy during and after the Rajiv Gandhi involvement in the Bofors howitzer scandal appears set to haunt the Narendra Modi-led NDA in its attempts to buy assault rifles for the Indian Army. Both episodes have but one fatal consequence for the Indian Army and the nation-self-inflicted delays in acquisition. From the un-thought-through advice of then Army Chief Gen KrishnaswamiSundarji to scrap the Bofors deal… Read More »Effective assault rifle

India has long had expertise in creating and using nuclear, biological and chemical (NBC) weapons. But it has voluntarily abjured the use of these weapons and has destroyed its biological and chemical weapons stockpiles and facilities in keeping with the Biological and Chemical Weapons Conventions. However, it has retained and deployed its nuclear weapons with the clear provisos that it would not be the first to use them and (what has hitherto proved to be… Read More »Countering CBRN attacks

In view of recent tremendous efforts made by some leading naval scientists and engineers who are working tirelessly to develop a series of credible unmanned underwater vehicle (UUV) technologies, the militaries are looking for new ways to engage the enemy in a 21st century battlefield scenario by using artificial intelligence. All over the world the new trend is to deal with a threat from unmanned platform so that the casualties are less or zero but… Read More »Next revolution in UUV

Modern war zone is full of hazards but military commanders are often worried about the safety of their soldiers and how effectively the operational readiness can be ensured without compromising the swiftness of the battle formations. Indeed, technology is ensuring that unmanned ground vehicles can be handy and operate in most lethal battlefield conditions without any pause despite the fact that it can be targeted by the enemy cross fire and aerial assault. These days… Read More »Use of UGV in warzone

In modern war, the role of precision guided munition is increasingly being optimized by the military commanders to avoid collateral damages which helps overcoming the pitfall of public opinion as war causes lot of unwanted damages. In fact, the evolution of new technologies has, in many ways, changed what defines a precision weapon. For the first quarter of the 21st Century, the military commanders are looking not only for weapons that can hit a specific… Read More »Precision guided munition

It is the height of irony that a Navy that is far short in weapons platforms that it requires to defend the nation should find itself confronted with a mismatch between arrival of platform and delivery of sensors and subsystems. If we have one we don’t have the other appears to be the ongoing syndrome for Indian Navy. For example, India has floated the first of the Scorpene class of French submarines but it has… Read More »Development of torpedoes

Ever since the escape of more than 500 Taliban fighters from a high security prison in Kandahar, Afghanistan, in April 2011 through a sophisticated tunnel built from the outside I had predicted that the technology would be used by Pakistan to cut tunnels into India under the barbedwire fence that had been erected from Gujarat in the south to Jammu and Kashmir in the north. The logic for this prediction was that Pakistan enjoyed very… Read More »Art of tunneling