The Russian government-owned company will be setting up eight to ten plants at Kudankulam in Tamil Nadu and Haripur in West Bengal over the next two decades under the Indo-Russian civil nuclear agreement, and the proposed fabrication plant will be supplying fuel to these plants, TVEL executive director for communications and public affairs Ivan Dybov said in Mumbai.
Union Defence Minister A K Antony arrived in Moscow on Tuesday for a crucial meeting of a key joint defence commission as the two countries are poised to finalise new co-ventures in strategic weapons, including investment and technical parameters of 5th generation fighters.
Foreign Secretary Shiv Shankar Menon said in New Delhi that, "Both India and Russia are keen to expand nuclear cooperation. All the preparatory work has been done." He was inaugurating an international conference on "Changing Patterns of Indo-Russian Cooperation" organised by the Observer Research Foundation. He said that India and Russia already have an "excellent relationship" and India considers relations with Russia very important.
Opening up India's market to neighbouring countries can be as strategic as access denial to others. The game should be played both ways, even if it upsets domestic business lobbies, observes T N Ninan.
Tamil writer D Jayakanthan, who charted a new course in Tamil literature, died on Wednesday night following a prolonged illness.
As remarkable as DRDO's contribution in containing and treating COVID-19 has been, its success over the last 15 months has been in its primary role of developing conventional defence equipment and technologies.
Extending greetings to new Russian President Dimitri Medvedev, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has invited him to visit India, a proposal which has been accepted. Singh extended the invitation to Medvedev during a telephone conversation on Thursday evening when he conveyed his best wishes to the new President. Dr Singh congratulated Vladimir Putin, who took over as the new Prime Minister of Russia.
The modalities for developing hypersonic missile BrahMos-II to be carried out by the Indo-Russian joint venture BrahMos Aerospace, are on the verge of being finalised, a top official of the company said in Tiruchurapalli.
Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin will visit India in March next year at the invitation of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh."I am very grateful to you for accepting my invitation in March next year. I am confident that your visit will give a new fillip to our ties," Dr Singh said a meeting with Putin in Moscow on Monday.
Imperial Energy, which operates in Siberia's Tomsk region and far eastern Kamchatka, has no strategic fields and deposits under its control, business channel RBC TV reported quoting sources in the natural resources and environment ministry. The London-based oil company owns a number of licences and hopes to produce 35,000 barrels per day (bpd) by the end of 2009 and 80,000 bpd by 2011, which could be directly exported to energy-hungry India.
"The joint development of the Fifth Generation Fighter Aircraft will mark the start of cooperation in the development of major state-of-the-art new technology weapon systems," Antony said, adding that both India and Russia would have equal financial and technological stakes and issues related to the intellectual property and specific requirement of the Indian Air Force have been resolved.
Russia enjoys a very unique place in India's foreign relations with their strategic partnership covering the entire spectrum of the bilateral cooperation, External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee said in Moscow.
Defence Minister A K Antony will co-chair the commission meeting with Russian Defence Minister Anatoly Serdyukov to hold talks on a wide-ranging agenda of military technical cooperation, covering key spheres, including timely delivery of contracted military systems, in the light of the reported settlement of the cost-escalation issue and supply of defence systems.
After failing to hit the target in the previous test, the Defence Research and Development Organisation is planning to test-fire the Block II version of the BrahMos supersonic cruise missile on March 4."We are planning to conduct the second test of the BrahMos Block II version at the Army's test range in Pokharan on March 4 this week," Defence Ministry officials said.
After successfully working on the contracts for the Indian navy and army, the New Delhi-based JV is now poised to expand in the international market and some of the contracts are already in the pipeline, Brahmos CEO Sivathanu Pillai said.Many nations across the globe are taking keen interest in the deadly supersonic Brahmos cruise missile, which will remain unmatched at least for the coming decade.South Africa, Chile, Kuwait are in the waiting list.
In any conflict with China, the unmanned BrahMos could be advantageously used in the opening stages for pinpoint strikes on heavily defended targets -- such as air bases, headquarters, key roads and railways or logistics dumps -- which are too dangerous for manned fighter aircraft to attack.
State-run Kerala High-tech Industries Ltd (KELTEC) is all set to become part of the Indo-Russian joint venture cruise missile project, BrahMos Aerospace.
A day after Naval Chief Admiral Suresh Mehta made some harsh comments against Russia, Foreign Secretary Shivshankar Menon on Tuesday said relations with Moscow were excellent and any issue between the two countries can be sorted out. "We have excellent relations with Russia. If there are any issues, we can sort them out," Menon told reporters in New Delhi
The delay in the refitting of aircraft carrier Admiral Gorshkov and a range of bilateral issues came up for discussion when Defence Minister A K Antony on Thursday met Russian vice premier Sergei Ivanov in Moscow.
One hopes the big daddies of South Block and DRDO realise why radical reforms are so crucial.
"Rafale contract caters for delivery time between 36 months to about 66 months if I am not wrong. So within three years time we will have the first few aircraft delivered to us and within five and a half years we will have two full squadron of aircraft in operation," Raha said at a function in Kolkata.
Moscow's example highlights to India that in a balance of power world, India has to learn to deal simultaneously with all major powers to enhance its own national interest.
An interview with former foreign secretary and India's ex-ambassador to Russia Kanwal Sibal
The first pour of concrete for units three and four was scheduled for December 2007 but failure to sign the agreement for the additional reactors during Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's visit to Moscow last month put a huge question mark over NPCIL's expectation of touching a generating capacity of 20,000 MWe by 2020. Kudamkulam is critical to its calculations.
The CPI wants the Prime Minister to explain in Parliament why he failed to sign a nuclear pact with Russia during his recent trip, after reports that such a deal was planned.
Delhi witnessed the emotional reunion of two friends -- Indian space man Rakesh Sharma and Soviet cosmonaut Anatoly Borozovoy -- who trained together for the historic launch of the 1984 Indo-Russian manned space mission. "It is a very special feeling to meet Anatoly after all these years. We had lost touch in all these years but now as I met him today, it seems that time has passed so quickly but things between us remain the same," an emotional Sharma told PTI.
They met to finalise the agenda of the Indo-Russian summit on January 25 in New Delhi.
In the course of modernisation, the Indian fighters will be equipped with new Zhuk-ME radars capable of engaging several targets simultaneously.
BrahMos is unique among cruise missiles due to its 2.8 Mach supersonic speed (all other cruise missiles are sub-sonic at present) and much-longer strike range.
India has said the stalled agreement for four more Russian nuclear reactors in Koodankulam in Tamil Nadu was not a setback.
He noted that in last 60 years, India and Russia have acquired great experience in mutually beneficial cooperation at various levels.
The warships will be armed with BrahMos supersonic cruise missiles which can reach targets 295 km away.
The exercise provides an opportunity to practice freefall techniques with the highly-experienced Russian diving team.
Brahmos will tilt the conventional arms balance between India and Pakistan.
These will be the first joint anti-terror exercises.
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