Armed with rockets and missiles, these helicopters can rain fire on the enemy in rarefied altitudes.
HAL is poised to sell the Philippines at least seven Dhruv Advanced Light Helicopters and eight Dornier 228 aircraft for Rs 30 billion, reports Ajai Shukla.
Rather than going through the tedious, hit-or-miss process of physically designing hull forms and superstructures for warships and then determining how visible they are to radar, the company will simulate this process on supercomputers.
Army gave three good reasons why it could not build the bridges for Ravi Shankar's event. Defence ministry overruled the army's objections, reveals Ajai Shukla.
Most of the scanty 6.35% rise in the defence budget is accounted for by manpower and running expenses.
Senior officers recounted extreme Chinese brutality to the Indian prisoners, with some of them being pushed over cliffs and soldiers' bodies being recovered from the Galwan River.
The full grant of OROP would raise annual military pensions to Rs 75,000 crore, only slightly less than the salary bill of Rs 93,216 crore.
Capable of flying at Mach 2.5 (two-and-a-half times the speed of sound), the F-15EX is the world's fastest fighter aircraft. It carries 13.5 tonnes of weapons load, more than the Rafale or the Sukhoi-30MKI.
The Indian Army has been slow to react. Indian troops have deployed in the vicinity of PLA incursions, but there are no attempts to outflank Chinese positions.
'The future is about autonomy and tanking.'
The gun is unique in its ability to fire a five-round burst, while no other contemporary The gun is unique in its ability to fire a five-round burst, while no other contemporary gun exceeds three-round bursts. This brings down a greater quantity of explosive onto the target before enemy soldiers can take cover
For the navy, which is making do with just 14 conventional submarines against a requirement of 24, the INS Khanderi delay extends a dangerous operational void.
It has been argued that India should have held back on disengagement from the Kailash Range, using that as a trump card to force Chinese concessions in areas such as Depsang, where they hold the advantage.
The army has long been deficient in artillery, the modern battlefield's most lethal killer, says Ajai Shukla.
Given the urgency, the Indian Navy is buying 24 MH-60R Seahawks in flyaway condition, and plans to build another 99 in India through the strategic partnership route.
New Delhi's regional partners in restraining a belligerent China -- primarily the US, Japan, Australia and Singapore -- would like the Indian Navy to lock down the Indian Ocean Region, while the other partners can focus on deterring the PLA (navy) in the South China Sea, explains Ajai Shukla.
'The F-21's capabilities far exceed all other torpedoes currently in service.'
'Foreign ministry sources in Delhi discount the official version of the story, in which Modi made an impromptu request to stop over at Lahore, during the course of a birthday telephone call to Nawaz Sharif. In fact, this stopover had been carefully considered in Delhi, as a way to galvanise the peace process further.'
HAL is also integrating the Advanced Short Range Air-to-Air Missile onto the Mark 1A. Each Tejas will carry two of these missiles.
India to go ahead with S-400 missile deal with Russia, but declines project to develop a fifth-generation fighter aircraft.
A salvo from a Pinaka battery brings down on the enemy more than seven tonnes of high explosive in just 44 seconds.
So keen is Moscow that India buy its helicopter -- Kamov-226T -- that President Vladimir Putin personally took up the issue with PM Narendra Modi during their summit meeting last year
American armaments dominated the defence services's show of weaponry.
Defence experts want defence expenditure to be at 3% of GDP, which they consider minimum to counter the two-front threat from China and Pakistan, internal insurgencies, and dominating a 7,500 km coastline and the Indian Ocean beyond. What Arun Jaitley has given India this Budget is 2.16% of GDP, observes Ajai Shukla.
The coming together of the Quad and the Australia-UK-US grouping would be a formidable adversary, moving toward the creation of a 'thousand ship navy' that reins in the PLA navy in the Indo-Pacific.
Indian Army officers are convinced China is maintaining the pretence of dialogue and negotiations in order to create the opportunity to occupy more Indian territory. Senior Indian planners apprehend this might be a Chinese ploy to divert attention from Depsang, in Northern Ladakh, which might be China's actual target.
If New Delhi finds itself out in the cold in Afghanistan, both the Congress-led UPA and BJP-led NDA have only themselves to blame. Each has been in power for a full decade from 2001, without reaching out to the Taliban, points out Ajai Shukla.
The ministry's year-end review is silent on the continued occupation by Chinese troops of territory that India has always claimed and patrolled.
'It would be a travesty if the Malaysian air force likes the Tejas, but decides against it because it sees the IAF reluctance to back the fighter.'
'We cannot understand why the government is facilitating the import of artillery when our indigenous guns are doing so well.'
Given the importance of equipment modernisation, the overall defence budget should rise at least at the same pace as salaries and pensions, so that equipment modernisation is not hit.
With the two armies again in a face-off at multiple points, there is apprehension of renewed clashes.
RInstead of disengagement, the Indian and Chinese armies have deployed an estimated 35,000 to 40,000 soldiers each along the LAC. The PLA has deployed S-400 air defence missiles to neutralise the IAF's advantage in air power
With India's political wheel turning full circle this year, National Security Advisor Ajit Doval will negotiate from an expanding diplomatic space, writes Ajai Shukla
Access to Sabang Port will allow the Indian Navy to dominate Malacca Strait more effectively, reports Ajai Shukla.
It is baffling how the PM chose the LCH as an indigenous product to celebrate on Rashtriya Raksha Samarpan Parv, even while his Cabinet holds up manufacturing clearance for 15 LCHs on the grounds that they are not Indian enough.
Top HAL sources say the AMCA, which is being developed as the IAF's next-generation stealth fighter, is slated to be assembled at HAL Nashik.
Even as Chinese troops continue squatting on territory that we claim as our own -- this was the lowest allocation for defence in percentage terms since the 1950s, reveals Ajai Shukla.
With the Rafale contract in limbo, the upgrade of IAF's Mirage 2000 and Jaguar fighters has become vitally important.
India has over 4,000 medium tanks, but not a single light tank. It remains to be seen whether the Ladakh face-off with China galvanises a change, observes Ajai Shukla.
