On the shopping list: Light tanks, anti-tank guided missiles, UAVs, assault rifles, fighter aircraft.
While the Saudi drone strike has put the focus back on anti-drone measures, caution also stems from the fact that India has a number of large oil refining assets close to India-Pakistan border.
Will private firms really boost Make in India in the defence sector? Ajai Shukla seeks answers.
Her departure from the cabinet marks an abrupt halt to the meteoric rise of the Gujarati-origin MP, often touted as a potential future leader of the Conservative Party and a prime ministerial candidate.
Israeli jets on Tuesday hit over 100 targets in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip, killing at least 17 people, as the army mobilised 40,000 reservists to prepare for a "strong" ground offensive and warned the Palestinian group to be ready to pay a heavy price for its rocket attacks.
Israel wants to provide India with high-resolution pictures of Kashmir from its photoreconnaissance Ofeq-5 satellites.
Did Xi deliver a message to Modi at Mamallapuram, which though couched in a velvet glove was time-bound? What was that message? It is clear Indian/Israeli/US spy satellites would not have missed detecting Chinese troop movements towards the Ladakh-Tibet frontier. Then why did some important functionaries in the Government of India choose to only ask the Russians about this in April 2020? Was Russian reassurance of Chinese troop movements being part of a routine exercise the reason that the Leh-based XIV Corps did not mobilise itself for its annual summer exercises near the LAC? A fascinating excerpt from Iqbal Chand Malhotra's new book Red Fear: The China Threat.
The authoritative Congressional Research Service, which provides data and analysis to the US Congress, finds that India no longer features in the world's three biggest arms importers.
Stepping up its offensive, Israeli forces on Wednesday hit about 200 targets in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip killing at least 17 people, triggering a retaliation from the Palestinian group which fired a barrage of rockets deep into the Jewish state in the bloodiest conflict since 2012.
Israel on Tuesday bombed several mosques, a hospital and a stadium in Hamas-ruled Gaza even as international efforts intensified to broker a ceasefire to end the 15-day conflict that has killed 620 Palestinians and 29 Israelis.
The aircraft flew out from the airbase in the French port city of Bordeaux and will cover a distance of nearly 7,000 km with air-to-air refuelling and a single stop in the United Arab Emirates before arriving at Ambala airbase on Wednesday, officials said.
The IAF faces a 'fighter gap' of 13 squadrons. The IAF would be caught seriously short in a two-front war -- the worst-case planning contingency in which China and Pakistan attack India simultaneously, points out Ajai Shukla.
'It appears that Prime Minister Modi has to undo 50 years of State monopoly in the defence sector during which public undertakings like HAL or DRDO monopolised defence production and development with disastrous consequences.'
Two missiles were fired on Tuesday and on Wednesday on high speed targets, during naval exercises being undertaken in the Arabian Sea, a Defence spokesperson said, adding that this was a significant step towards Indian Navy's transformation into a force capable of projecting power in its area of interest.
Sitharaman has completed just 19 days as defence minister and is also pre-occupied with the Gujarat assembly election, notes Ajai Shukla.
The contracts with Israel Aerospace Industries will condemn the Tejas Light Combat Aircraft to a marginal presence in the IAF's future fleet.
Defence projects worth a whopping Rs 80,000 crore were on Saturday cleared by the government which decided that six submarines will be made indigenously and over 8,000 Israeli anti-tank guided missiles and 12 upgraded Dornier surveillance aircraft will be purchased.
The final deal may be clinched by May-end.
The deal which is worth 7.87-billion (Rs 58,363 crore) comes with a saving of nearly 750 million (Rs 5,611 crore).
The integration of the Rafale jets will allow the IAF to hit targets inside both Pakistan and across the northern and eastern borders while still staying within India's territory.
An uneasy 72-hour ceasefire brokered by Egypt between Israel and the Palestinian militant groups began on Tuesday morning after a month of fighting, with Hamas firing a salvo of long-range rockets minutes before the truce, calling them revenge for Israel's "massacres".
Governments must give companies a hearing before blacklisting them.
'As the tanks roll down Delhi's Rajpath and the C-17s fly overhead, there could be a lot brewing in Hyderabad House,' says Surya Gangadharan.
The artillery pounds targets and keeps the enemy's head down, preventing them from firing at attacking troops.
An industrial house bred in old-school manufacturing values, Godrej & Boyce has displayed unusual agility to become a trusted builder of advanced weaponry, discovers Ajai Shukla.
The proposed law seeks bars on storing and processing of personal data by entities without the explicit consent of an individual. It, however, provides for exemptions for "reasonable purposes" such as "prevention and detection of any unlawful activity including fraud, whistle-blowing, merger and acquisitions, network and information security, credit scoring, recovery of debt, processing of publicly available personal data and the operation of search engines".
Even while rejecting Israel Military Industries' petition, the court has effectively granted foreign vendors the constitutional right to be treated equally with Indian companies.
Saudi Arabia has invested in Pakistani nuclear weapons projects and believes it could acquire atomic bombs "at will", the BBC reported on Thursday.
"Three 155 mm howitzers (Dhanush) have been handed over to the army recently for user's trial," GCF's Joint General Manager and PRO Sanjay Shrivastava told PTI today.
'Suspect all, fix all.' 'It is this mindset that begins at the very top of an establishment and then trickles down and across,' notes Shekhar Gupta.
'But India, increasingly, is not that far behind, which is a story I never expected to tell.'
'Like General Patton, possibly the greatest exponent of the art of war, Vajpayee had the ability to be always on the offensive,' assesses Colonel Anil A Athale (retd).
Indians must remember that Pakistanis hate losing to India, at war or in cricket, says Sanjeev Nayyar.
'The most striking thing about the US strike on Syria is its futility of purpose beyond a symbolic value to impress the domestic constituency that Trump is a forceful decision-maker,' says Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar.
From 2018-19 onwards, 16 'Standard of Preparation-18' Tejas fighters, which involves four major upgrades, will roll off the line each year.
Two lessons from the closure of the Barak investigation: be careful with investigations, and buy from the US or Russia through transparent protocols. Premvir Das examines
It is time the new government, unencumbered with the burden of past, initiates a wide ranging review and open debate on the security issues to rectify our short term and long term shortcomings. It has taken some wise steps but has to go beyond this to identify the structural weakness and create systems, says Colonel (retd) Anil Athale.
'There will be some issues of contention, especially on H1B visa and on trade policy.'
The Indian Army rejected DRDO's INSAS assault rifle in 2010 due to its all-round inefficiency. Now the army is being forced to accept DRDO's Excalibur rifle, which is basically an ungraded variant of the INSAS, to make up for a severe shortage of small arms.
Two US warships fired at least 50 cruise missiles at the Ash Shai'rat airfield in Homs province in western Syria, from where the US administration believes Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad fired the chemical weapons against his own people, media reports said.
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