The ceremony to hand over the first Rafale jet will take place on October 8, the foundation day of the Indian Air Force, the sources said.
Pakistan is evaluating, among other options, three or four Chinese surface-to-air missiles, including the advanced 'HQ-18', Air Chief Marshal Rao Qamar Suleman told China Daily.
United States aerospace major Boeing on Thursday said it received approval from the country's government to offer its F-15EX multi-role combat jet to the Indian Air Force.
Gen Rawat will be able to serve as CDS for a period of up to three years after the government amended the rules extending the age of retirement to 65 years.
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.
'Assuming the official defence allocations represent the true picture, the $142 billion figure still represents a phenomenal increase and surpasses that of Japan ($42 billion), India ($40 billion), South Korea ($33 billion) and several other Asian countries put together and shows that China is flexing its military muscle.'
Last year, the country's defence budget was $175 billion.
The first Hawk will be flown by the IAF by end 2006 and is expected to be accepted by India in early 2007, BAE Systems Senior Military Advisor, Air Chief Marshal Sir John Day said.
The tragedy of MH17 should awaken the world to the sobering reality that the "non-state actor" charade has gone too far, notes Nitin Pai
Russia -- already India's biggest arms supplier from 2014-18, accounting for 58 per cent of India's defence imports -- eyes more, reports Ajai Shukla.
The army chief also appealed the cadets to keep abreast with new technology to counter the contemporary challenges.
'But India, increasingly, is not that far behind, which is a story I never expected to tell.'
The proposals will help in the modernisation of the armed forces.
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.
Speaking at the annual Republic Day military parade attended for the first time by troops from China and Saudi Arabia, Hussain said: "Pakistan is ready for dialogue with India and wants resolution of the Kashmir dispute, which is the unfinished agenda of the partition."
'Large-impact aerial weapons have no use against dictator regimes or terrorist entities,' says Group Captain Murli Menon (retd).
The US President, however, said he does not know if this would send a message to North Korea.
The president made a special mention of the threat to the environment and asked all citizens to take care of it for future generations.
The US assessment of nuclear weapons security in Pakistan appears to have changed considerably from confidence to concern, particularly as a result of the introduction of tactical nuclear weapons, the report said.
The AWACS is set to redefine battlefield surveillance, and will totally revolutionise the way IAF operates.
DRDO plans to build a tank for use in the mountains and in the jungles.
'The Balakot mission was an act of political signaling that India is willing to raise the price that the Pakistani State has to pay in order to support terrorism.'
The new minister must commit himself to supporting long-term defence plans or else defence modernisation will continue to lag and the growing military capabilities gap with China will assume ominous proportions, warns Brigadier Gurmeet Kanwal (retd).
India has realised that one can only deal with China from a position of strength and that is not palatable to Beijing, observes Dr Rup Narayan Das.
Singh is leaving for Paris on a three-day visit, primarily to receive the first of 36 Rafale fighter jets
This is the first deal for artillery guns since the Bofors scandal in 1980s.
'In the present era of strategic uncertainty and rapidly changing threats, no military professional now disputes the unavoidable necessity of a joint planning staff for the planning and conduct of joint operations so that integrated operations can be planned 'top down',' says Brigadier Gurmeet Kanwal (retd).
The flight test of the Air Launched Cruise Missile, Ra'ad, which is also known as Hatf VIII, was the seventh since it was first tested in 2007.
Against the backdrop of efforts to increase indigenisation to avoid defence scams, Defence Minister A K Antony on Tuesday asked the Indian Air Force to reduce its dependence on imports and work towards achieving self reliance in military weapon systems.
The nation has the fifth largest defence budget in the world, at $52.5 billion in 2017 ($51.1 billion in 2016), overtaking the UK whose defence budget fell from $52.5 billion in 2016 to $50.7 billion in 2017.
Captain John M Cox, who spent 25 years flying for United States Airways and is now the chief executive officer of safety operating systems at Washington DC, talks to Rediff.com's Vicky Nanjappa about the MH17 Malaysian Airlines flight which was shot down in Ukraine on Thursday night killing 298 people on board.
'Any conventional conflict could trigger a nuclear war with results that neither India nor Pakistan could survive easily.' >A revealing excerpt from Shuja Nawaz's The Battle For Pakistan: The Bitter US Friendship And A Tough Neighbourhood.
The Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) spokesperson Anurag Srivastava said complete disengagement requires re-deployment of troops by each side towards their regular posts on their respective sides of the Line of Actual Control(LAC) and this can be done only through mutually agreed actions.
The government has adopted a multi-pronged approach involving the Army, the Indian Air Force and the Navy as well as diplomacy and economic measures to send out a firm and clear message to China that its misadventure in eastern Ladakh was not acceptable at all.
'Ex-servicemen engineers and technicians are true professionals worthy of being 'Make in India' agents. They can be trusted to bring long term dividends -- it is in their character to be long term loyalists!' says Air Marshal P V Athawale (Retd).
'India-US defence pacts are seen by many analysts as a subtle move to jointly contain China's growing militarism, especially in the strategic Indian Ocean Region.'
Rawat said India was looking forward to procuring Kamov helicopters and other weapon systems and technology from Russia.
The 50-page Shadows in the Cloud: An Investigation into Cyber Espionage 2.0 report, on released April 6, claimed 780 sensitive documents had been stolen from India. It said the Chinese hackers had also stolen sensitive documents from 16 other countries and all E-mails from Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama's office in Dharamsala.
'Others will think twice before attacking our space assets.'
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