With Pakyong now usable by AN-32s, the Indian Army can quickly move soldiers, weapons and supplies to this highly sensitive sector, which includes flashpoints like Doklam, Nathu La and the Siliguri Corridor.
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).
Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson Arindam Bagchi said the students were being taken to Poltava, some 175 km south of Sumy, from where they will board trains to western Ukraine.
>Putin's last-minute intervention with PM salvages $5.43 bn pact.
Beijing will be intently watching Washington's response for any hint of weakness. Xi Jinping, who feels China has a limited window of strategic opportunity, will be emboldened to take additional initiatives in the Indo-Pacific and specifically against India and Taiwan, warns Jayadeva Ranade, the former senior RA&W officer and China expert.
India's Permanent Representative to the UN Ambassador T S Tirumurti said India remains on the side of peace.
Group Captain Varun Singh, the lone survivor in the horrifying chopper crash near Coonoor in Tamil Nadu, was conferred with the Shaurya Chakra in August for averting a possible mid-air accident after his Tejas light combat aircraft suffered a major technical glitch last year.
One can only imagine how it is at the receiving end of the bomb. The sound is deafening, splinters and rocks fly like missiles and the blast sucks in the air around asphyxiating everyone. The shock waves can be felt for miles around.
India on Saturday 'strongly pressed' the Russian and Ukrainian governments through multiple channels for an immediate ceasefire in Sumy to ensure a safe passage for around 700 Indian students stuck there as it keeps focus on their evacuation from the war-hit city in eastern Ukraine.
'Notwithstanding the realisation among the Indian leadership to build up its navy for the force's expanding role, the Indian Navy was allocated only 15% of the interim defence budget presented in Parliament in February 2019.' 'The outlay for the navy's capital acquisition is not even adequate to meet its committed liabilities,' points out Brigadier S K Chatterji (retd).
India on Tuesday test-fired an advanced version of the 290-km range BrahMos supersonic cruise missile from the Odisha coast. The missile was test-fired from a mobile launcher from the Integrated Test Range at Chandipur at about 10.40 am, Defence Research and Development Organisation said.
'Please get us home': An Indian family stranded in Almaty, Kazakhstan.
The plane was last detected in the skies over Greece, about 40 minutes from Athens, according to Sky News Arabia.
In New Delhi's corridors of power, debate continues on whether the navy even needs a third aircraft carrier.
Sushma said after the Pulwama terrorist attack, Pakistan instead of taking seriously the call for the international community to act against the JeM and other terror groups denied any knowledge of the attack and out rightly dismissed claims by the JeM.
Valieva dominates the ice despite doping scandal
One of the most sought after exhibitions in Asia, as many as 549 companies are participating this year with 53 fighter aircraft on display.
'Frankly, India has no role to play.' 'This is a showdown between the US and NATO on one hand and Russia on the other.' 'That said, the outcome of this titanic struggle in Central Europe will remould the world order and affect India profoundly,' argues Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar.
"The contract for the detailed design would be signed soon and that will be a major milestone. It should be signed in the second half of the year," a top official involved in the negotiations with Russia on the project said.
'We decided that we would fire our rockets and dive into the valley and get away, making it difficult for the missiles to be fired.'
Russia has blamed "human factor" for the crash of a Sukhoi 30 MKI fighter aircraft in October last year that led to the grounding of the entire fleet of India's frontline fighter plane for a month, a charge denied by the Indian Air Force.
'Large-impact aerial weapons have no use against dictator regimes or terrorist entities,' says Group Captain Murli Menon (retd).
'It is hard to justify $225 million a plane for an increasingly obsolete mission.' The purchase of the 36 Rafales has changed little for the IAF.
'The US will not want to tangle with China landwards.' 'Nor will the US confront the Chinese navy seawards on India's account.'
The production of S-400 missiles to be delivered to India has started. The S-400, an upgraded version of the S-300, had previously only been available to the Russian defence forces.
If the new request for 18 more fighters translates into a contract, the Sukhoi-30MKI fleet size will go up to 14 squadrons, or 290 fighters.
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.
"The deal is being implemented. We witnessed attempts on the part of the US to undermine this cooperation and make India obey the American orders to follow the American vision of how this region should be developed," Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said.
By undertaking medical mercy missions, the Indian Air Force will win immense political and national goodwill.
China on Tuesday announced that its Defence Minister General Li Shangfu will visit India this week to attend the meeting of SCO defence ministers from April 27 during which he is expected to hold talks with his Indian counterpart Rajnath Singh on ending the prolonged eastern Ladakh standoff which has severely strained bilateral ties.
5 planes and 13 ships are out trying to track the aircraft, which was carrying 29 people on board.
Russia's main gain will be that in geopolitical terms, Ukraine regains its sovereignty and ceases to be a de facto American colony, observes Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar.
The central government has told the high court that under 'Operation Ganga', in addition to commercial aircrafts, Indian Air Force flights have also been pressed into operation to evacuate the Indians who have crossed into Romania, Poland, Hungary and other neighbouring countries of Ukraine.
Lokomotiv Moscow midfielder Dmitri Tarasov insists he acted alone when he wore a T-shirt praising Russian President Vladimir Putin, leaving the player and team facing an anxious wait over possible sanctions for Tuesday's incident in Turkey.
The Tejas Mark 1A outperforms the Sino-Pakistan JF-17 Thunder in avionics and weaponry, but the finance ministry's tax burden makes the Indian LCA costlier and hurts it in the export market.
'He consulted widely, both formally and informally and acted quickly on pragmatic suggestions.' 'To his credit, Parrikar took the initiative to reduce excessive litigation against armed forces veterans and widow over small sums of pensionary and disability benefits,' points out says Brigadier Gurmeet Kanwal (retd).
Mere shuffling of resources or cosmetic changes to prove a point would be counterproductive in the long run, observes Commodore Venugoptal Menon (retd).
At the same time, it is learnt that Indian officials in Ukraine are facing growing complexities to evacuate the Indians to the neighbouring countries with Russian forces closing in on Ukrainian capital Kyiv and targeting several other key cities by land and air.
As two recently declassified Intelligence Bureau reveal that the Jawaharlal Nehru government had spied on the family of Subhas Chandra Bose for nearly two decades, one of India's political mysteries takes centrestage. Rediff.com reproduces this 2006 report in which Sumit Bhattacharya reported that a website claims that Netaji, in fact, did not die in an air crash, as was being believed, and that Netaji had escaped to Russia.
Billionaires are not only eyeing a profit as they push mankind out into the stars.
It appears India will be among those nations consigned to being among the watchers and not participants of this crucial phase, observes Aakar Patel.
