'Shivaji was among a handful of Indian rulers to realise the importance of sea power... Not much attention is paid to his remarkable achievement: Building a modern navy and the revival of Indian maritime power.'
The tearing hurry to form theatre commands has to be replaced by a balanced and deliberate approach. We need to accept that this process will take time if executed correctly and in the best interests of the Indian armed forces, argues Commodore Venugopal Menon (retd).
The China threat continues to resonate in the strategic partnership between India and the USA, points out Rup Narayan Das.
An Indian Coast Guard Ship, designed and built by Cochin Shipyard Limited, was commissioned here on Monday by Flag Officer, Commanding-in-Chief, Southern Naval Command, Vice Admiral Sunil Lanba.
The 1971 war reaffirmed the importance of inspirational senior leadership in battle and heralded the emergence of a new fighting class amongst officers and men of India's armed forces.
Maintaining that maritime security was the new government's top priority, Defence Minister Arun Jaitley on Saturday stressed the need for hastening delivery of ships to step up surveillance and secure the vast coastline.
The fresh incident comes amid growing global concerns over attacks on various commercial vessels in the Red Sea by the Houthi militants.
However, police said that based on the description given by some school children, who spotted the armed suspects on Thursday, their sketches were issued late last night.
The world needs to wake up to this new dimension of war at sea and be prepared to face the 'unknown enemy' who have the advantage of attacking at their choice of location and time, cautions Commodore Venugopal Menon (retd).
Spread out over 1000 acres, INS Vajrakosh, Indian Navy's latest establishment which was commissioned by Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar on Wednesday, would be the home base for a bulk of the Indian Navy's strength on the western coast.
The two western states, already battling a raging pandemic, which has put their health infrastructure under severe strain, opened new fronts to tackle the fallout of the storm which is expected to make a landfall close to Mumbai on Wednesday. They are likely to be impacted most by the cyclone.
The Indian Navy's flagship carrier, the INS Viraat will be decommissioned on March 6 after serving the nation for 30 glorious years.
India's decision to skip the meeting came after a year of bilateral discord over China's stubborn opposition to India's entry into the Nuclear Suppliers' Group and a UN ban against Pakistan-based terrorist group Jaish-e-Mohammed leader Masood Azhar.
In the lead up to this week Indo-US Strategic Dialogue, for which United States Secretary of State, John Kerry, will be coming to Delhi, the Indo-US defence engagement is even more intense than usual.
In wake of the blasts on the INS Sindhurakshak, the Navy has ordered extensive checks on weapon-related safety systems on all its submarines, Defence Minister A K Antony told Lok Sabha.
Preliminary investigations have indicated that blasts on submarine INS Sindhurakshak were caused by "possible ignition" of armament, Defence Minister A K Antony said.
The cyclone would bring light to moderate rains at most places and 'heavy to very heavy downpour' at some places on November 6.
Kalvari underwent around 120 days of extensive sea trials and tests for various equipment and is expected to bolster India's maritime prowess.
There is no word yet on the progress of rescue operations for the accommodation barge SS-3 and the Sagar Bhushan oil rig.
Lt Gen Baggavalli Somashekar Raju will take over as the next vice chief of the Army Staff on May 1, the defence ministry said on Friday.
The creation of a CDS has got the head right. Issues that were not talked about for years are now being discussed, points out Ajai Shukla.
Reports (not denied by India) that the USA had 'for the first time provided real-time details to their Indian counterparts on the Chinese positions and force strength in advance of a PLA incursion' into Tawang at the LAC in December 2022, helping India thwart China's expansionist designs, show how operationally effective the USA-India friendship has become on the ground. A engaging excerpt from Sreeram Chaulia's must-read new book, Friends: India's Closest Strategic Partners.
There are times in each nation's life when the gods shower their blessings on it. The right leaders are in place and they make the right decisions. Everything seems to click and good luck favours its people. Such times came to this country 50 years ago, recalls Admiral J G Nadkarni (retd).
'We failed as a country because those who should have been there to say goodbye did not show up.'
On Friday, Taiwan's Defence Ministry said that 68 Chinese military planes and 13 warships crossed over the median line to participate in drills.
The Indian Navy, which regards itself as the 'net security provider' in the Indian Ocean Region, has also stepped up to the plate, with a warship stationed at all times off the Gulf of Aden for counter-piracy tasks. 91 Indian warships have been deployed in the region since 2008, patrolling high risk areas where piracy was rampant.
It is learnt that Russia is not sending any military platform to exercise and there is no clarity yet on whether it will depute any delegation for the event.
At any time, there is a need to operationally deploy two aircraft carriers in the vast Indian Ocean, asserts Vice Admiral Premvir Das (retd).
India's voting pattern in the United Nations with regard to the Israel-Palestine conflict is lately marked by a calibrated distancing from Israel, observes Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar.
India also went on an overdrive in expanding its military engagement with like-minded countries in its neighbourhood and beyond in the face of China's relentless attempts to become a regional hegemon and establish its primacy in South Asia.
'At 1.58% of GDP, the defence budget is one of the lowest since the Chinese aggression of 1962.' 'The government of the day has lost sight of the fact that defence of the country is as important as its growth,' says Brigadier S K Chatterji (retd).
The Chinese have just one commander for all the forces confronting India. Commanders of all these forces answer to one man, and one headquarter. India, on the other hand, offers a diversity of options that is a military embarrassment in the 21st century. In Arunachal and Sikkim-Bhutan, the Eastern Army Commander is in charge. In the Uttarakhand (central) sector, it will be the Central Army Commander. The Himachal-Tibet border is the domain of the Western Army Commander. And all of Kashmir and Ladakh further on, the Northern Army's. Effectively, an array of at least eight 'three-star' commanders will be arrayed against one Chinese, says Shekhar Gupta.
The high-voltage Malabar exercise featuring the navies of all four Quad countries -- India, the US, Australia and Japan -- began on Thursday off the coast of Guam against the backdrop of a resolve by the four nations to solidify cooperation for a free and open Indo-Pacific in view of China's rouge behaviour in the region.
An Indian Navy submarine caught fire after an explosion and sank in Mumbai late on Tuesday night, with 18 personnel on board, including three officers, feared dead.
India and the United States have started discussions to jointly develop a next-generation aircraft carrier to bolster the Indian Navy's blue-water capabilities, a top Pentagon official has said.
India's historical focus on its continental borders has overshadowed its maritime ambitions, but that is changing quickly, notes Ajai Shukla.
India cannot choose its geography and devise regional strategies to dovetail into the Western Indian Ocean hypothesis conceived in the Pentagon, argues Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar.
With 40 officers and 260 men, INS Kochi sailed into the eye of a cyclonic storm and rescued 125 men who had jumped into the sea from a sinking barge. It was one of the Indian Navy's greatest rescue operations.
The US has deployed its naval carrier strike group, led by the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan, as well as a fleet of F-18 fighter jets and E-2C Hawkeye all-weather aircraft for the exercise, officials said. The Indian assets at the exercise included Jaguar and Sukhoi-30MKI fighter jets, IL-78 air-to-air refuelling tanker aircraft, Airborne Warning and Control System aircraft and warships Kochi and Teg. The Indian Navy has also deployed a fleet of P8I maritime surveillance aircraft and MiG 29K jets, apart from other platforms.
The Chinese military, on the last day of its largest-ever military exercises to vent out its anger over United States House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's visit to Taiwan, carried out island saturation attack drills in the Taiwan Straits, amid global concerns of a full-scale attack to annex the breakaway island which Beijing claims is part of its territory.
