The pressure on India to take a hostile attitude towards Russia and China was not subtle, but it was guarded, observes Ambassador T P Sreenivasan after Monday's 2+2 ministerial meeting in Washington, DC.
Will the unpredictable North Korean leader provoke conflict on the Korean peninsula?
It also comes ahead of a possible visit by President Donald Trump to India later this month. Trump is set to visit India on a two-day trip between February 23 and 26 and both sides are in the process of fine-tuning his schedule, according to sources in New Delhi.
More than anything else, Pathaan is a silent and subtle statement of Shah Rukh Khan about his place, his commitment to cinema and, if one can say, his politics, observes Mohammad Asim Siddiqui.
A convoy with military equipment of the Russian southern military district units crossed the Crimean bridge on the way to the places of permanent deployment following the planned drills in Crimea, the Russian defence ministry said on Wednesday.
In addition to the attack helicopters, the contract also includes fire control radars; Hellfire Longbow missiles; stinger Block I-92H missiles; night vision sensors and inertial navigation systems.
Israel and Hamas were on Thursday holding on to a renewed five-day ceasefire in Gaza that got off to a rocky start with Israeli air strikes in retaliation to rocket fire, as both sides agreed to give more time to talks to end the conflict that has claimed over 2,000 lives.
Its advanced Longbow radar picks up enemy armoured vehicles and then destroys them with anti-tank missiles, air-to-surface rockets or a chain gun that sends 625 rounds per minute ripping into the targets.
With tensions between China and Taiwan rapidly increasing, the tone of China's official media has also become progressively more strident, observes former senior RA&W officer and China expert Jayadeva Ranade.
'Many senior officers are unhappy with him, but many lower level officers are still supportive.' 'This is also not something that has happened for a long time. So this is certainly a milestone.'
United States Defence Secretary Lloyd J Austin arrived in India on Friday on a three-day visit, aimed at further boosting bilateral defence and security ties in the wake of China's growing military assertiveness in the region including the Indo-Pacific.
A US president graced the Republic Day parade in the first year of the Modi regime. Will another American prez turn up in the final year of the first Modi Sarkar?
'If UAV technology is used by the adversary to target VIPs or strategic targets it would be a different ball game altogether,' says Group Captain Murli Menon (retd).
The elephant in the room will permeate the conversations, predicts Rup Narayan Das.
In fact, given the current tensions and massed troops on both sides, there is a danger that the LAC will become more like the Line of Control with Pakistan, a heavily fortified and strongly defended border where weapon fire exchanges regularly occur. Indeed, Stratfor Worldview research has listed a sharp increase in new Chinese facilities along the LAC in 2019-20.
The strategic illiteracy on display in the arguments put forth on the Rafale deal before the Supreme Court is breathtaking, argues Colonel Anil A Athale (retd).
A US count of Pakistan's F-16 fleet has found that all the jets are present and accounted for, a report claims.
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.
Liverpool stuttered into the quarter-finals of the Champions League with a 2-1 aggregate win over Inter Milan after suffering a 1-0 loss to the Italian side, who were reduced to 10 men, at Anfield on Tuesday.
The decision to speak to the political convention in pre-recorded remarks from Jerusalem breaks with the longstanding precedent of sitting secretaries of state avoiding partisan politics and appears to violate guidance on political activities that Pompeo himself emphasised in a cable to diplomats just last month.
'The world may be desirous of peace, but not Kim Jong-un.' 'Should we then accept the old adage that to maintain peace, we should be prepared for war?' asks Rajaram Panda.
The Indian Navy has a big role to play in support of our strategic objectives in the Indian Ocean. The increasing Chinese presence in the Indian Ocean is a matter of concern and need to be factored. Hence, the requirement of an Aircraft Carrier is a foregone conclusion, asserts Commodore Venugopal Menon (retd).
The United States air force nuclear command has been rocked by the worst cheating scandal in proficiency exam involving 34 officers at the inter-continental missile launch of the global strike command, the Pentagon has said.
We mourn the passing of Admiral J G Nadkarni, who passed into the ages on Monday. The admiral -- one of the finest officers to head the Indian Navy and a most remarkable human being -- was one of Rediff.com's earliest columnists. His assessment of why India won the 1971 War is a classic and we republish the column today to celebrate his brilliant mind and salute an office and gentleman, the likes of who we will not see again.
Shrugging aside the recent reports of Pakistan illegally modifying the United States-supplied harpoon missiles to target India and former President Pervez Musharraf's revelations that he diverted the massive American military aid provided to Pakistan to fight the war on terror to the eastern border to bolster his country's defenses for a potential convention conflict with India, the US Senate passed a massive $7.5 billion economic and military largesse to Pakistan.
The fault line between the West and Russia has widened into a deep chasm and this is likely to endure in the foreseeable future. Far from forcing its way into the European tent, Russia may be reduced to the status of an even more sullen and weakened bystander on its periphery. The US appears to have won this hand with little cost to itself, observes former foreign secretary Shyam Saran.
The first joint theatre command would be responsible for the border against Pakistan in what the military refers to as the "western theatre"; while a second command -- the northern theatre command -- would be responsible for the border with China. A third, navy-heavy theatre, called the "maritime command" will be responsible for the security of the Indian Ocean Region (IOR); and an island command, already functional and called the Andaman & Nicobar Command (ANC), would project power into the eastern Indian Ocean.
Shanghai-based military analyst Ni Lexiong said the overhaul marked a significant strategic shift from having a homeland-based defensive force to one with the capacity to allow Beijing to flex its muscles beyond its national borders and to protect its interests overseas.
In a presentation obtained by Danger Room from wired.com, Randy Jones, the associate technical director of the Defence Intelligence Agency's Missile & Space Intelligence Centre, warned that terror groups could use lasers, radio frequency jammers, and even nuclear weapons to knock out US satellites.
North Korea warns the US that it will soon 'suffer the greatest pain it ever experienced in its history'. Rajaram Panda looks at the latest twist in the North Korean crisis.
'It is ironic that General Rawat, an infantry officer who the government chose because of his expertise in counter-insurgency, has made his first bold statement in the realm of warfighting and mechanised operations,' points out Colonel Ajai Shukla (retd).
The success of Anil Ambani's ambitious defence plan will depend partly on whether he can persuade government officials and international partners that he can build sophisticated equipment and partly on whether the PM can get India's notoriously slow procurement process to work, say Paritosh Bansal, Sanjeev Miglani and Promit Mukherjee.
Curtains will fall on the Rim of the Pacific 2016, the world's largest international maritime exercise, on August 4.
'We spent Rs 59,000 crore on acquiring 36 Rafales and we do not know if we will ever use them. The chances are that we never will,' argues Aakar Patel.
Pakistan's powerful Army Chief Gen Raheel Sharif's visit to Beijing comes in the backdrop of assertions by Pakistan that it will raise its concerns at the international level over India's successful test of supersonic interceptor missile.
China has started the construction of at least 13 entirely new military positions including three air bases, five permanent air defence positions and five heliports near the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in the aftermath of the Doklam standoff in 2017, according to a report by global security consultancy Stratfor.
Future, even present, wars -- at least those involving such tech giants as China -- include hi-tech battlefields, which a Pakistan-obsessed India has not sufficiently prioritised. Today's generals plan on how to disrupt an enemy city's power supplies, rail networks, airports, ports, and government departments, not just by bombing or torpedoing them; they also examine the option of tripping up the computer networks that run these, notes David Devadas.
American help in defending our independence will send a strong signal to the Chinese, argues Colonel Anil A Athale (retd).
President Pervez Musharraf Thursday said Pakistan would not compromise on its nuclear deterrence capability and claimed the world was "astounded" by the test firing of the Babur cruise missile in 2005.
The strike by a Hellfire missile in Kabul on August 29, which was launched in an effort to kill ISIS-K planners, instead killed 10 civilians, he said.
