Everybody talks of China as the real threat, but we aren't even building a decisive capability against Pakistan, asserts Shekhar Gupta.
'General Paddy was amongst the last line of generals who stood by his convictions and brooked no interference in matters which were his domain.' Lieutenant General Zameer Uddin Shah (retd) salutes his former chief who passed away on August 19.
On the 25th anniversary of the battle that made his war cry 'Dil Maange More' part of national lore, we republish that feature to salute Captain Batra's ultimate sacrifice for the nation.
Kabir was seen clinging to the tricolour-wrapped coffin of his father. He bowed before his father's body just before cremation.
The marshals wore a blue uniform with a military-style peak cap and stripes on shoulders. In summers, the marshals are likely to wear white uniforms which have a resemblance to the uniform of the Indian Navy.
Col N S Bal, who had earned a Shaurya Chakra and ran marathons despite battling cancer, died on Thursday at a hospital in Bengaluru, officials said.
There were 11,301 tourists when the advisory was issued and only 1,652 of them remained on Saturday.
The defence budget for this year, which is 1.79 per cent of the GDP, has come under criticism from former Army generals and military experts who say it is not adequate in view of the present security environment.
Excluding the pension outgo, the allocation in the Union Budget for the armed forces stands at Rs 3.62 lakh crore.
Former Army chief General V P Malik has observed that India must step up its vigil along the Chinese border in Arunachal Pradesh as its eastern neighbour might try to "forcefully occupy" Indian territories. "India should remain vigilant from the evil designs of China which may forcibly occupy some of the territories in north-west and in Arunachal Pradesh," he said.
A high-level committee set up to examine the gaps in the country's security system in the wake of the Kargil War in 1999 had called for appointment of a Chief of Defence Staff as a single-point military adviser to the defence minister.
Admitting that Kargil intrusion was a result of intelligence failure, former Army chief General (retd) V P Malik on Tuesday said a repeat of 1999-like attack cannot be ruled out as long as the Pakistan Army continues its proxy war against India.
'We have been cheated. We are trying to bring Article 370 back'
A retired Indian Army General has blamed India's "timid" response to the Pakistani military ingress in Kargil in 1999 for the series of terrorist strikes beginning with the attack on Parliament in 2001.
'The picture only looks worse from where Bajwa sits.' 'He sees a domineering India to the east, an unravelling Afghanistan and a complex Iran to the west, an overbearing China on the north and a US which is no longer an ally,' observes Shekhar Gupta.
"They (Armed Forces) need to be reassured about the weapon system they use and about the planning of what kind of the yield they have when they hit the target," Malik, the army chief during Pokhran-II, told Karan Thapar on the Devil's Advocate programme of CNN-IBN.
Malik also claimed that R&AW had 'failed to understand the importance of the intercepted telephonic conversations between Musharraf and his army officers,' according to a release issued by the Observer Research Foundation, which brought out the book The Military Factor in Pakistan by Lt Col R S N Singh. Malik, who heads the Foundation, narrated how the Kargil infiltration by the Pakistani Army happened soon after the 'much-hyped' Lahore Declaration between Vajpayee & Sharif.
General V P Malik, who headed the Army during the Kargil war, has blamed the lack of visualisation of security threats by the then government as one of the main reasons for the 1999 conflict.
The CDS will be senior to the service chiefs and his primary role will be to work towards increasing operational coordination among the army, the navy or the air force and deal with India's national security with a comprehensive approach.
The former Army chief cited annual remembrance services in honour of the Kargil martyrs, saying the events were organised mostly by the families and social organisations instead of government.
'He could relate to strategic and security issues almost instantly.' 'He had the ability to grasp, absorb and come out with actual rectification.'
They batted for better coordination between the Indian Air Force and the Army in guarding the air bases in case of exigencies like the one at Pathankot in Punjab.
The government imposed restrictions under Section 144 CrPC in Srinagar district.
Political parties held protests against the ban on April 7 as well as Wednesday.
Ahir said there is a process for putting such issues in perspective which was duly followed by the Army as well as the government.
'Even though an India-China military conflict scenario seems unlikely, its possibility gets enhanced if our capabilities are seen to be inadequate by the adversary,' warns Vice Admiral Premvir Das (retd).
The new army chief's highest priority must be to address the critical hollowness in the Indian Army's operational preparedness, says Brigadier Gurmeet Kanwal (retd).
Stepping up the agitation on 'One Rank One Pension', a fast-unto-death was launched by two of the protesting ex-servicemen at Jantar Mantar
India is observing the sixteenth anniversary of the Kargil War this week.
Indians thrive in ordinariness -- from academia and science to business and military power. Sports is just an apt metaphor, says Shekhar Gupta.
Former External Affairs Minister Jaswant Singh believes that Nawaz Sharif could have been aware of Pakistan army's aggression in Kargil in 1999 despite the insistence by the then Pakistan prime minister that he did not know about it.
'It is the government's most important duty to ensure that when war breaks out, the armed forces are absolutely ready to face the adversary -- well equipped, well trained and in high spirits,' says Brigadier Gurmeet Kanwal (retd).
'What should worry India and which needs to be expressed is Russia's simultaneous proximity to both China and Pakistan from a strategic angle. That hasn't happened ever before,' says Lieutenant General Syed Ata Hasnain (retd).
'Kargil was Pakistan's strategic blunder. India must remain on guard against such sinister operations being launched in future by Pakistan's vengeful and devious military leadership that continues to have a hate-India mindset and the mentality of primitive warlords,' says Brigadier Gurmeet Kanwal (retd).
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