After taking off in the frontline Sukhoi jet and riding a battle tank, President Pratibha Patil on Tuesday had a tryst with the Navy as she created history by becoming the first woman head of state to sail in a warship and review an impressive naval steampast.
The sources also said another round of military talks between the two sides on Wednesday to defuse tensions in the area remained inconclusive. The talks lasted nearly seven hours.
Raha said the force has the power to punish its enemy, but a decision on using it in an offensive role will have to be taken by the government.
The IAF's mainstream fighter aircraft, the Sukhoi-30MKI and Jaguar, are set to square off with their American counterparts to execute some of the most realistic manoeuvres of its kind during Exercise Red Flag over Alaska starting April 28. Here's what you need to know.
Ajai Shukla spends a day with Tejas test pilots to find out what drives them.
'We were against politicisation of the defence acquisition process. It was a question of capability of the air force'
Among the handful of countries with large defence budgets and armed forces, India is matched only by Saudi Arabia in the level of its import dependence. For revenge to be served cold, go beyond import bans and correct these long-term failures -- if we're up to it, notes T N Ninan.
Air Marshal N A K Browne, an ace MiG-21 and Sukhoi-30 MKI fighter pilot, will be the next chief of Indian Air Force.
The thanks-giving activities will start with laying of wreaths at the police memorial in Delhi and in several other cities on Sunday morning to honour the police personnel deployed in enforcement of the nationwide lockdown, officials said. It will be followed by fly-pasts by fighter and transport aircraft of the Indian Air Force, covering a sizeable number of cities and towns across the country between 10 am and 11 am, officials said.
The decision to disengage the forces, locked in a bitter standoff for the last six weeks in eastern Ladakh, was taken at a nearly 11-hour-long meeting between senior Indian and Chinese commanders in Moldo on the Chinese side of the Line of Actual Control (LAC) on Monday.
Has the army confronted China, equipping itself with emergency purchases that have been largely paid for by pensioners, asks Ajai Shukla.
December 3, 2021 marks 50 years since the beginning of the 1971 War which ended in a decisive military victory for India and the liberation of Bangladesh. Most analysts of the 1971 War agree that the IV Corps dash across the mighty Meghna river led by the brilliant General Sagat Singh was the turning point in the war, recalls military historian Colonel Anil A Athale (retd).
The Indian Air Force is gearing up for a day-and-night fire power blitzkrieg using its potent fighter jets including Sukhois for two days from February 24 in Pokhran after a gap of four years.
India will upgrade Indian Air Force's Nyoma advanced landing ground in Ladakh into a full-fledged air base closer to the borders with China to deploy its top-notch fighter jets, including the Sukhois there.
Rediff.com goes back in time and lists some public figures who met with a tragic end.
With a Sukhoi fighter aircraft, a special air craft from Indian Space Research Organization and another low flying aircraft of the state government completing a comprehensive aerial survey of Nallamalla forest area to find missing Andhra Pradesh CM Y S Rajashekhara Reddy's helicopter on Wednesday night and gathering crucial data including the photographs, focus of the search operation on Thursday will move to the ground.
On the shopping list: Light tanks, anti-tank guided missiles, UAVs, assault rifles, fighter aircraft.
"By triangulation, we have located the area which is about 5-km radius circle and it has been identified based on the last contact with the air traffic control," Chavan, Union minister of state in the Prime Minister's Office, told reporters
Patil, the supreme commander of the country's armed forces, will get on board the ship at around 11 am on Wednesday, a spokesman of the Indian Navy said in Mumbai.
'While fighter pilots must not be sent into combat in inferior aircraft, an obsessive quest for outright combat superiority will leave an air force short of numbers,' says Ajai Shukla.
Ahead of the 70th Republic Day celebrations, here's a quick glimpse at what's in store for January 26.
Saurav Chordia's morale patches celebrate bravery and glorify events that are significant for different IAF units or squadrons.
Sukhois alongside Chenchus. Sheela Bhatt argues that the search for YSR brought India face to face with Bharat.
A Russian fund submitted its interest to the resolution professional on February 14 and also hired a consultancy firm to help them with the bidding process.
The Russian defense ministry confirmed that one of its jets, a Sukhoi SU-24, had crashed in Syria but said it had been downed "presumably as a result of shelling from the ground."
President Pratibha Patil is not scared of undertaking a sortie in a two-seater Sukhoi-30 frontline fighter jet plane of the IAF next week at Pune.
What the new defence minister does with the Rafale fighter jet deal will decide if India wants to build genuine, long-term defence capability through an indigenous product that slashes life-cycle costs, or opt for glitzy signing ceremony with foreign vendors that would please the public, says Ajai Shukla.
American armaments dominated the defence services's show of weaponry.
New airbases, troops, infrastructure, development initiatives are all part of a longer strategy
Russia has said the maiden flight of the fifth generation fighter aircraft (FGFA), being developed by its Sukhoi design bureau in tie-up with Indian aerospace and defence major Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd (HAL), will be made by the end of the year.
So keen is Moscow that India buy its helicopter -- Kamov-226T -- that President Vladimir Putin personally took up the issue with PM Narendra Modi during their summit meeting last year
Jet Airways Executive Director Saroj K Datta declined to comment, stating he has not got any circular from DIAL.
'It is not clear how the NDA government -- including Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman and Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, backed by senior IAF officials -- claimed that the 36 Rafale contract with Dassault in 2016 cost the IAF 20% less than Dassault's 126 Rafale offer,' notes Ajai Shukla in the first of a three-part series.
A P J Abdul Kalam, 83, was a daring President who undertook a submarine sortie, flew Sukhoi jet, visited Siachen glacier.
In a tweet, the IAF welcomed the "new bird" into its arsenal.
A batch of frontline IAF fighters and pilots will leave for the United States on Monday to prove their mettle during the multinational air exercise, "Ex-Red Flag 08", at the USAF's Nellis Air Force Base.
In a major technology leap, Indian defence scientists are ready to go ahead with the first full test flight of its indigenously developed air to air beyond visual range missile, ASTRA. The test-flight from an IAF Sukhoi fighter aircraft could be undertaken "anytime in the next 45 days", top DRDO officials said.
There is considerable discomfort within the defence ministry about the Rafale deal.
Under the deal signed in Moscow last month during Indian Defence Minister A K Antony's visit, HAL will supply large components to Russia's Irkut Corporation for assembling the airframes of Su-30MK fighters. The Russian firm is working on Indian, Malaysian and Algerian export orders.
The Russian-origin An-32 aircraft lost contact on the afternoon of June 3.
