A load of crap from an idle brain

For years China has been pursuing its policy of a string of pearls; which meant having naval stations around the Indian subcontinent as a means of encircling India.  The building of a port in the Sri Lankan town of Hambantota, Gwadar in Pakistan, courting the island states of Seychelles, Maldives, Mauritius and not to mention Myanmar.

Unwittingly of course, India had been resorting to its own plan of undoing this pearls by its Look East policy that it put in place a couple of decades ago.  Over these years, India has strengthend not only economic, but also military partnership with some key nations of South East & East Asia like Japan, South Korea, Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand & Singapore.

Its no secret that China is one of the biggest trading partner of ASEAN as well as of Japan & South Korea.  But its also a fact that most of these countries are not comfortable with the flooding their domestic markets with Chinese goods.  Also China’s yuan manipulation keeps the prices of their goods cheaper and affects the local economies of countries like Vietnam, Philippines, Thailand, Indonesia etc.  And many of these countries are already protesting the same.

The increasing economic clout of China has also massaged its military ego and it now has a lot of territorial claims against countries like Japan, Vietnam and other South East Asian countries.

It is in this context that one can see how India’s Look East policy is reaping rich dividends.  Not only has it led to economic benefits, but also robust military exchanges between the countries and India.

In all these hoopla, what is not being missed is the increasing defence collaboration between the militaries of America and India.  During the cold war era, India was fully dependent on the Russians for arms supply.  with the collapse of the USSR, the spares dreid up and defence procurement dipped to a low for India. During the Kargil war, it was the Israelis who came to India’s aid with timely supplies of spares and the required ammunition.

Today Israel and the US are increasingly becoming the biggest arms suppliers to India. Over the last couple of years, India has purchased six C-130J Super Hercules aircraft for almost US$1 billion and eight Boeing P-8I planes for more than US$2 billion (2009) from the US.

Also US is in running to bag the massive $12 billion 126 advanced figher for which the testing is already underway.

Though it would do a world of good for India to have a coherent defence policy instead of buying piecemeal arms and ammunitions.  Not to mention try to have an indegenous arms production industry within the country.  Depending on the DRDO and its allied organisations is a suicidal step for the country.  Privatisation of the defence industry would go a long step in indigenisation of defence technology.   The Mahindras, L&T, Tatas are increasing their participation in defence technology and it would do a lot of good in future.

Some good reads on this topic

How India is undoing China’s string of pearls
Delhi’s obsequious Obamamania
India counters China’s “String of Pearls” through Naval Diplomacy

Above pictures courtesy: Tactical Life & Twenty22

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India’s latest addition to the Navy – warship INS Kochi, a Delhi-class destroyer, was inaugurated on Friday. This is the second warship of ‘Project 15-A’, built by Mazgaon Dock Limited.

Naval Chief Admiral Nirmal Kumar Verma on Friday said a serious relook at the inefficiencies of Navy is required and an indigenous warship building system needs to be conceptualised.

Verma said, “Fluctuating funding in the past has compelled the Navy to resort to (warship) building in abroad, but now there is an urgent need to emulate worldwide trends in warship building (in the country).”

The 6,500-tonne INS Kochi, launched by Verma’s wife Madulika, is the second warship in the ‘Project 15-A’ under which three guided-missile destroyers with stealth and multi-role features will be built.

“The destroyer has been launched using pontoon-assisted technique, employed for the first time in the history of indigenous warship building. The technique helps in overcoming slipway constraints which hinder heavier vessel movement into deeper waters for fitting its superstructures such as decks,” chairman and managing director of Mazgaon Dock H S Malhi said.

INS Kochi has advanced stealth features that make it less vulnerable to detection by enemy radar. Its weapons system include nuclear capable supersonic BrahMos surface-to-surface missile.

News source: Indian Express

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India and Russia have signed an agreement to jointly develop the 5th generation stealth fighter aircraft with equal financial and technological stakes. Overall development cost of the Sukhoi T-50 is in the region of US$ 10 billion.

An artist’s rendering of the Sukhoi T-50 fifth generation fighter aircraft

India will lease a nuclear powered Akula-II attack submarine from Russia from mid-2008 onwards under a hush-hush Rs 2600 crore (US$ 650 million) deal.

The Akula-II class attack submarine

Then, of course, India will be acquiring another 40 Sukhoi-30MKIs to add to the 190 already contracted, 347 more T-90S to add to the 310 such main-battle tanks already inducted, and 80 more Mi-17 medium-lift utility and assault helicopters from Russia. The deal does not include 230 Sukhoi-30MKI fighters India is going to acquire from Russia at an overall cost of over $8.5 billion.

2 SU-30K Flankers, 2 F-15 Eagles and 2 Mirage 2000 flying in formation

The 44,570-tonne aircraft carrier Admiral Gorshkov (below), was initially supposed to join Indian Navy by August 2008 as per the $1.5 billion package deal signed with Russia in January 2004. But India will not be getting the carrier, already rechristened INS Vikramaditya, anytime before 2010. The package deal, incidentally, includes 16 MiG-29K ‘Fulcrum’ supersonic fighters and a mix of Ka-31 and Ka-28 helicopters to operate from the carrier’s deck.

News source: TimesofIndia

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INS Rajput, 8 Other Warships To Deploy Brahmos Cruise Missiles

The Indian Navy has already deployed the Indo-Russian BrahMos supersonic cruise missile on the INS Rajput, P Venugopal, director, Defence Research and Development Laboratories (DRDL) and head of the BrahMos mission told a packed audience at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Powai, Mumbai, which is holding the aerospace meet Zephyr 2007.

INS Ranjit is next in line among the eight warships that the Indian Navy has planned to equip with this missile. Each ship will be fitted with four missile launchers, two on each side of the vessel. The Indian Army has already inducted its first group of truck-launched missiles.

The four-tonne rocket has a diameter of 70 cm and is 8 metres long. It has a maximum range of 300km and a payload of 500kg. Both the latter are the maximum limits mandated by the international missile control regime, he said, hinting that they could have achieved higher parameters in these two areas had it not been for the limits.

The missile can fly from a sea-skimming height of just 10 metres above the waves to an altitude of 15km. While it can achieve a maximum velocity of Mach 2 in the denser air at sea level, this goes up to Mach 2.7 in the rarefied upper atmosphere above 7 km, he said.

The missile has three propulsion systems. First, a gas generator blows it out of its canister, then a solid fuel booster speeds it up to Mach 2, after which an air-breathing liquid fuel ramjet takes over to propel it to its target.

Read the full article here.

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