The sky is no longer the limit for these heroes

An insight into the city's defence units in the run-up to the Air Force Day on October 8

As the Indian Air Force celebrates its 79th birthday this October 8, the Ministry of Defence has provided an insight into its organisations in the city that makes up an essential part of the Indian Air Force. October 8 is observed as Air Force Day across the country.

Defence authorities took mediapersons on a visit to their units in the city recently, starting with the Aircraft and Systems Testing Establishment (ASTE) located near the Wind Tunnel Road in Murgeshpalya.

TESTING

Among ASTE's functions are testing and evaluating airborne system as per the Air Staff Qualitative Requirements (ASQRs), assisting the development programmes of institutions like Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL), Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO), Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) and Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO).

A little known fact about the organisation is its role in the rejection or acceptance of an aircraft and its weapons systems. It has a crucial say in the trials and upgrade of the fighter aircrafts like Jaguar (Darin II) to Darin III, MIG 27 and Sukhoi-Midlife Super 30, among others. Since 1949, ASTE has lost (sacrificed) over 30 test pilots, with Flight Test Engineer Squadron Leader Ilayaraja losing his life as recently as 2009 near Bangalore while testing the Saras PT-2 (second prototype).

FAMOUS NAMES

ASTE, whose alumni include Wing Commander Ravish Malhotra and Squadron leader Rakesh Sharma has an Air Force Test Pilots' School (AFTPS) that awards an M. Tech. in Flight Test Engineering.

Institute of Aerospace Medicine, the other organisation works towards ensuring the mission safety and operational efficiency of the Air Force pilots. It has an instrument laboratory for testing oxygen systems, partial pressure suits, and hyperbaric chambers.

Certain special disabilities like air sickness, orthopaedic disabilities, and poor +Gz and post-ejection tolerance are evaluated here.

The Air Force station in Yelahanka serves as a premier transport and helicopter training centre of the IAF. It is involved in training of pilots, navigators of Air Force, pilots of navy and coast guards on fixed wing aircraft and has grown in stature from its humble beginnings in 1963.

The annual International Aero India shows have added to its popularity.

The Fixed Wing Training Faculty (FTWF) is entrusted with the task of conversion training of transport pilots and navigators of the Indian Air Force, besides undertaking operational commitments assigned by the IAF and Air headquarters.

Another unit is the station maintenance organisation, The Preservers, extends maintenance services to large fleets of different varieties of transport aircrafts namely AN-32, HS-748(AVRO), Dornier-288 aircraft, Mi-8 among others. In addition, this organisation provides maintenance support to all the visiting aircraft and aircraft of 416 air force station.

The operations support group that includes Air Traffic Services (ATS) and MET (Meteorological Department) is a vital defence unit in the city.

Also called the nerve centre of the station, the ATS coordinates with the Bengaluru International Airport and HAL on space sharing. The ATS squadron handles approximately 20,000 hours of flying each year, which supposedly is the highest in Asia.

MET provides accurate metrological observations and forecast for all aircraft operations and ensures timely issue and dissemination of all the weather warnings.

The 112 Helicopter Unit, also known as the Thoroughbreds, presented a demo of Mi-8 helicopters' winching operations during casualty evacuations and rescue sorties. These helicopters also perform the under slung operation that deals with supply of essential commodities and relief material at places inflicted with natural calamities and other disasters.

Thoroughbreds have been involved in mercy missions such as the 1975 earthquake at Shimla and Chandigarh, flood relief in various States like Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu. They had a heroic role in providing relief measures during the 2004 tsunami in the country.

Source:The Hindu

With Afghanistan, India marks its rise in Central Asia

In the annals of diplomatic advice, this one, proffered by former Minister of State for External Affairs Shashi Tharoor, must rank as the most enigmatic.

Never try to telephone an Afghan at 8.30 in the evening, he once said.

And why not?

Because, Tharoor said, that’s when the Indian TV soap opera Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi, dubbed into the Dari language, would be telecast on Afghanistan’s Tolo TV, and no one wishes to miss it.

In fact, Tharoor further recalled, Afghan cities also witnessed a spike in petty crime rates during the time that the saas-bahu serial was beamed — because watchmen were distracted by the TV screen and the family drama that was unfolding.

Tharoor frequently narrates this anecdote as evidence of India’s increasing ‘soft power’ projection around the world – and even in war-wracked places like Afghanistan. And although that point does have its merits, India until recently did not have anything harder than soft power to project in the troubled region.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai arrived in India on a two-day visit. B Mathur/Reuters

After Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s two-day visit to New Delhi beginning today, that failing will have been sufficiently remedied. The two countries, brought closer together in recent weeks by a shared threat perception arising from Pakistan-backed Taliban fighters and jihadis, are to formalise a strategic relationship that holds momentous significance for both India and Afghanistan – and for how India defines its place in the region.

It could mark the moment when India begins, however tentatively, to play the Great Game in Central Asia.

Late last month, the Australia India Institute hosted a conference in Melbourne, whose very name summed up India’s somewhat diminutive standing. The conference, billed The Reluctant Superpower, was intended to explore why India, with all the buzz around its economic rise, wasn’t casting a longer shadow on the world stage.

Even the formalisation of the strategic relationship with Afghanistan, under which India will undertake to train Afghanistan’s police and armed forces, doesn’t quite mean that India is announcing its emergence as a military power. It isn’t imperialistic outreach ambitions that are driving India’s efforts to get a foothold in Afghanistan; it is more the compelling need to protect a strategic flank that was used by Pakistan, during the Taliban-ruled years, as a breeding ground for jihadi terrorists who were then unleashed in Kashmir and elsewhere in India.

The Economist, in its latest edition, recounts the swagger of a whisky-slinging retired senior Pakistani official to explain Pakistan’s sponsorship of jihadis in Afghanistan. Pakistan, he is reported as saying, has no choice in the matter. After all, the Indians were throwing money at their own favourites in Afghanistan, and so were the Russians and the Iranians. Pakistan too felt compelled to play the game, “except that we have no money. All we have are the crazies. So the crazies it is.”

For that very reason – because Pakistan sponsors the “crazies” – India’s stepping up with an enhanced profile, however necessary from its own standpoint, is fraught with many perils. After all, Afghanistan has proven to be the graveyard of empires – from Alexander to Genghis Khan to the Mughals, the British, the Soviet Union — and now, the US, which is contemplating retreat after a 10-year war in hostile terrain that bled it dry.

The costly lesson of entanglement in a war where the enemy is ready to fight you forever is only now dawning on the US. Which is why the US is eager to see India step up and take over the baton – and pay the blood price to secure a foothold in Afghanistan.

Yet, for all its enhanced profile in Afghanistan, India is justifiably wary of getting directly involved in the ethnic conflicts that have wracked the country for centuries. It is impossible to visualise how the conflict in Afghanistan will unravel in the lead-up to and beyond the 2014 timetable for the withdrawal of US troops from there. Still more difficult is it to know whether the country will remain united or be balkanised along ethnic lines – and what such a partition could mean from an Indian strategic perspective.

Afghanistan’s rich deposit of minerals also makes it a trophy that is coveted by other emerging global players, including China. And although China doesn’t quite have the same ‘soft power’ advantage that India perceptibly does, it has many more levers to operate – including enhanced money power, besides Pakistan’s willingness to act as its proxy state.

In such a hazy scenario, the only thing that can be said with certainty is that there is enormous scope for things to go horribly wrong.

Yet, the very fact that India is stepping up and doing what it has to in order to secure its immediate strategic interests in Afghanistan represents, in many ways, a rite of passage in India’s gradual emergence as a “reluctant superpower”.

Source:FirstPost.com

Arjun Mark II to go for second trial

CHENNAI: The Army will be watching closely as an updated version of its Main Battle Tank Arjun, which has incorporated 59 improvements, goes for a crucial trial in the next three months.

The Mark-II version, being developed at Combat Vehicles Research & Development Establishment (CVRDE), will go for a crucial trial in the next three months, DRDO sources said.

"We have incorporated 56 of the total 89 improvements recommended in Arjun Mark IIafter the last test in Pokhran in Rajasthan. We are hopeful of the next test which is scheduled in December this year or January next year," they said.

The testing would also include firing of Lahat missile, having a range of six kms.

After clearing the test, Mark II will have to face final integrated testing by Army in June 2012.

Some of the major improvements include changes in the commander's panoramic sight with eye safe LRF, night vision, driver's uncooled thermal image, digital control harness, new final drive for increased weight, new track and sprocket.

"Once Arjun Mark II comes out successfully through the integrated testing in June next year, the production of the latest version of Arjun tanks will start in Heavy Vehicles Factory," the sources added.

Indian Army has ordered 142 MBT A

Source:TOI

India will ink strategic pact with Afghanistan ahead of US

Amidst deteriorating relations with Pakistan, Afghan president Hamid Karzai is arriving here on Tuesday, scheduled to sign several agreements including a key strategic pact, that possibly involves training of Afghan national army by their Indian counterparts. Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh will hold discussions with Karzai and host a dinner in his honour. However, all eyes are on Karzai’s private engagement, a lecture on Wednesday in memory of RK Mishra, founder of Observer Research Foundation (ORF).

Sources here say, a bilateral agreement was under discussion to formalise a training programme for Afghan security officials in Indian academies. Both countries are already engaged in intelligence sharing and other security exchanges at the level of the national security advisors. Other agreements include forming working groups on issues of economic cooperation and consultations to forge common positions at the UN and other international bodies.

Significantly, the United States is also negotiating a strategic pact with the Afghan government. Experts believe this agreement may involve securing permanent bases in Afghanistan beyond 2014. They will do special force-style counter-terrorism work and also train the Afghan army.

Afghanistan’s relations with Pakistan have deteriorated in the wake of killing of the former president Burhanudin Rabbani, who as chairman of peace council was negotiating with the Taliban. The Afghan intelligence agency has disclosed that Rabbani’s assassination was planned by the Quetta Shura, based in Pakistan. It has also reportedly handed over evidence to this effect to Pakistan.

These developments coincide the rising tensions between Pakistan and the United States, over Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen’s allegations that the Haqqani group is a “veritable arm” of the ISI.

Security expert Arvind Gupta believes that war in Afghanistan was proving to be unbearably expensive for the US at $120 billion in 2010 alone. The US spends about $10 billion on training the Afghan security forces. Obama has asked for $12 billion in the 2012 budget for training the Afghan security forces.

At a panel discussion on Indian options in the war-torn country, at the premier defence think-tank Institute of Defence Studies and Analysis (IDSA), experts advised government to resist any temptation for a direct military involvement in the war torn country. They have asked New Delhi to restrict its role in strengthening the Afghan army and police by way of special training programmes. On the political side, India should support genuine indigenous efforts for national unity even as Afghanistan plunges into a full scale civil war.

The recent killing of Rabbani is believed to the fifth high profile assassination since the killing of Gen. Khan Muhammad Mujahid, the police chief of Kandahar, in April 2011. This was followed by the killing of Gen Daud Daud, a top police commander, in May. Subsequently, Karzai’s half-brother Ahmed Wali Karzai and former governor of Uruzgan province, Jan Muhamamd, were assassinated in July.

Ashok K Behuria, senior fellow at the IDSA maintains that tall these killings are proof of the Taliban’s confidence. He believes this is a precise reason for Taliban not negotiating at a time, when they were wining the battle of nerves in the war-torn country.

IAF likely to induct 5th-gen fighters by 2017

The Indian Air Force (IAF) is likely to begin inducting so-called fifth-generation fighter aircraft (FGFA), to be jointly developed by India and Russia, into its fleet from 2017, air chief marshal N.A.K. Browne said on Monday.
The IAF will procure 214 FGFAs, of which 166 aircraft will be single seaters, while the remaining will be twin seaters. “The twin-seater variety would be assembled at Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd (HAL),” Browne said.
In December, the two countries had announced a preliminary draft agreement for the FGFAs at an estimated project cost of $25-30 billion (Rs.1.24-1.48 trillion today). Browne, however, said the design agreement needs to be finalized and so the final deal was “a long way off”.
FGFAs are technologically more advanced than fourth-generation jet fighters in most aspects, including stealth, internally carried air-to-air and air-to-ground weapons, advanced avionics and integrated computer systems.
Most of the IAF’s inventory is of Russian origin. But in recent years, India has been sourcing military hardware from other countries, including Israel, Britain and France.
Meanwhile, the ministry of defence (MoD) could open the financial bids for acquiring 126 medium multi-role combat aircraft for the IAF in the next couple of weeks. There are two contenders left in the race for the deal. “The envelopes will be opened by the third or fourth week of October,” Browne said.
Six global defence companies—Lockheed Martin Corp., Boeing Co., European Aeronautic Defence and Space Co. NV (EADS), Dassault Aviation SA, Saab AB and RSK MiG—were initially in the fray. MoD shortlisted Dassault and EADS in April, following technical field trials.
Browne said a meeting of the defence acquisition council is likely to be held on Friday, which will consider various aspects related to the deal.
According to defence procurement procedure (DPP), under which India makes acquisitions from foreign vendors, the shortlist is followed by the opening of commercial bids. On the basis of the bids, MoD will determine the lowest bidder, after which cost negotiations will begin.
“We want to maintain a constant force level of 34 squadrons till 2022, by when we could have 42 squadrons,” Browne said.
“The IAF is facing a serious problem of obsolescence. Barring the Sukhois, most other aircraft are in the process of being refurbished or being phased out,” said Deba Ranjan Mohanty, senior fellow at New Delhi-based Observer Research Foundation.
The IAF is also set to acquire six more C-130J Super Hercules transport aircraft manufactured by Lockheed Martin in addition to the six that had been ordered in 2008 at a cost of $1.05 billion.
The IAF will also acquire an additional 59 Russian-origin Mi-17 V5 helicopters, the IAF chief said. It had ordered 80 such helicopters in 2008. Browne also said that in addition to the IAF, the home ministry was also looking at acquiring an unspecified number of the same helicopters.


Source:livemint.com

Engines and radar to blame for MiG-35 failure in MMRCA contest

Radar and engine performance shortcomings were to blame for the MiG-35 failing to make the shortlist in India's medium multi-role combat aircraft (MMRCA) contest.

The revelations are contained in feedback from India to Russia's arms export agency, Rosoboronexport.

The MiG-35's radar, the Zhuk-MAE active electronically scanned array (AESA), from Russia's Phazotron, failed to achieve the required acquisition and tracking ranges. And its Klimov RD-33MK engines also fell short of the Indian performance criteria.

Speaking to the media on 3 August, Vladimir Barkovsky, chief of MiG's engineering centre, said: "The Klimov and Chernyshev [engine companies] briefed [India] at length about their capabilities and intentions to improve their offering, but unfortunately their arguments were not taken into account."

Despite this, the same RD-33MK met Indian navy requirements and powers the newly-built MiG-29K/KUB fighters being delivered to the service.

Barkovsky also defended the Zhuk-MAE AESA radar, pointing out that the prototype nature of the model fitted to the MiG-35 meant that it did not meet the tender specifications, particularly regarding range.

He said: "We told the tender committee that this particular unit is experimental, and that in future we will make a larger radar antenna [capable of being used at a longer range]."

Barkovsky pointed out that the Eurofighter Typhoon is yet to be fitted with a working AESA radar.

"While the Russians demonstrated their radar fitted to the real fighter and working, [Eurofighter] demonstrated their radar on a helicopter," he said.

"The positive outcome of the Indian tender is that we made a huge effort on the radar development and demonstrated what nobody expected of us, and thus surprised many, including some in our home country," Barkovsky added.

The company will continue the MiG-35 project, he said, and look for other export customers

India's massive winter war game begins this week

New Delhi: Buoyed by its successful summer war games in Rajasthan and Punjab, the Indian Army will hold another such massive exercise beginning this week featuring a potent strike corps in the Rajasthan desert along the Pakistan border.

This time around, the Bhopal-based 21 Corps will carry out the winter exercise that will go on for two months till the middle of December, top sources in the Army Headquarters here said.

Aimed at building the capacities of the strike formation in delivering deadly blows to the enemy forces in a short offensive by breaching the hostile Army's defences and capturing important strategic assets deep inside enemy territory, the war game will enable the 21 'Sudarshan Chakra' Corps to showcase its firepower through battle tanks and artillery guns.

The Army strike corps will be ably supported by Indian Air Force (IAF) fighter jets, attack helicopters and transport aircraft, with nearly 20,000 troops involved in the exercise.

The summer war game 'Vijayee Bhava', in the Rajasthan desert in May was conducted by the Ambala-based 2 'Kharga' Corps, the other of the three strike formations. The 'Pine Prahar' exercise in the plains of Punjab, also in May, was staged by the Jalandhar-based 11 'Vajra' Corps, a pivot formation with both defensive and offensive elements among its ranks.

Indian battle formations carry out the training in turns, once every three years to perfect the warfare doctrines that Indian armed forces have drafted keeping in mind the jointness in operations of the Army and Air Force during war.

These exercises have been evolved learning from its experience of slow military mobilisation as part of Operation Parakram during the stand-off with Pakistan in the aftermath of the December 2001 terror attack on Parliament.

The Army has carried out nearly a dozen major exercises in the western sector from 2004 to validate a new battle doctrine loosely termed "Cold Start" by think tanks and the media. In simple terms, it involves replacing a lumbering elephant with a race horse.

Though Army Chief General VK Singh has denied the existence of a "Cold Start" doctrine, he did acknowledge that it had plans for speedy mobilisation in case a conflict loomed.