For years, the India-US defence partnership has been more about symbolism than substance. While the two countries conduct a spate of joint exercises across the three services, the previous United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government and...
Chinese President Xi Jinping’s public announcement downsizing the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) at the grand military parade on September 3, 2015, was a major event. It signalled that the final stages of reform and reorganization of the PLA...
The strategically significant Joint India-US Naval exercise MALABAR-2015, hosted by India between October 14 and 21, 2015, conducted in the Bay of Bengal, in many ways, illustrates the growing multi-faceted military cooperation between...
During his first year in office, Defence Minister, Manohar Parrikar gave a free hand to the army to act pro-actively on the LoC. He led from the front and worked closely with the leadership of the armed forces, the bureaucracy and his...
“Our defence cooperation with Vietnam is among our most important ones. India remains committed to the modernization of Vietnam’s defence and security forces.”
---PM Narendra Modi, October 2014
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Defence planning in India has been marked by knee jerk reactions to emerging situations and haphazard single-Service growth. The absence of a clearly enunciated national security strategy, the failure to commit funds for weapons and equipment...
Preceding Prime Minister Modi’s contemporary clarion call of ‘Make-in-India’ by half a century, the indigenisation drive first launched by the Indian Navy in the 1960s has, over time, matured into a success story worthy of...
On May 1, 2015, Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar, appointed a 10-member committee headed by former Home Secretary Dhirendra Singh, to review the defence procurement policies and procedures and to recommend fresh guidelines with a view to...
Since 1998 China has been taking out white papers on defence regularly as part of its exercise in military transparency. While such an exercise does have inherent limitations in terms of what it can reveal and what it should conceal yet it serves...
India conducted five nuclear tests over two days on May 11 and 13, 1998, and declared itself a state armed with nuclear weapons. Since then, India’s nuclear deterrence has been effectively operationalised. With a pacifist strategic culture...