Tag: Defence Minister

Daily Podcast | 17 July 2020

Defence Minister Rajnath Singh is on a visit to Ladakh a day after India’s foreign ministry categorically said no territory had been ceded in the region. The fire onboard the U.S. Navy’s amphibious assault ship USS Bonhomme Richard at San Diego Naval Base has finally been put out, Japan has inducted it’s first Bell Boeing V-22 Osprey tiltrotor aircraft and Saudi Arabia has announced a new defence exhibition.

Daily Podcast | 16 July 2020

Indian armed forces personnel with less than the qualifying 10 years of service are now eligible for invalid pension, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh has delegated powers for urgent purchases of upto INR 300 crore or USD 40 million to the armed forces to meet their emergent operational requirements, U.S. Navy continued firefighting efforts onboard the USS Bonhomme Richard light aircraft carrier for the fourth day, Japan has announced it will operate the Short Take-Off and Vertical Landing F-35B from the helicopter destroyer JS Izumo and former Afghan vice president and ethnic Uzbek warlord General Abdul Rashid Dostum has been promoted to the highest military rank of marshal by Afghan President Ashraf Ghani.

India’s VSHORAD program off flight path
Defence ministry faces problematic result after 20 years of shopping around

Even after two decades since the acquisition case, the Very Short Range Air Defence (VSHORAD) search has seen a system absent from trials and failing trials, being passed as technically compliant and ending up as, apparently, the cheapest. Also problematic is the difficulty its purchase could pose by provoking U.S. sanctions under their CAATSA.

Indian Navy should heed San Juan tragedy siren

Former naval aviator Captain K.P. Sanjeev Kumar examines the San Juan tragedy, pointing out that after half a century of operating submarines, India still does not have organic submarine rescue capability and asks why navies such as ours invest in submarines without closing the loop on submarine rescue.