Anyone here noticed any responces from Iran? any overtures? I wondering if they are quitely thinking about upgrading their airdefence after seeing what happened to the Syrians

These same sources told us not too long ago that Iraq had stockpiles of WMD and later that saddam has hidden WMD in Syria. We all know now that it was fabricated lies…i simply dont believe in intelligence failure which is normally blamed. If so, how could we even contemplate to even pay such attention to those people who told us those lies in the first place.

Maybe but although i do not remember right now the Times having a voice against the war in Iraq, it definately didnt fall for the Rubbish that Iraq could hid a missile large enough to be able to reach British troups in greece that was all done by the Tabloids SUN paper amongts others come into mind

It could be put to good use as a floating island for Indias diplomacy. Let India use it to claim a bit more of the Indian Ocean.

It was to do with a North Korean Shipment somehow connected to the AQ KHAN network. Israel apparently destroyed some facilities or something.

India building nuclear sub, says top scientist

India building nuclear sub, says top scientist

· Secret military programme nears completion
· Vessels may undergo sea trials next year

Maseeh Rahman in Delhi
Tuesday September 11, 2007
The Guardian

India has kept its efforts to build a nuclear submarine under wraps for more than 30 years, but a top Indian scientist has confirmed that the ongoing project at the Kalpakkam nuclear facility near Chennai to develop a nuclear reactor fuelled by enriched uranium was in fact intended to power the country’s first indigenously built submarine.
After several setbacks, the top secret military programme appears to be nearing completion, and the nuclear submarine, codenamed the Advanced Technology Vehicle (ATV), is expected to undergo sea trials next year before its induction into the Indian navy in 2009.

Article continues

——————————————————————————–

——————————————————————————–
“Indian scientists and technologists are capable of making light water reactors and we are already constructing an LWR at Kalpakkam in south India for the submarine,” the former chairman of India’s Atomic Energy Commission, PK Iyengar, said at a public debate on the Indo-US nuclear deal in Mumbai on Saturday.
Light water reactors, which use ordinary water to produce steam for running the turbines that produce the power, are considered safer and therefore more suitable for submarines.

Indian scientists appear to have successfully developed a larger version of such a reactor at the Indira Gandhi Centre for Atomic Research in Kalpakkam. It is not clear whether they have succeeded in miniaturising the reactor for use in a submarine.

The nuclear submarine is being built at the naval shipyard at Visakhapatnam port on the Bay of Bengal, and is a joint project involving several government and private organisations, including the Navy, the Defence Research and Development Organisation once headed by former president Abdul Kalam, and the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre in Mumbai, which is the main facility for producing India’s nuclear bombs.

If the Indian scientists fail to develop a miniature light water reactor for the submarine, New Delhi is expected to purchase such a reactor from Russia.

Russia is building an Akula-class nuclear submarine at its Komsomolsk-on-Amur shipyard for lease to the Indian navy which is expected to be ready for trials in 2009.

New Delhi is also reported to be negotiating for the lease of a second nuclear submarine from Russia.

India’s keenness to go in for nuclear submarines increased after it tested nuclear weapons in 1998 and began to stockpile a nuclear arsenal. The country’s military strategists said they needed to develop a “second strike capability” – to be in a position to retaliate to a nuclear attack.

“You need submarine-based arsenals to retain a second strike capability, since all land-based arsenals can be detected through satellite surveillance in about eight years,” said retired Rear Admiral Raja Menon, a nuclear strategist. “If they’ve been detected, you have to assume that they can be targeted.”

remember that these a/c would be produced in house (IIRC ) so getting your hands on an allready developed AESA radar (combat proven) and a pretty darn good targeting system (many options avaiable ) might offer more interms of working on and with american equipment , corps and the likes . Wont be a bad expereince going forward .

India does not need AESA right now, let it develop some more IAF jets can always be upgraded later with the new radars.

I know it may sound patronising and apologies for that but better to have such expensive electronics in something like the SU-30MKI than on the hornet.

If you look at the capabilities the “standard” super hornet has in terms of all the sensors (ignoring the AESA) then most of the IAFs few Soviet multi roll aircraft already out class it or they will with the upgrades going ahead with very little expenditure.

And to pay such an overhead just to get a new tech RADAR in IAF service makes very little sence.

Go for a solid airframe then worry about the changeable electronics instead of plinking for electronics on a questionable airframe.

And I can understand the arguments about lower maintanance costs for the hornet and I would say they are valid in India as they are in the USAF but if you look at the disparity in pay packets between India and US those arguements become less important.

And again I would agree low maintance = more aircraft in air but if the cost of the aircraft is such that India cannot afford the 126 but say only 40 then the whole arguement about aircraft in air should come into question.

If India really wants AESA she can buy it from Israel or use its vast resources in IT and electronics to build its own under a JV with an experience counterpart.

Lets not waste all that money on an aircraft just because of one thing.

As for the training if the IAF really prefer the US training methods then I am sure our Democratic and Freedom Loving cousins wouldnt mind selling it to us even if we didnt buy Freedom Fighters.

on the sidelines, Saudis have bought EFA Typhoon for 20 Billion they got 72 going by that pricing i am guestamating for indias 10billion it could get 39-40

Depends , give me a liberal development program to SET right the F-18E/F and i’ll take it with open arms , Loose weight (take out extra weight that has been added to beef up the undercarriage for carrier landings) , add higher thrust engines , give me the Apg-79 and conformal targetting systems and maybe throw in a TVC nozzle and i’ll take it anyday . I doubt boeing would be that liberal however these are mods that can be done and the cost might not be as much as we might think they will be .

If an cliche’d F/A 18MKI is allowed then even I would be for it.. but as it stands and the expense of the standard superhornet I cannot see india being able to afford the Block II+ hornet.

India’s quiet sea power
By Sudha Ramachandran

BANGALORE – India’s new listening post in Madagascar has reportedly begun operations. Under construction for more than a year, the monitoring station will provide India with electronic eyes and ears in the southwestern Indian Ocean.

Located in northern Madagascar, the monitoring station “was quietly made operational” in early July, according to a report in The Indian Express. It will be linked with similar facilities in Kochi

and Mumbai “to gather intelligence on foreign navies operating in the region”, the report said. Mumbai and Kochi, which are on India’s west coast, are headquarters of the Indian Navy’s Western and Southern Commands, respectively.

Madagascar, a large island off Africa’s east coast, is among a growing number of Africa’s Indian Ocean shores with which India is building naval and other ties. The Indian Navy took charge of Mozambique’s sea security during the African Union summit there in 2003 and during the World Economic Forum summit the following year.

To Madagascar’s east lies Mauritius. In 1974, India laid the foundation of its naval security cooperation with Mauritius with the gift of the Indian Naval Ship (INS) Amar. India later provided Mauritius with an interceptor patrol boat, INS Observer, in 2001 and a Dornier Do 228 maritime surveillance aircraft in 2004. The Indian Navy has patrolled waters off Mauritius a few times.

Media reports last year spoke of a possible larger profile for India in Mauritius. According to reports, Mauritius offered its Agalega Islands to India on a long-term lease ostensibly for development as tourist destinations. The Agalega Islands are 1,100 kilometers from Mauritius, 3,000km from India and 1,800km from the US base at Diego Garcia.

Both India and Mauritius quickly denied the lease report – the leasing of a predominantly Creole island to India would be a touchy issue in a country with a delicate ethnic balance between the francophone Creoles and the Indo-Mauritians. However, according to the Indian Express report, “India is looking at developing another monitoring facility at an atoll it has leased from Mauritius [Agalega] in the near future.” The report said that while the government is silent on the issue, “sources say some forward movement has recently been made on the project”.

Across the channel to Madagascar’s west lies Mozambique. Last year, India signed a memorandum of understanding with Mozambique that envisaged maritime patrolling of the waters off the latter’s coast, supplying military equipment, training personnel, and transferring technical know-how in assembling and repairing military vehicles, aircraft and ships.

India’s long-standing ties with Seychelles were further strengthened in 2005 when Delhi gave the latter’s coast guard a fast-attack vessel, INS Tarmugli. India has given a few helicopters to Seychelles over the years and Indian naval ships routinely visit the archipelago.

India’s naval foray into the southwestern Indian Ocean has gone by largely unnoticed. In contrast, its naval presence and activity near the Malacca Strait to its east and the Gulf of Oman to its west has been widely reported. The Indian Navy has been conducting exercises with the Republic of Singapore Navy for more than a decade, with the Indonesian Navy since 2004, and with the Royal Thai Navy since last August. Next month, the navies of five countries – India, Singapore, the United States, Japan and Australia – will participate in a huge naval exercise in the Bay of Bengal. To its west, India has been holding joint naval exercises in the Gulf of Oman, the Gulf of Aden and the Arabian Sea with such countries as Oman, Iran and France.

India’s naval profile in the southwestern Indian Ocean is smaller but growing quietly. Naval exercises with South Africa – the only medium naval power in Africa – and Brazil are expected to take place next year.

Indian Navy officers say that India’s gifts of patrol boats and other equipment to countries in its immediate and distant neighborhood are to “help them identify and isolate more effectively fast-moving surface craft that may be carrying terrorists, gun-runners or smugglers. By providing these countries with better equipment, India is not only helping them secure themselves but also hoping that this will halt the flow of arms, ammunition and contraband into India.”

There is the problem of piracy, too, in the waters off Africa that has affected India’s trade. To the north of Madagascar lies Somalia, whose coastline has been identified by the International Maritime Bureau (IMB) as the area with the highest piracy risk in the world. According to the latest IMB report, there were 15 reported attacks on vessels in or near Somalia’s waters in the first seven months this year, compared with 10 incidents during all of last year. An Indian merchant ship was seized by Somali pirates this May and held for a month.

For India, monitoring the waters off Africa’s east coast is an essential part of its effort to secure sea lanes of communication in the Indian Ocean. Most of India’s trade is by sea – nearly 89% of India’s oil imports arrive by sea. These sea lanes are thus lifelines for the Indian economy and any disruption can have disastrous consequences for its economic and energy security.

India has been acting to secure sea lanes in the Indian Ocean, and the monitoring station in Madagascar is part of this larger naval and maritime strategy.

India is reaching out far into the Indian Ocean, way beyond its shores, as it sees this ocean as its domain. In an article published last year in the Naval War College Review, Donald L Berlin, professor at the Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies in Honolulu and an expert on Indian Ocean strategic issues, wrote:
New Delhi regards the Indian Ocean as its back yard and deems it both natural and desirable that India function as, eventually, the leader and the predominant influence in this region – the world’s only region and ocean named after a single state. This is what the United States set out to do in North America and the Western Hemisphere at an early stage in America’s “rise to power”. American foreign policy throughout the 19th century had one overarching goal: achieving hegemony in the Western Hemisphere.

Similarly, in the expansive view of many Indians, India’s security perimeter should extend from the Strait of Malacca to the Strait of Hormuz and from the coast of Africa to the western shores of Australia. For some Indians, the emphasis is on the northern Indian Ocean, but for others the realm includes even the “Indian Ocean” coast of Antarctica.
Of major concern to India is China’s steady influence in the Indian Ocean through its naval and other ties with India’s neighbors, including Myanmar, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Pakistan. China has a major role in the Gwadar port in Pakistan at the mouth of the strategic Persian Gulf, about 400km from the Strait of Hormuz, a major conduit for global oil supplies.

Concern mounted in India in January when Chinese President Hu Jintao rounded off his eight-nation trip to Africa with a stop at Seychelles. It was to preempt a Chinese offer of naval assistance to Seychelles that India quickly gave INS Tarmugli to the Seychelles Coast Guard. Hu’s visit – the first by a Chinese president to an island state in the southwestern Indian Ocean – underscored the looming challenge that China poses to India’s influence in this region.

Raja Mohan, an Indian strategic-affairs expert, pointed out: “No one doubts India’s desire to retain its foothold in these geopolitically crucial island states. But question marks remain on whether India has a strategy to cope [with] China’s dramatic entry into the western Indian Ocean.”