It is hard to take your claims seriously when you insist that the majority of defence journalists are substandard. If you heard someone claiming in the pub that most garage mechanics, plumbers, secretaries, bakers or candlestick makers were incompetent, I suspect that you’d assume that this was bar-room hyperbole rather than a serious claim.

If an informal poll is held across many professions as regards the yardsticks employed to allow people into the profession, journalism would rank amongst those with the most variable and with an inability to self police. Can you point to the professional qualifications held as a universal standard for defence journalists to become defence journalists, worldwide? Something like a five year med degree + internship + hands on work adding upto another year or two before being allowed to practise?

So yes, its hard for you to take my “claims” seriously, when you currently identify yourself as a journalist. But go ahead & speak to anyone employed in a technical or even business related trade & ask them their opinion of journalists, defence or otherwise, and you’ll have your answer.

Net, if there were no common, standards employed for trades such as plumbers, secretaries etc (as versus the fact that certification exams do exist) or the fact that folks are not asking for demonstrated evidence of hands on experience of high quality work in substitution for aforesaid certs (as evident from the shoddy work of many journalists), then the quality would be abysmal and variable and the outcomes, likewise.

Which is much the case with defence journalism today, where all sorts of people with hardly any hard nosed hands on knowledge of technology, or business or operations are busy writing for “prestigious journals” purely based on the fact that they have been writing for donkey’s years and are hence “proven”, irrespective of how much of that work was good to begin with or was even audited to some industry standard (which too doesn’t appear to exist).

Now let’s see if I understand things correctly. For you to call many journalists ‘cretins’, ‘charlatans’, ‘fools’, ‘asinine’ and ‘undeserving, overprivileged hacks’ is presumably fair comment. But when I describe their self-appointed critics as ‘know-it-alls’, that is not fair comment, but an ad hominem argument. The difference is so subtle that it seems to be eluding me.

Kindly dont play coy here. I didn’t call you any of these names. You on the other hand responded with a direct ad hominem.

And yes, judging by the quality of many of these so called “journalists”, they deserve every one of the words I have used, and then some. In the past, I & many others have seen these “gentlemen” plagiarize, invent claims, make outright false statements and then continue to do so merrily at the expense of probity. If that hurts you, then spend more time taking a hard look at the ethics (or lack thereof) of some of your august fellow travelers.

I write for a living. Imagine what reaction you would get from a professional carpenter if you were to tell him that although you were not a carpenter, you could assure him that most of the wood he was using was second-rate, if not third-rate?

And who said I or many others on this forum did not know how to “carpenter”? Another assumption.

If you pull up some random examples from the many academic theses from military colleges that are available on the internet. What are the main sources being cited? – conference proceedings, manufacturers’ publications, other military academic papers, and the specialist defence press. I looked at one random example, and found that it cited material from Jane’s more than 15 times.

Irrelevant example. Academic theses from military colleges available on the net have to cite public sources, as flawed as they may be. On the other hand, detailed studies, which are mostly not available on the net, often evaluate and reject shallow material even if available from Janes or whatsoever group.

But what you and some other critics seem to be suggesting is that the articles in the defence press that military academics and analysts use as source material is highly unreliable. In your view, we professionals have apparently been unable to realise this, but the clever chaps on enthusiast fora have.

Lest you are still confused about this, you are not the only professional out there and let me be frank, there are enough folks who have voiced the same opinions that I have & more forcefully.

Your touting your opinion as those held by “military academics and analysts” while seeking to dismiss those of others as being merely those of “enthusiast fora”, are merely the same old same old one has come to expect from a defence journalist community which is resistant to probity and being called out for its lapses.

As matter of fact, those who use the data that the journalists churn out end up wasting tons of their time rechecking claims which should not have been made in the first place.

The main faction that expresses dissatisfaction with the defence press are the on-line fora. Is it really credible to think that they are right and the industry and military are being hoodwinked by all those wicked and incompetent journalists? Not a credible hypothesis in my book.

The on-line fora expresses dissatisfaction because they are neither bound by the you-scratch-my-back-i-scratch-yours culture that pervades many of your august publications, with many “journalists” having worked across the “industry” and on friendly terms with their peers who frequently make mistakes.

On-line fora, for all their rustic & intemperate behaviour, are at the end of the day, far more democratic & offer a voice to people who’d otherwise not have the time of the day to get their opinions, backed by industry expertise, heard.

Further, people willingly & freely share information on boards such as these, above & beyond what one gets from many subscription sources. They are neither bound by or affected by the commercial interests that many of your journals are affected by – and if you claim these don’t exist, there is a red bridge in the US, which goes cheap and which I own and would like to sell you.

I must confess that I would be much more impressed by claims of journalistic incompetence that appear in this and other fora if those who make such charges documented instances of major factual error. For example, did the journalist write “Power is transmitted to lift fan via a single drive shaft made of maraging steel” when in practice there are twin drive shafts made from titanium?

Then perhaps you should have spent more time on forums, because most folks have at one time or the other “fisk”‘ed many of these so called articles. The exigencies of actually working through the week, cut into the pleasures of exposing such rubbish.

I can’t help wondering if many if not most of these alleged journalistic errors are not errors of fact, but cases where the journalist’s opinion or interpretation of the situation differs from that of the critic. A critic who is convinced that his views are right will inevitably think that opposing views are wrong.

Hardly. Its one thing to have an opinion – many do. But the bloopers & rubbish that are often printed in defence journals go above & beyond those. There are acts of commission & omission – plus those of sheer laziness.

These can range from calling the radar on the Su-30 MKI a Phazatron set (as Flight did) after a decade of it being in service, of another reporter publishing an uninformative rant on Indian aerospace despite claiming to be an Aero India special (not an inch of worthwhile data on programs) while boasting a pedigree of a decade plus of writing on defence aerospace (sic.) while college students who visited the show did better. It goes on & on & on…

Inevitably, what is a neutral viewpoint to one man is a biased viewpoint to another. When the ‘International Defense Review’ published an account of the Falklands War in 1982, so many Latin American readers complained that the article was biased, that the magazine commissioned a second account from a Latin American journalist. It was duly published, but the editor insisted on adding a series of footnotes drawing attention to statements in the article that could be demonstrated to be wrong. Was the editor correct to do this, or was this another example of bias?

Did IDR do the same to its own account of the Falklands war? If not, then yes it was bias. They should have published a separate article as a rejoinder instead of trying to be over smart & claiming to publish a second account but seeking to undermine it from within the text itself.

Published press reports are part of the raw material I work with every day. Of course they contain errors. I saw one the other day, but don’t see that as evidence of incompetence by the journalist in question. Any human activity requiring precision involves inevitable errors. I have made my share. That is why (for example) the manufacture and servicing of aircraft involves such comprehensive inspection.

A couple of errors are one thing. Sheer laziness when it comes to fact checking, demonstrated over many articles entirely another. And there are many “defence journalists/analysts” who are getting by despite such behaviour.

While not always completely accurate, reports from the technical press are far more reliable than much of which appears on this forum.

I’d take what a handful of serious posters write on this forum over a bulk of the technical press anyday.

If I am speaking from personal experience, I cannot satisfy the GivvusALink brigade. So I mention selective parts of it only in order to show that I have some professional knowledge of the areas I’m talking about.

Irrelevant.

I am certainly not boasting of great achievements, given that in practice my industrial career had its fair share of Cancelled Projects, Unsuccessful Projects, and Too-Late-To-Be-Successful Projects. But that was the nature of the 1950s to 1960s UK aerospace scene. It was not surprising that like many others I started to consider sunnier climes.

Again, irrelevant. This is not about you, but about those who DONT share your background but continue to churn out high wordcount less informative rubbish.

Not many charlatans in my profession – clients don’t write cheques for unsatisfactory work, and there are no second chances.

The record of many defence journals speaks to the contrary.

A working lunch is not a ‘perk’, but often the only way of connecting to top industry people at a trade show. The point I was trying to make was not that she was in danger of malnutrition but that she simply could not get the whole story because she needed to head off for her next appointment.

Then that is something she should fix by scheduling a follow on appointment, either by phone or mail. Sorry, but this is not an excuse.

You forgot to mention hurrying from one location to another that could be at the other end of the show. Events such as Farnborough and le Bourget are huge, and a significant part of the professional visitors’ day is spend walking from one chalet to another and from one hall to another. I’m convinced that the reason that ‘Flight’ used to have the best show dailies was that it equipped its staffers with bikes. So they spent less time ‘in transit’ and more time doing interviews.

Another reason could be that those interviews…were interviews, with verbatim quotes & data. As versus journalistic interpretations of said interview.

I can recall seeing an advert for a job as a defence journalist, and working out how many words per week it would involve, and going a bit pale after I’d comparing it with the time it took me to write technical reports in my industry job. The attractions of that potential change of career started to shrivel when I realised the increased pace of work that this would have involved.

Much of the stuff appearing in many defence journals is hardly information packed technical reportage. It contains of a few nuggets of info packed with a lot of filler. Quotes do the rest. You are making the process sound harder than it is.

Word count is important. I’ve never opened a newspaper or magazine and seen blank pages in the finished product. Same goes in other writing endeavours. If I’m commissioned to write a 70,000 word book, the publisher will be most unhappy if I deliver only 50,000.

We are not talking of books here, but magazine articles.

“Publish and be dammed?” Not for many decades. One UK defence magazine run by a friend of mine was put out of business in the 1980s by a legal case after it had published an article whose subject resorted to law.

One only wishes it happened more. Perhaps then, quality would rise.

Selective letters? What proof do you have for such an assertion? I can offer an example of the contrary. During the Greenham Common anti-cruise missile campaign, “Flight” declined to respond to massive numbers of ‘stock’ letters sent in by protestors, but did publish a selection that had been custom-written and showed original thought. You don’t need to take my word for it; the magazine has a searchable archive.

The proof that I have is what I have personally observed. If you have not seen this happen first hand, then all I can say is that, despite your obvious experience, you have missed out on the more unsavory parts of your trade and are displaying the shock shown by the emperors courtiers when pointed out his highness was not wearing any clothes.

We are in fantasy land here. Having had articles published in the technical press, I can assure you that whether generated in house or commissioned, copy is not meekly published. It is checked for factors such as readability, balance, fairness, and potential legal problems by experienced copy editors.

Many thanks for your assurance, but I can assure you that you are the one in fantasy land, and firmly so. The record speaks for itself. As I said, the matter stands where it is today, that a certain prime magazine’s correspondent is persona non grata with a certain air arm, after having deliberately published misleading claims, in order to appeal to a certain target demographic who purchases his magazine. The reality, as versus the anodyne utopia you mentioned.

If you were to stop and fact-check every single fact in a document, that process would take an impractical amount of time – much more than your hypothetical half an hour. So inevitably, any writer relies partly on memory, and checks what he is unsure of. But memory is not perfect, and you can ‘bet your bottom dollar’ that the error that brings wrath down on your head will be a fact that you’d pulled out of memory.

Guess what, most folks in many professions are expected to stop and check facts in their work.

That is exactly the problem. In may earlier posting I postulated a journalist attending a defence exhibition having to talk to a tank company, an aircraft company, an electro-optical company, a submarine builder, an electronics company, and a small arms company, in the course of a single day. On the next day, he or she might have to tackle interviews on aero engines, robotics, body armour, ammunition, and simulation. The next day might involve UAVs, bridging equipment, command-and-control systems, and so on. It is hard to maintain a working competence in so many areas.

The issue is not of working competence in some areas, the issue is of massive incompetence across several and still publishing.

That is a good question, and one that any professional user of the professional defence press has to face. The only solution is to read, and over time find out how reliable each journalist is.

Journalist A might be good on the politics of defence procurement, but weak on technology.

Journalist B might be good on warships and naval technology, but a bit shaky on aerospace.

Journalist C might be good on technology, but have a poor understanding of tactics and operational matters.

Journalist D might simply be an ‘also ran’, struggling to cope, and likely to face a change of career before long.

Journalist E might be an experienced combat officer, but with little understanding of the practical problems of high-technology manufacturing.

In short, they are like any other profession – some are extremely good, some are bad ‘uns, but most are fairly competent at their jobs. If they were not, they would soon be swelling the ranks of the unemployed. It is like any other job – if you cannot to the job properly, you will be fired.

If any types are writing on areas outside their ken and mucking up, then they shouldn’t be, as simple as that. Or they should be willing to improve and demonstrate it. Merely calling them good won’t do.

I both know Tmor and Scorpion, and regularly talk with them (via forum) 😎

And i know they are very reliable and knowledgable sources (in fact i very recently asked Scorpion where to find a comprehensive summary of Eurofighter evolutions). Aswell as some others. But what Merurius pointed is that journalist cannot be as specialized as they are… And i intended to quote myself as an amateur…
If you like as uch as i do Tmor site, you may also find those two sites interesting : http://rafalefan.e-monsite.com/blog/7/
http://rafalenews.blogspot.fr/

Have a nice day!

Thanks for the links. I’d take both of the people you mentioned above many of the so called specialized journalists, as at least I know both of these guys are honest & do decent research. I just got my hands on one more of the so called “internationally acclaimed” aviation mags. Its nothing but pictures interspersed with dodgy unreliable text. Every third page is an advert.

Wasnt the SRSAM recently agreed upon / contracted between GoI and French?

It was mentioned to be a $6 billion program.

Yes, the final agreements around who’d do what etc were agreed on when Hollande recently visited India. But GOI approval is pending. Because as soon as they do, and the program is launched, money has to be allocated, which is why I’d assume it’ll be after the next fiscal starts (later this year).

—

Also, what is the difference between PDV and PAD? I didnt know there was a new missile under development for Phase 1 BMD.

Thanks a bunch.

PDV is solid fuelled (primary) with a more sophisticated end game system (second stage). It is likely to have an IIR or a combined IIR/RF seeker system. It should be able to go up higher & take out faster targets as well. Typically, the longer ranged the ballistic missile system, the faster its speed. Since the BMD is all about hitting a bullet with a bullet, even incremental improvements are welcome.
The solid fueled part (IMO) is amongst the most significant.

The BMD Phase 1 is technically ready with the PAD/AAD combo, but a PDV would be a more logistics friendly system on account of being solid fuelled. You can deploy it to places wherein Prithvi infrastructure does not exist.

So why are the ‘know-it-alls’ like you not taking over their jobs and showing how it should be done? Some years ago, I travelled back from a defence show in the company of the editor of a well-known defence magazine. He told me that he was always looking out for new talent, and was bemoaning the fact that he could find little.

But I suspect that you would not survive more than a few weeks under the stress of a newsroom operation.

Perhaps you should try the simple exercise of counting the number of words in a professional defence magazine and dividing that total by the number of journalists that the magazine employs, and seeing what their weekly or monthly output must be in terms of published pages. Then try to imagine working at that pace for the rest of your professional life.

You may have 1,700 forum postings to your credit, but if the 180 words that made up the posting that I am responding to is a typical length, that means you have generated only some 30,000 words. That’s no more than the equivalent of about 40 pages of a typical magazine or professional journal. Not a lot for someone who has his or her share of a magazine’s pages to fill.

Today’s mail brought me the latest issue of a magazine in which I have a couple of published items. Only about 7-8 pages in all, but I remember only too well much work and time writing them took. And I have already spotted the first mistake. Perhaps I have qualified as one of your cretins.

I ‘have it lucky’ at defence shows. I’m a grey-haired gentleman well past retirement age who has only a limited number of professional topics to cover for a limited number of clients. And all these topics are in areas where I have some internationally recognised professional expertise.

At a recent show, I found myself lunching at the same table as a well-known young lady reporter. (Perhaps she is also on your cretins list?). She had time to eat her starter and a few mouthfuls of the main course before having to grab her briefcase and run to her next appointment. The senior engineer who was hosting the lunch was happy to expound on his subject for another hour or more (much to the delight of one of my professional clients) but the relentless show schedule meant that most of his audience had to move on.

I asked the editor of a major defence magazine if the lady reporter’s problem was normal. He showed me his diary for that day, with appointments at 30 minute intervals stretching from breakfast time until late evening.

Even in my younger days I could not have survived that pace, and I’d love to see you trying – moving from a tank company to an aircraft company to an electro-optical company, to a submarine builder, to an electronics company, and finishing up with a small arms company, while effortlessly demonstrating your expertise and knowledge in all these areas.

I could not do it, and I doubt if you could either. But to stand on the sidelines and criticise? That’s fairly easy.

Actually, your post above is an undeserving defense on behalf of fools who deserve none of it.

Even more surprising, given the rapid manner in which you descended to an ad hominem argument. “Know it all” apparently for just noticing the obvious.

Why the thin skin? Surprising.

I can guess at your history – especially given how often you mention it, and your professional history & I’d have placed you in the ranks of the few who are both knowledgeable and sincere.

But then again – it seems that for all your own achievements, you seem to lack the ability to distinguish between the charlatans who do inhabit your profession, as versus people like yourself.

If you can’t see the difference, more’s the pity.

And what exactly is this rubbish?

But I suspect that you would not survive more than a few weeks under the stress of a newsroom operation.

She had time to eat her starter and a few mouthfuls of the main course before having to grab her briefcase and run to her next appointment. The senior engineer who was hosting the lunch was happy to expound on his subject for another hour or more (much to the delight of one of my professional clients) but the relentless show schedule meant that most of his audience had to move on.

I asked the editor of a major defence magazine if the lady reporter’s problem was normal. He showed me his diary for that day, with appointments at 30 minute intervals stretching from breakfast time until late evening.

Even in my younger days I could not have survived that pace, and I’d love to see you trying – moving from a tank company to an aircraft company to an electro-optical company, to a submarine builder, to an electronics company, and finishing up with a small arms company, while effortlessly demonstrating your expertise and knowledge in all these areas.

Oh poor thing! She barely had time to grab a bite to eat. She had a busy schedule, much worse!

Which world are you living in? You think the rest of the world has it easy?

In the course of work, millions have gone days & nights without an iota of sleep. Meals are routinely skipped.

People who routinely work long hours with minimal expectation because their professions & fields require the same.

You expect me & the millions of other worker bees to have some sympathy for some person who has barely enough time to have lunch (sob, sob) while doing interviews? How freaking hard.

Ah the toils of this poor journalists life, going to arms shows & spending time talking to people.

Guess what, been there, done that. Several times over.

Its NOTHING in terms of both complexity, and stress levels when compared to being a developer, or a manager, or a sales person or one of the umpteen other professions which require back breaking toil at the drop of a hat.

And given you would have worn those hats one time or the other, do go back & think how relentless your schedule was then. At that point of time. Unless you were one of the rare few who could set his own schedule and operate by that.

That should also answer your questions why the rest of us are not “taking over” this very hard profession etc etc. Its simply not satisfying for many of us.

Other folks may like it for a bunch of their own reasons.

But all of this is besides the point, since none of it, excuses the lack of quality in many “articles”, which by your statements, seem to be all around the all important word count.

I routinely see the worst trash, printed in newsmagazines, defense journals, by asinine journalists or cretins, if you would prefer, by “authors”

a) lack the expertise in topic of interest
b) are not interested in acquiring it (as demonstrated by follow on articles remaining mediocre)
c) have zilch accountability (publish, and publish, who cares)

Hacks churning out a lot of copy & then repeating the same bilge again and again, with selective “letters to the editor” published – as long as they are adulatory or dwell on the minor errata.

That coupled that with a tendency of many “journalists” to routinely act like a “know it all” in terms of making bloopers, yet be judgmental, pick sides – yet headline as a neutral observer & so forth…then he/she deserve to be called out.

I know of one prominent “journalist” who is no longer welcome to visit a prominent region of coverage, after he openly picked sides thanks to commercial interests. Did he change his spots? No, he continues merrily. Without an iota of introspection.

Many others who routinely write entire screeds without an iota of fact checking. A half hour spent doing research would have been enough. But no, why should they bother?

Only a very limited bunch of people (DTI’s BillS or a handful of “greybeards” in some other defence journals, aviation specialists eg Steve Davies and a few others) can now be relied on to provide some level of serious insight into defence related topics.

Unfortunately, you, they etc are in the minority & no matter how much you may attack me for voicing that the emperor has no clothes, the reality is that undeserving, overprivileged hacks are the majority, and do spoil the impression the media puts across.

Really? On what platform?

Sukanya class OPVs, two of which are publicly reported to have received the Dhanush. Given there are six of the class and that the Navy was very keen to acquire Ballistic Missile capability, more of them having been converted is also a possibility.

http://www.deccanchronicle.com/130127/news-current-affairs/article/%E2%80%982013-will-be-astra-year%E2%80%99

The year 2013 will be Astra Year when the next stage of flight trials for the ‘beyond-visual-range-air-to-air missile’ will be carried out. Tejas, Mirage 2000, Su-30 MKI and Sea Harrie will also be integrated with the same.

A 1998 Padma Shri awardee, Dr Saraswat revealed that the DRDO has got orders worth Rs 1,42,000 crore in the last five years from defence forces for developing products and the next 3-5 years would witness induction of DRDO-developed weapons and systems to the tunes of `80,000 crores into the forces. The first phase of Ballistic Missile Defence is ready for deployment and can intercept and engage missiles upto 2,000 kms.

Astra will witness at least eight flight tests in 2013 and hopefully the IAF can start the user trials by 2014 said Dr Saraswat.

1,42,000 Crore = 1,420, 000 million
$26 Billion worth of orders for DRDO products in the last five years. A huge change! The basic winners here are the DPUSs who have reaped the windfall of successful DRDO designs and being the designated manufacturers.

Eight tests of Astra this year & user trials in 2014 confirm that the earlier issues with the original design have been overcome as reported earlier.

Thanks, first official depiction of the MAWS intended for fighters and why India didn’t go for the ones on the MKM.

EW fit from AI 2011. Digital Receiver to upgrade RWRs and allow them to detect exotic radars, including LPI. Also note the model of the Su-30, a fit very similar to the Su-30 MKIs in Russian livery with SAP jammers on centerline and wingtip.

As versus AWST

The SAP 14 has already been exported, according to a Knirti brochure. The brochure shows the pod fitted to what it describes as an Su-30MKI (pictured below). The aircraft, side number 02, is believed to have been involved in the Su-30MKI development for India, suggesting that the SAP 14 may have at least been on offer.

SAP-14 covers 1-4 GHz
SAP 518 (wingtips) covers 5-18 GHz

PAF ORBAT per FlightGlobal

F7 142
F16 A/C 36
F16 B/D 27
jf-17 30 (120 on order)
Mirage 3 69 (Mirage 3EP/OF/RP)
2 seaters 18
Mirage 5 84 (Mirage 5EF/F/PA)
2 seaters 2
.

AWIN (Aviation Week) suggests more F7s and fewer Mirages:

F7: 160 (103 F7P and 57 PG)

Mirages 131 (but says Mirage 3: 82, Mirage 5:49) which could be a typo instead of 151, or could mean fewer operational airframes