Defense

Singh took over the command of NSG on Monday, 10 days after the Appointments Committee of the Cabinet (ACC) led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi approved his appointment as the Director General of the ‘Black Cats commando’ force. The ACC had approved Singh’s appointment to the post on October 18.

The demonstration of the operational mechanism of a land-based prototype of the Air Independent Propulsion system, engineered to fit on a submarine, was carried out at the Naval Materials Research Laboratory in Ambernath in the presence of Navy Chief Admiral Karambir Singh.

According to the officials, the only place where China has proposed an early resolution is Sikkim – where the Indian Army dominates the Chumbi Valley with the Bhutanese Army on the other side. India and China have a 3,488-km long unresolved border with 13 mutually agreed disputed points and other sensitive points. China is strengthening its border defences, and India finally replaced mule trains with truck convoys to replenish Indian Army positions at Daulet Beg Oldi near the Karakoram pass.

A senior officer on the condition of anonymity said, “The Army has designated troop units and helipads for quick reinforcement of border forces in case of flare-ups and marked them with exact responsibilities to meet repeat events.”

The SOI was signed during the ninth meeting of DTTI Group, which held on October 24 and was co-chaired by Subhash Chandra, Secretary, Defence Production, from the Indian Ministry of Defence and Ellen M Lord, Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment, from the US Department of Defense.

As part of Exercise Shakti-2019, French troops arrived in India on October 26 for training with their Indian counterparts. The bilateral training exercise will be conducted at Foreign Training Node at Mahajan Field Firing Ranges, Rajasthan. The bilateral exercise will be conducted from October 31 to November 13.

NEW DELHI: With the IAF now fully backing the indigenous development of a fifth-generation fighter aircraft (FGFA), it’s all systems go for the desi stealth jet. The defence establishment plans to seek the Cabinet Committee on Security’s approval for the detailed design and prototype development of the advanced medium combat aircraft (AMCA) by early next year.
The twin-engine AMCA will basically combine advanced stealth, supercruise (the capability to achieve supersonic cruise speeds without the use of afterburners), super-manoeuverability, data fusion and multi-sensor integration with AESA (active electronically scanned array) radars.

Development of a FGFA is an extremely complex and costly affair, with the American F/A-22 Raptors and F-35 Lightning-II Joint Strike Fighters being the only fully-operational ones around the globe at present. “Both the Chinese J-20 and the Russian Sukhoi PAK-FA do not have the requisite super-cruise and stealth capabilities,” said a senior IAF officer.

DRDO, in turn, rejects widespread concern the developmental saga of the “swing-role” AMCA may go the same way as the long-delayed Tejas light combat aircraft. “The design work on AMCA began in 2009. By 2014-2015, the fighter’s configuration, in tune with IAF requirements, had been worked out. But the problem was that there was no engine,” said a scientist.
Consequently, the decision has now been taken to go in for two squadrons of AMCA Mark-I with the “available” General Electric-414 afterburning turbofan engine in the 98 Kilonewton thrust class.

“The next five to six squadrons of AMCA Mark-II will have a more powerful 110 Kilonewton engine, which will be developed indigenously with foreign collaboration parallelly. The supercruise of Mark-I will be slightly limited due to the older engine but it will be upgraded in Mark-II,” said a source.
After the Rs 400 crore design sanction for AMCA in December 2018, it will now take “another seven to eight months” for the nod for the prototype development phase at a cost of around Rs 7,000-8,000 crore, which will be required over a decade, said sources.
As per existing plans, the 25-tonne AMCA’s “roll-out from the hangar to the runway” will take place by 2024-2025, with the first test-flight a year after that. “By 2029, the clearance to begin production of AMCA Mark-I should come. Mark-II production, in turn, should begin by 2035,” said the source.
DRDO says the advanced technologies to make AMCA a stealth fighter range from “serpentine air-intake” and an internal weapon bay (internal carriage of smart weapons) to radar absorbing materials and conformal antennae. “Most of the designing for stealth shaping of AMCA has already been done,” he said.

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The plan is to produce the single-engine Tejas in greater numbers, with the IAF already committed to acquiring 123 of them. Another 200 Tejas Mark-II, with more powerful engines and advanced avionics, will be inducted at a later stage.
“The first test-flight of Tejas Mark-II or the MWF (medium weight fighter) should take place by 2023. The specialised AMCA, which will cost double the Tejas Mark-II, will be inducted in smaller numbers … stealth aircraft are expensive,” said the source.

The exercises with the two countries will be conducted in a tri-service format (involving their armies, navies and air forces) — for the first time with the US and the second with Russia. The first India-US tri-services military exercise named Tiger Triumph will be held in November off India’s east coast, while the Indra drills with the Russians will be staged off the west coast in December, said one of the officials cited above.

According to reports, the helicopter crashed at an altitude of 11,500 feet at the Kedarnath helipad, just short of the Kedarnath shrine, a few days back. With transporting the wreckage to a lower region being next to impossible due to only foot track connectivity to Kedarnath, the company, through the state civil administration, requested the IAF to help it evacuate the crashed helicopter before the closure of the shrine at month-end.

For the Indian Navy, access to French southern Indian Ocean territories would mean longer deployment missions in regions where visible flag-waving is seen as crucial to counter growing Chinese naval presence. Earlier this month, Indian Vice-President Venkaiah Naidu had visited Comoros – following in the steps of President Ram Nath Kovind’s trip to Madagascar last year.