Defense

Underlining the need to reduce dependency on arms imports, Defence Minister said several steps have been taken under the Make in India initiative to make the country a major defence manufacturing hub and net defence exporter. The government would not hesitate to initiate more measures, if required, he added.

In a joint investigation by the Narcotics Control Bureau and the local police, it was revealed that suspicious substance in the gunny bags was ketamine, a psychotrophic substance, and there were 1,160 packets of 1 kg each worth Rs 300 crore in the international market, they said. Defence Minister Rajnath Singh congratulated the Coast Guard for apprehending the ship.

“The first P17A frigate ‘Nilgiri’ will be launched on September 28. Since, it is named after the previous frigate which was part of a series of six ships, so the remaining names will also follow till the sixth ship,” said Vice Admiral G Ashok Kumar, the vice chief of the Navy. “For the seventh frigate, we have identified one more in the series — ‘Mahendragiri’,” he said.

The Army’s new concept of offensive operations is a combination of ‘cold start’ — the ability to launch quick strikes across the International Border (IB) without prior warning by moving rapidly to battle positions from the cantonments — and the employment of ‘integrated batt le groups’. IBGs are offensive forces usually formed at divisional level to penetrate across the IB over a wide front but not necessarily strike too deeply.

The tail number of the first Rafale aircraft to India is RB-01. Air Marshal RKS Bhadauria, PVSM, AVSM, VM, ADC, will take over as 26th Chief of the Air Staff. He will be taking over the command from the Chairman Chiefs of Staff Committee & Chief of the Air Staff, Air Chief Marshal BS Dhanoa, PVSM, AVSM, YSM, VM, ADC, who is due to retire by the end of the month.

“We will begin the work of redeveloping the Rajpath area by February 2021. The present condition needs complete revamp. Go and look at the state of electricity poles and the chaos of traffic and street vendors there and compare it to the Central Vistas of other capitals like Paris or Washington DC. Interestingly, all the central vistas of these places is the same, three kilometres. We have the space and we need to modernise ours,” a senior official at the ministry of housing and urban affairs said.

The planned system will collate data and footage from a vast multitude o surveillance cameras spread throughout the country; the facial recognition system will also be linked with government databases containing information such as passport details and fingerprints of millions of citizens.

In the inhospitable terrains, like the Chinese frontier and along the Line of Control, the Army is only dependent on foot patrols. But with enhanced technology through artificial intelligence, that can pinpoint any movement and give specific locations, surveillance could be much stronger. To boost its artificial intelligence, the Indian Army is conducting a first of its kind brainstorming session at the field formation level in Hisar to interact with experts and industry representatives.

India had signed an inter-governmental agreement with France in September 2016 for procurement of 36 Rafale fighter jets at a cost of around Rs 58,000 crore. Defence Minister Rajnath Singh is set to receive the first of 36 Rafale fighter jets in Paris on October 8 – the foundation day of the Indian Air Force, according to government sources.

Indian Army currently has some 49 Mechanised Infantry Battallions. According to former Major General SB Asthana, the vehicle will be used in all sectors that face a threat, including the crucial northern, western and eastern sectors that are threatened by Pakistan and China. “It will swim crossing water obstacles, move across country and will even operate in the valleys of Sikkim and Ladakh.”