Amphibious vessels to strengthen Navy

The government has cleared the Rs 2,176-crore acquisition of eight specialised vessels or LCUs (landing craft utility), capable of "hard beaching" on enemy shores, to boost the country's amphibious warfare and island protection capabilities.

This comes even as the defence ministry is finalizing another project to acquire four huge amphibious warfare ships, called Landing Platform Docks (LPDs) for "stand-off beaching", for around Rs 16,000 crore.

The LCUs and LPDs will help in swiftly transporting thousands of troops, heavy weapon systems and infantry combat vehicles over long distances to take the battle right to the enemy mainland.

The Cabinet Committee on Security cleared the LCU project for the eight amphibious assault vessels, to be built by the Kolkata-based defence PSU Garden Reach Shipbuilders and Engineers Ltd, a couple of days ago. "The first LCU will be delivered in three years," said an official.

The LCUs are likely to be based at India's first and only regional 'theatre command', the strategically-located Andaman and Nicobar Command (ANC), which will complete 10 years of existence next month.

With additional airstrips, OTR (operational turn around) bases and jetties, ANC is slowly being transformed into a major amphibious warfare hub. A strong military presence in the 572-island archipelago is considered imperative to counter China's strategic moves in the Indian Ocean as well as ensure security of the sea lanes converging towards Malacca Strait.

The armed forces have been sharpening their amphibious warfare skills with a series of exercises over the last few years to practice blitzkrieg assaults on enemy territory from the sea.

All this gained momentum after the induction of the 16,900-tonne INS Jalashwa, known as USS Trenton earlier, and its six UH-3H Sea King troop-carrying helicopters for around $88 million from the US in 2007.

The second-hand Jalashwa, currently undergoing a refit, has given the Navy "strategic sealift capabilities" since it is capable of transporting four landing craft, six helicopters and a battalion of 1,000 fully-armed soldiers or a squadron of tanks over large distances.

The Army, on its part, has three specifically-earmarked amphibious brigades, with almost 10,000 soldiers, one based in South India, another in West India and the third at ANC.

The Navy in recent years has also inducted other large amphibious warships like INS Airavat, which can carry 10 main-battle tanks, 11 combat trucks and 500 soldiers.

Incidentally, the four new LPDs, which will be built by Hindustan Shipyard (HSL) as well as private shipyards in collaboration with a foreign manufacturer, will be similar to Jalashwa in terms of size and sea-lift capabilities.


- Times of India

On the anvil: 5th generation Super Sukhois

(Rediff) : The upgradation of the existing fleet of the Sukhoi-30MKI jets of the Indian Air Force, will enhance them with fifth generation fighter technology, thereby making them Super Sukhoi fighters.

Alexey Fedorov, chief of the Sukhoi-making Russian company, Irkut, said at the recently concluded biennial airshow -- MAKS-2011 -- in Zhukovsky near Moscow , that the Sukhoi upgradation has two components, for which technical negotiations are on. One includes the modernisation of the aircraft to fit the BrahMos missile's air version on it, and the other is to upgrade the existing five Sukhoi-30MKI squadrons of the IAF. Approximately, 100 Su-30MKI aircraft are divided into five squadrons, and the IAF plans to have about 270 of these aircraft in the long run.

These upgraded Super Sukhois will have a better lifecycle engine, be fitted with a modern glass cockpit, and the aircraft will be able to carry more weapons with a larger range. Fedorov said the number of aircraft the IAF wants upgraded, will be done, beginning with the current fleet. 
About the radar, the Super Sukhois are likely to be installed with the AESA (active electronically scanned array) radar, made by the Russian Tikhomirov's NIIP.

Test pilot Yury Vaschuk, who made the first public flight of the Sukhoi-35 fighter jet at the airshow, said, "The IAF's Su-30MKI upgrade will bring the aircraft close to the Su-35 aircraft, which already has fifth generation features." Vaschuk, who has clocked 70 hours on the Su-35, said both the Su-30 and Su-35 belonged to the Su-27 family, from which originated the fifth generation fighter, called the PAK-FA/T-50, which also debuted at the MAKS airshow this year. The Su-35 is a twin-engined, single cockpit, multi-role aircraft with a digital fly-by-wire controls.

Hindustan Aeronautics Limited Chairman Ashok Nayak said there was no progress on the Sukhoi upgrade, and it was yet to be finalised.
Refusing to divulge the exact amount on the upgrade, Fedorov said it was a large programme and would run into several billions of dollars, and that it was likely to be concluded in this financial year. Russia  hopes to start the upgradation in 2012 and finish the first aircraft by 2014.  

Also, those manufactured under licence by HAL will be upgraded. Discussions are on to finalise the upgradation of different types of aircraft, said Fedorov.  


Suman Sharma

India - Just One More To Go

The fifth of six C-130J Super Hercules on order for the Indian Air Force has departed the Lockheed Martin facility in Marietta. This aircraft, like its predecessors, was delivered well ahead of schedule and is now en route to Air Force Station Hindan in India. India’s sixth C-130J will be delivered in October.

- Lockheed Martin(press)

CAG pulls up IAF for radar damage

(Zeenews) : New Delhi: The Indian Air Force (IAF) was on Thursday reprimanded by the CAG for causing damage to an aerostat radar deployed along the Pakistan border to monitorlow-flying enemy aircraft resulting in a loss of Rs 302 crore.

In its report tabled today in Parliament, the CAG said the accident took place in May 2009 due to "failure" of its three officers and the critical radar is likely to get operational only by the end of next year.

The accident has hit the surveillance capabilities of the IAF with one of its two aerostat radars procured from Israel getting damaged.

The report said a Court of Inquiry to investigate the causes of the accident involving the Rs 338 crore aerostat "held three officers responsible for their failure in adequate supervision" of the maintenance activities.

"All the three officers were awarded severe displeasure (censured) for six months as they failed to carry out their responsibilities," the report said.

Slamming the Air Force for the mishap, the CAG said the repair of the damaged system is estimated to cost Rs 302 crore.

"The recovery programme of the damaged aerostat would take 18 months from the commencement of repair work. However, the IAF could issue the RFP to vendor for damage assessment in April 2010 and the contract was not concluded by June 2011," it said.

The CAG said that by the time IAF makes the aerostat operational by 2012, 80 per cent of its prescribed life would have been completed.

The government auditor said against the authorised four meteorological officers and nine meteorological assistants, "the Unit had no meteorological officers and only two meteorological assistants were there."

PTI

CAG raps Indian Navy for buying combat planes sans weapons

(The Deccan Herald) : The Indian Navy came in for a hard rap from the government auditor Thursday for buying Russian MiG-29K combat planes without their weapons systems, rendering them toothless.

In its latest report presented to parliament, the Comptroller and Auditor General said the navy followed a flawed approach in acquiring its new fighter aircraft fleet by not finalising the associated weapon package along with the contract for the aircraft. The aircraft will be deployed on the carrier INS Vikramaditya when it is commissioned in the navy about two years from now after a refit in a Russian shipyard. Of the 19 aircraft bought for $526 million in March 2004, 11 were delivered by Russia between December 2009 and May 2011. But, "no item of armament contracted in March 2006 had been delivered as of October 2010 adversely affecting the operational capabilities of the aircraft." Further, the navy had selected a Beyond Visual Range (BVR) missile, a critical weapon system that provided the aircraft capability to shoot down enemy aircraft long distances away, with "an unsatisfactory track record" with the Indian Air Force (IAF). The IAF had bought the same BVR missiles for its Soviet-origin MiG series combat aircraft between 1999 and 2002, and had found its serviceablity "unreliable". The navy had bought 40 of the air-to-air BVR missiles for $21.88 million (Rs.97.67 crore) "Lastly, the complete armament package finalised for the (MiG-29K) aircraft contains certain ammunition worth $20.98 million (Rs.93.68 crore) which did not have the approval of the competent authority," the CAG report said.

Lockheed starts final assembly on last F-22A

(FlightGlobal) : Lockheed Martin has started final assembly on the last F-22A Raptor ordered by the US Air Force, but the delivered fleet remains grounded over concerns about the pilot's breathing system inside the cockpit.
Lockheed has mated the fuselage sections of the F-22A with USAF serial number 09-4195. In final assembly, the company's workers in Marietta, Georgia, will instal the wings, tails, landing gear and Pratt & Whitney F119 engines, among other avionics integration and check-out tasks.
The last of 195 aircraft ordered by the USAF, including 185 remaining operational airframes, is now scheduled for delivery early in the second quarter of 2012.
The updated schedule is delayed slightly from the company's plan last year to deliver the last F-22A before March. Lockheed halted deliveries to the USAF while the F-22 was ordered grounded by the Air Combat Command after 3 May.
That order continued to be in effect after this article went to press, although the fleet's status could change quickly.
Although the fleet is technically grounded, some F-22As have been allowed to fly for specific reasons. As Hurricane Irene approached the US east coast in late August, the USAF scrambled F-22As and other fighters away from Langley AFB, Virginia.
USAF officials have confirmed that hypoxia was ruled out as a potential cause of the fatal F-22 crash at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, Alaska, last November. The actual cause of the incident has not been released.
That unexplained crash and a string of reports of hypoxia illness prompted the USAF to voluntarily stand down the F-22A fleet. The service is continuing to study aircraft onboard oxygen generating systems (OBOGS) for the F-22A and several other aircraft, including the Lockheed F-35A.
The OBOGS investigation is led by a scientific advisory committee chaired by Gregory Martin, a retired USAF general and fighter pilot.

On the Move

(Force) : Army’s force modernisation plans designed to make pro-active warfighting strategy a reality
Since late 2002, post OP Parakram (the 10-month eyeball-to-eyeball standoff with Pakistan starting December 2001), Indian Army HQ, has been in the process of conceptualising its future warfighting doctrines. It has also been working on the strategies and tactics required for waging ‘hyperwar’ or multi-dimensional parallel warfare — the optimum pro-active warfighting strategy (mistakenly referred to as the non-existent Cold Start Doctrine by both Indian and foreign think-tanks) that is designed to both reduce the mobilisation time of its offensive formations and their break-out into Pakistan (within a 72-hour period) in a series of shallow thrusts going no deeper than 30km into enemy territory. This is meant to ameliorate the Indian Army’s disadvantage of longer external lines of communications as compared with the Pakistan Army’s advantage of deploying and switching its warfighting formations along interior lines of communications. Given the fact that the next round of all-out war between the two countries will be short, swift and intense, the 1.13 million-strong Indian Army believes that instead of making multiple Corps-level thrusts deep into enemy territory, the objective should be to force the Pakistan Army to commit its operational reserves into battle at the very early stages of the war. Following which, the Indian Army would employ superior operational art backed up by network-centric war-waging technologies to envelop and overwhelm the hostile forces by waging effects-based ‘parallel’ or ‘hyper’ war, thereby destroying the enemy’s war-waging assets in detail.

However, several questions remain unanswered till today. For instance, what will be the usefulness of the three armour-heavy offensive Strike Corps and the Armoured Battle Groups, depending on the theatre of war? Should the three existing Strike Corps be placed under a new Strategic Command? What will be the quantum of close air support and battlespace air interdiction provided by the Indian Air Force (IAF) to compensate for the army’s inferiority in field artillery within the first 72 hours of hostilities breaking out, considering that early in the war the IAF’s air campaigns will be monopolised by air superiority and counter-base sorties? Will China activate a second front against India and if so, then how much and in what ways will Beijing militarily support Pakistan? Will this prevent the Indian Army from re-deploying a few of its existing Mountain Divisions from the Sino-Indian border to the western front? 
Despite these still-unanswered questions, the Indian Army has set in motion several force modernisation programmes that are designed to make the pro-active warfighting strategy a reality — such as those involving new-generation force multipliers like 155mm/52-cal field artillery assets, battlefield utility and light observation helicopters, battlespace management system (BMS), F-INSAS and the tactical communications system (TCS), although they all are still years away from deployment. In addition, the integral offensive firepower of all existing warfighting formations is being increased exponentially through the large-scale induction of medium altitude long endurance UAVs like the Heron and Searcher 2, anti-armour guided-missiles like the 9M133 Kornet-E, Milan-2T and FGM-148 Javelin, all-terrain wheeled armoured recce vehicles, plus batteries of the 214mm Pinaka and 300mm 9K58 Smerch-M multi-barrel rocket launchers, and 290km-range BrahMos Block 2/3 supersonic land attack cruise missiles. Going hand in hand with such projects are efforts by the army to raise an extra two infantry divisions to add to the two already raised since June 2008 (these being the 41 Mountain Division in Binaguri, West Bengal, and 56 Mountain 56th Mountain Division headquartered at Zakhama, Nagaland, during the 11th Defence Plan (2007-2012), each of which was raised at a cost of Rs7 billion. This will be followed by a new Corps (to be headquartered in Panagarh in West Bengal), including its two new infantry divisions, being raised during the 12th Defence Plan (2012-2017).

By Prasun K. Sengupta

Russia to sign deal for 2 more French warships by yearend

Russia will sign a contract with France for the third and fourth Mistral-class amphibious assault ships before the end of this year, Russian Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov said on Wednesday.
"I believe we should complete the negotiating process and have these contracts signed before the end of the year," he said.
The two new warships will be built in Russia, he added.
Russia is also buying related technology and has two crews being trained in France, the minister said.
Russia and France signed a $1.7 billion (1.2 bln euro) contract in June on two French-built Mistral class amphibious assault ships for the Russian Navy, which includes the transfer of sensitive technologies.
The helicopter carriers are due to enter service with the Northern and the Pacific fleets in 2014 and 2015.
A Mistral-class ship is capable of carrying 16 helicopters, four landing vessels, 70 armored vehicles, and 450 personnel.

RIA Novosti

Procurement cost of Su-30 MKI over Rs.55,717 cr; LCA about Rs.8691 cr

(Machinist.in) :   Defence Minister Shri AK Antony said that the total cost of procurement of the Su-30 MKI is over Rs.55,717 crore while the cost of procurement of the TEJAS Light Combat Aircraft is about Rs.8691 crore.

Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) is already manufacturing the Su-30 MKI aircraft as well as the TEJAS Light Combat Aircraft for the IAF. HAL would also eventually be manufacturing the Medium Multi-Role Combat Aircraft (MMRCA) and Fifth Generation Fighter Aircraft (FGFA) planned for induction into the IAF. "The Defence Procurement Procedure provides for procurement of aircraft and their subsequent manufacture in India. Hence, major aircraft procurement programme entail a mix of outright purchase from abroad and subsequent manufacture in India with increasing levels of indigenization," Antony said.

He added that capacity for design and manufacture of modern combat aircraft involves development of very high and sophisticated technology skills which is a gradual process. Technology denial regimes have thwarted this effort in the past.

The Defence Industry sector is open up to 100% for Indian Private sector participation with FDI permissible upto 26%, both subject to licensing.

The Government promotes production of equipment/components/ spares under transfer of technology from foreign suppliers through acquisitions categorized as "Buy & Make" and "Buy & Make (Indian)" under Defence Procurement Procedure (DPP).

The DPSUs and OFB have developed their capabilities by way of absorption of technologies through TOT route over the times and thereby are catering mainly to the procurement by the services from domestic sources. Private sector is enhancing its capabilities. However, the rate of change in technologies in the defence sector is limiting procurement from domestic sources.

The Defence Production Policy-2011 endeavors to build up a robust indigenous defence industrial base by, proactively encouraging larger involvement of the Indian private sector in design, development and manufacture of defence equipment.

The Defence industry sector is capital intensive and the investments in this sector are driven by the commercial interests. Foreign technology infusion is being encouraged by permitting FDI upto 26%, subject to licensing, in the defence industry sector. Greater allocation of resources in R&D by the DPSUs and DRDO is also being encouraged.

IAF chief visiting Germany

(PTI) IAF chief Air Chief Marshal N A K Browne has embarked on a week-long visit to Germany to strengthen military ties with the European country.The visit comes at a time when the Defence Ministry is in the final stages of deciding the multi billion dollar deal to procure 126 Medium-Multirole Combat Aircraft (M-MRCA) for the IAF.Germany is the lead partner of the four nations manufacturing the Eurofighter Typhoon, which along with the French Dassault Rafale has been shortlisted for the deal by the ministry.During the visit, which began yesterday, the IAF chief may also go to the plant where the Eurofighter Typhoon is manufactured. He will meet with senior military leadership of that country to strengthen bilateral ties.India is in final stages of finalising the mega deal and is likely to open the commercial bids of the two shortlisted companies by the end of this month.

 - Indiareport 

S. Korea to Deploy Israeli Missiles to Protect Border Islands

 

(Defenseworld) : South Korea will deploy Israeli-made, precision-guided missiles to protect its western islands near the tense border with North Korea, Yonhap News Agency reported Tuesday. 
"A deal was reached recently to bring in Spike NLOS missiles developed by Israel," a military source was quoted as saying. "We should be able to deploy them late next year." The source said about 50 of the Spike NLOS (non line of sight) missiles, developed by Rafael Advanced Defense Systems, will be placed on Baengnyeong and Yeonpyeong islands in the Yellow Sea.

 Two South Korean civilians and two Marines were killed in the North's shelling of Yeonpyeong in November last year.

Black Panther Squadron to complete commissioning of MiG-29K/KUB in mid-2012

(Rusnavy) : Indian Navy's Black Panther squadron will finish commissioning of the first parcel of Russian fighters MiG-29K/KUB in the middle of 2012. In prospect, the squadron will obtain the number of "303".

According to Press Trust of India referring to the squadron commander, delivery of the last 16 fighters from the first parcel would be probably finished in the current month.

Appearing at the press conference related to 50th jubilee of Hansa Naval Base, the squadron commander said that advanced simulator for MiG-29K would be ready for operation within the nearest several months.

Besides, Hansa Naval Base will be equipped with ski-ramp takeoff simulator and shore-based test facility (SBTF) which is currently available only for the US and Russia.

As is planned, MiG-29K fighters presently stationed at Hansa Naval Base will constitute the air wing of aircraft carrier INS Vikramaditya when delivered to Indian Navy late in 2012.

According to Indian Navy command, MiG-29K is one of the world's most versatile ship-based fighters.

Indian defense ministry signed a procurement contract for 16 MiG-29K fighters including 4 two-seat operational trainers MiG-29KUB in Jan 2004 under agreement of delivery and modernization of aircraft-carrying cruiser Admiral Gorshkov.

During the solemn ceremony held on Feb 19, 2010 at Hansa Air Base in the presence of Indian defense minister A.K. Antony, Indian Navy commissioned first 4 deck-based fighters MiG-29KUB. Among top-ranking guests was the head of Russian delegation Viktor Khristenko, minister of industry and trade.

The contract for the second 29-airplane parcel was tied during the visit of Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin to India on March 12, 2010. The deliveries are planned to start in 2012. The contract cost makes $1.5 bln. Sixteen fighters from the new parcel will be also stationed on INS Vikramaditya.

In Apr 2009, Indian Navy opened technical center at Hansa Naval Base (Goa, India) providing aircraft maintenance and crew training.

Ship-based fighter MiG-29K is a 4++ generation aircraft capable to perform wide range of tasks under severe weather conditions day and night; among them are gaining air dominance, ship's air defenses, destruction of sea surface and land targets. MiG-29K is armed with missiles capable to hit targets beyond the visibility range, guided antiship missiles, free-flight rockets, air bombs, and 30-mm gun.

MiG-29K has advanced technical and operational performance characteristics, and improved reliability. Its avionics is based on the open architecture principle.

The aircraft's features are improved frame made of composite materials, low radar signature, increased combat load and fuel tank capacity, inflight refuelling system, updated wing-folding system, digital wire quad redundancy control system.

Deck-based MiG-29K fighters are equipped with arrester, reinforced landing gear, folding wing, and a special coating protecting from seawater corrosion.