Journal of Defence Studies

Honour and Fidelity: India’s Military Contribution to the Great War 1914–1918 by Amarinder Singh

Three days after the ‘Great War’ was declared at midnight on the 4–5 August 1914, mobilisation orders were issued to marshal what would become the largest expeditionary force of that...

The South China Sea: The Struggle for Power in Asia by Bill Hayton

The South China Sea disputes have received considerable attention from international relations scholars, world leaders and policymakers in the recent decades. China’s aspirations in the region are challenged by the...

China’s Emergence as a Cyber Power

Cyberspace is increasingly becoming an area of contestation among nation states. Similar to the physical domains of land, sea, air and space, superiority in the cyber domain enables a nation...

Arms and the Game: Accepting Competition and Encouraging Cooperation

The article approaches the issue of jointness through new lenses. It first describes how and why arms of the military, the ‘Services’, are different from each other. Airpower is shown...

Strategic Direction of the Chinese Navy: Capability and Intent Assessment by Kamlesh K. Agnihotri

Rarely do naval practitioners combine capability and strategy cogently. They are good at explaining technical terminology and its applicability, but insufficient in expounding strategy and analysis. They consider capability in...

Addressing Maritime Challenges in the Indian Ocean Region: A Case for Synergising Naval Capacities towards Collective Benefits

The vastness and diversity of the Indian Ocean Region (IOR) and its littorals, and difference in the latters’ overall view of regional security, presents a broad spectrum of challenges therein....

India’s Military Modernization: Strategic Technologies and Weapons Systems, edited by Rajesh Basrur and Bharath Gopalaswamy

The Oxford University Press could not have timed it better with its second part of the two-part project on Indian military modernisation in the field of advanced technologies like cruise...

Coalition Warfare, edited by N.B. Poulsen, K.H. Galster and S. Nørby

The book contains 10 articles from presentations made by Western scholars (including officers from the defence forces) at the Royal Danish Defence College, in 2011, and has been edited by...

An Indian Maritime Strategy for an Era of Geopolitical Uncertainty

The fractious nature of maritime relations in the Asia-Pacific region is a recognisable feature of international geopolitics today. Following China’s massive reclamation and ‘island-building’ project in the South China Sea...

China Borders: Settlement and Conflicts—Selected Papers, by Neville Maxwell

This book is a compilation of papers written by journalist Neville Maxwell over a career span of five decades. Those who look at China–India relations closely, notably the border dispute,...

‘Arriving in the Nick of Time’: The Indian Corps in France, 1914–15

Today, military historians as well as those dealing with colonial South Asian history tend to overlook the fact that during the First World War, the Indian Army was Britain’s strategic...

Asymmetrical Threat Perceptions in India–China Relations, by Tien-sze Fang

Tien-sze Fang’s Asymmetrical Threat Perceptions in India–China Relations makes a comparative study of the threat perceptions of the two countries vis-à-vis each other. The book endorses the view that although...

Indian Defence Offset Policy: An Impact Analysis

The article assesses the impact of defence offset policy on the Indian defence industry, by taking into account two key parameters—foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows and exports. It observes that...

Birth of UNLFWSEA: Internal Dynamics and Implications for India’s North-East

A distinctive feature of insurgency in India’s North-East and neighbouring Myanmar has been the tendency among rebel groups to form alliances. Cooperation is deemed advantageous in a hostile terrain, against...

Military Education in India: Missing the Forest for the Trees

India’s Professional Military Education (PME) system is weighted towards the tactical level in all stages of professional development. This results in inadequate exposure of its senior leadership to strategic studies,...

An Assessment of Organisational Change in the Indian Army

The article analyses military change in the context of the Indian Army, with specific focus on organisational innovation and change. In doing so, it analyses two case studies: restructuring of...

The Warrior, Military Ethics and Contemporary Warfare: Achilles goes Asymmetrical, by Pauline M. Karin

The process of ‘War’, whether waged for noble or ignoble ends and for long considered a valid instrument of state policy, is broadly interpreted along the Clausewitzian dictum of the...

Critical Analysis of Pakistani Air Operations in 1965: Weaknesses and Strengths

This article tracks the evolution of the Pakistan Air Force (PAF) into a potent fighting force by analysing the broad contours of joint operations and the air war between the...

Air Power in the 1965 Indo-Pakistan War: An Assessment

The 1965 Indo-Pak War came when India was in the midst of a major military expansion. India did not want to escalate matters when Pakistani forces invaded Kutch in April...

Indian Army’s Continuity and Transformation: Through the Prism of the Battle of Dograi

The continuum of change in militaries is derived from a number of factors, in which application of history plays an important part. The process of Indian Army’s evolution in the...