Gp Capt Ajey Lele (Retd.) is Deputy Director General at the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses, New Delhi. Click here for detailed profile.
For China, the Belt and Road initiative is a long-term strategy designed for it to assume a bigger role in global affairs through the business route. Various aerial and space-based platforms will play an important in making this strategy successful.
While India has a reliable vehicle for launching less than 2 tonne satellites into LEO, it lacks the necessary infrastructure to obtain larger commercial benefits from this capability.
East and Southeast Asia are known to get affected by various diseases routinely. Particularly, various waterborne and other diseases likely malaria and dengue fever commonly affect the regions. There is a concern that global warming may translate into explosive growth of mosquito-borne diseases. In addition to this, growing number of natural disasters are found escalating the health related challenges. All this eventually poses a threat to health, economic and human security.
While the attack on the chemical warehouse in France and the accident in the Taiwanese park are not cases of chemical terrorism in a classical sense, they can be analysed against the backdrop of a ‘chemical incident’.
India’s ministerial presence at the Shangri La Dialogue could have helped India to articulate the new government’s strategic thought and expand from the realm of military diplomacy to defence diplomacy. So, is India’s defence establishment blind to probable benefits of participating in the Dialogue or are they thinking differently?
The orbit insertion scheduled for September 24 will be a landmark achievement. The Mars accomplishment could assist the global efforts towards the possible human colonization of the Red Planet and would automatically increase India’s status.
US authorities have claimed that North Korea was behind the cyber-attack on Sony Pictures. But North Korea has strongly denied this claim. Now, both countries are threatening to fight this ‘battle’ in cyber space.
There are a few minerals which are categorized as ‘strategic’ because of their importance for the industries and owing to natural and man-made difficulties in their procurement. There has been an attempt here to contextualize the importance of strategic materials from a national security perspective. This study presents a macro view with regard to India’s strategic minerals architecture and undertakes analysis to understand current and futuristic challenges and opportunities in this sector, and offers a few recommendations based on the assessment undertaken. Issues related to Rare Earth and new materials are also discussed.
The ‘Road’ to Success for the “Silk Road Initiative” is via Aerospace
For China, the Belt and Road initiative is a long-term strategy designed for it to assume a bigger role in global affairs through the business route. Various aerial and space-based platforms will play an important in making this strategy successful.