Appointment of Chief of Defence Staff: A Historic Decision
The decision to appoint CDS is an important milestone in India’s quest for complete integration of its defence forces; a significant step towards seamless coordination, better efficiency, and greater effectiveness of the national defence architecture in meeting the challenges of the 21st century.
Finally a CDS for the Indian Armed Forces
While the scope of responsibility of the CDS is being worked out, it would be instructive to see what changes could be implemented immediately within the current organisational structures through greater jointness, before getting into the gamut of full integration which should be the logical end state.
Fighting Falcon: The End of an Era?
Is the termination of an unprecedented 40-year production run of the F-16 an indication of the beginning of the end for this versatile combat aircraft?
Blue Flag 2017 and Beyond
The Indian Air Force’s participation in Israel’s Blue Flag 2017 multilateral exercise adds an important layer to the matrix of cooperation between India and Israel.
Avro-replacement programme hits air pocket
Replacement of the Avro is an approved requirement. Scrapping the on-going process could delay acquisition of the transport aircraft by at least a year or two as it would inevitably involve revisiting the qualitative requirements (QRs) before restarting the tendering process.
RFI for the Basic Trainer Aircraft: New Ray of Hope for the Indian industry
It is difficult to understand why the MoD should bind itself by asking for request for information (RFI) that cannot be compared across all the proposals. What would constitute ‘capability’ and ‘requisite infrastructure’ to license produce the aircraft is a matter of subjective interpretation and therefore, it would become difficult for MoD to assess whether the information provided by a bidder establishes that he/she has the requisite capability/infrastructure.