Manoj Ambat's Blog dealing with Defence, Foreign Affairs, Strategic Affairs and Politics

Image courtesy- Wikimedia commons and The Indian Navy Admiral Robin K. Dhowan on Thursday took over as chief of the Indian Navy nearly two months after Admiral D.K. Joshi quit the post in the wake of a series of mishaps. Admiral Dhowan (59) who has been the acting Navy chief since Joshi’s exit, has been appointed the Chief of Navy Staff superseding Western Naval Commander Shekhar Sinha. He will have a tenure of 25 months, retiring in May 2016. Admiral Sinha was the senior-most Vice Admiral but he has been edged out of the race, apparently because majority of the 14 mishaps, including two major submarine accidents, took place under his command during the last 10 months. Admiral Joshi, who had 15 months left in service, resigned on February 26 following the mishap involving submarine INS Sindhuratna in which two Navy officers were killed and several others were injured. In August last year, submarine INS Sindhurakshak sank at the Naval Dockyard in Mumbai, killing 18 personnel on boa

USS America (LHA-6) ( Pic Courtesy- Wikimedia commons and the US Navy)  Last week the U.S. Navy  accepted USS  America , first of the  America -class amphibious assault ships, into service. Unlike most recent amphibious assault ships, USS  America  and her sister USS  Tripoli  lack well-decks, instead focusing on aviation facilities.  When fully operational,  America  and  Tripoli  will operate as many as 20 F-35Bs, potentially playing a critical role in what the Navy projects as the future of air superiority. Inevitably, the delivery of USS  America  rekindles the  ongoing conversation  over what, precisely, constitutes an aircraft carrier. In the United States, we endure the polite fiction that the USN’s 45,000 ton aircraft carriers are not aircraft carriers, but rather some other kind of creature.  USS  America  is roughly the same size as the French  Charles De Gaulle  and the INS  Vikramaditya , although a bit smaller than the RFS  Admiral Kuzetsov  or her Chinese sister,

Wishing you and your family a Happy and a Prosperous Vishu. May you be blessed with a Happy, prosperous and successful year ahead. Happy Vishu Manoj Ambat

USS Zumwalt (DDG-1000), Image courtesy- Wikimedia commons and United States Navy The U.S. Navy on Saturday christened the first ship of its newest class of destroyers, a more than $3 billion, 610-foot-long warship sporting advanced technology and a stealthy shape designed to minimize its visibility on enemy radar and reduce the size of its crew. Named after the late Adm. Elmo "Bud" Zumwalt, the newest destroyer's massive size and angular profile make it stand apart from other U.S. warships. And like its namesake, a reformer who spearheaded changes that helped shape the Navy by offering new opportunities to women and minorities, the Zumwalt will shepherd the fleet into a new era, officials said. "This ship is a modern marvel, and it's going to take smart and creative and hardworking sailors like Bud Zumwalt to operate it," Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus told the crowd of thousands at Bath Iron Works, where the ship has been under construction since

Indian Prime minister with the American President ( Image courtesy- Wikimedia commons and The White House) (The original work by Divya Srikanth as appeared in the E-International Relations Students website. All credits goes to Divya Srikanth for such a well researched work. The original copyright of the owner is acknowledged) Introduction: Brief Significance of Indo-US and Sino-Indian Relations Since 2001, there has been an upswing in US-India relations, greatly facilitated by the Bush Administration’s reversal of the decades-long US policy of indifference towards India. The signing of the Next Steps in Strategic Partnership (NSSP) between the Bush Administration and the Manmohan Singh government heralded a new beginning to Indo-US relations and cemented India’s growing rising power status. The 2005 civilian nuclear deal, which facilitated US technology assistance to India’s civilian nuclear program and allowed the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) to trade with India, a non-si

Image courtesy- Wikimedia commons, the author  and ISRO  India’s huge Geo-synchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV- Mark III) will soar into the sky with a crew capsule from Sriharikota in June, signalling that the country is getting ready to send its own astronauts into space. It will be an experimental mission and it will carry no astronauts. This crew capsule will return to the earth with parachutes. It would be identical to the “final crew capsule in structural and thermo-structural parts,” said S. Ramakrishnan, Director, Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre, Thiruvananthapuram. “We will take it beyond the atmosphere, make it re-enter the earth’s atmosphere, decelerate it and make a soft touchdown in the Bay of Bengal off the Andaman coast. We will make efforts to recover it.” The VSSC Director was speaking to reporters here after the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV-C24) put into orbit India’s second navigation satellite, the Indian Regional Navigation Satellite System (IRNSS-1B)

Image courtesy- The Election Commission of India After India conducts one of the most crucial general elections in its independent history, among the new political dispensation’s foremost priorities will be to craft an innovative foreign policy that helps revive Asia’s third largest economy, as well as gives it geopolitical leverage in a region fraught with asymmetries and political tensions. In an external environment marked by uncertainty - a festering border issue with Pakistan, an increasingly aggressive China, and a politically diminished US - India’s outreach in an increasingly multi-polar world needs to focus on strengthening old ties while forging new ones.   At such a juncture, it becomes critical for New Delhi to nurture its strategic relationship with Moscow, one that outgoing Indian prime minister Manmohan Singh described as a strong pillar of Indian foreign policy. Indeed Indo-Russian ties go back a long way. Both countries share convergences on a gamut of global

Image courtesy- Reuters/ Toru Hanai U.S.-Japan naval cooperation has long been recognized as the critical core of the U.S.-Japan security relationship; the navies’ success in rebuffing the Soviet naval threat in the 1980s is legendary. The successful cooperation between the U.S. Navy and the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force (JMSDF) even helped to buoy the broader alliance relationship, which was suffering at the time from trade-related and other economic challenges. The key elements that were so important to the naval relationship—strategic clarity, definitive roles and missions, and operational engagement—emanated from a strong and committed security alliance. As preparations are finalized for U.S. President Barack Obama’s upcoming trip to Japan, a reminder of what made these two navies so successful during a strategically challenging period of history can provide useful lessons. Today, the two navies once again find themselves on the front lines in the Asia-Pacific region as

PLA Tank ( Pic courtesy Wikimedia Commons and Dan, The Author) One of Washington’s leading members of Congress, J. Randy Forbes, and a brilliant analyst, Elbridge Colby, sound the alarm. They  believe that China has made precipitous gains  against the United States’ military power and that the U.S. must urgently increase its defense efforts to maintain its superiority. Forbes and Colby assert that “the balance of military power in the Asia-Pacific writ large is under serious and growing pressure from China’s military-modernization efforts,” and the U.S. “edge in technology … is eroding.” They caution that China’s military buildup poses “critical” challenges “to achieving U.S. political-military objectives in the areas that have traditionally been part of our defense umbrella,” namely “challenges to [the United States’] military superiority in the crucial air, sea, space, and cyberspace domains.” Most alarming, Forbes and Colby hold that failure to act could have “tremendous str

A Yuan Class submarine ( Pic courtesy Wikimedia commons and the author) Pakistan is planning to purchase six conventional submarines from China as a way to counter the influence of expanding Indian maritime power, the Military-Industrial Courier, a Russian-language website focused on global defense issues reported on April 3. Rana Tanveer Hussain, Pakistan's minister of defense production, is currently visiting Beijing to discuss the purchase of submarines from China, according to information released by the Pakistani government. Reports have circulated that Islamabad will sign a contract with Beijing before the end of the year to introduce six Type 041 Yuan-class diesel-electric submarines, to be constructed at either the Wuhan or Jiangnan shipyard. However, some experts say that the submarines will be S20s, the export version of the Type 041. The only difference between the Type 041 and the S20 is that the latter does not have the former's air-independent propulsion