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

Pinaka ( Image credits- Wikimedia commons/ Author- Hemant Rawat)   India has started ramping up military defences in the Ladakh sector of Jammu and Kashmir that faces China, especially after Beijing has ringed the area with at least six airfields, fighter aircraft, all terrain vehicles and special forces that are backed by top-class metalled roads right up to the Line of Actual Control (LAC). New Delhi will be moving an armoured brigade — some 150 T-72 tanks — to Ladakh and also have Smerch multi-barrel rocket launch units placed at key locations. These are capable of hitting targets 70-80 kms away. An armoured regiment — 46 tanks — had moved in last year to join the Kiari-based 70 Brigade and is now located at a forward sector, 20 km inside the LAC, where India suffered a setback in the 1962 conflict with China. This is separate from the upcoming Armoured Brigade that will be directly controlled by the Leh-based 14 Corps. Its three Regiments, comprising 46 tanks each, will b

Indian Army ( Image credits- Wikimedia commons/ Author- Antonio Malena) For the Indian military, this is a time of some fairly fundamental changes. After decades of pursuing Pakistan-centric war planning, the Indian Army and the Indian Air Force are recalibrating their sights towards the hitherto neglected northern frontiers with China, giving a hard push to improving its war-fighting capabilities against its more powerful neighbor and at the same time, increasing on-the-ground interaction with the People’s Liberation Army (PLA). This two-track policy, outcome of the experience of the past five years, is aimed at preventing any unnecessary flare ups along the Line of Actual Control (LAC), as the contested border between the two countries is known. In July 2014, this writer has had the opportunity to undertake a rare tour of the border areas in Ladakh, a high mountainous desert that abuts the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR). This remote region, rendered inaccessible by road fo

Napoleon Hill When the young journalist Napoleon Hill interviewed the industrialist Andrew Carnegie in 1908, Carnegie liked Hill so much that he decided he would share all of the strategies that turned him from a penniless immigrant into the richest man in the world. From that point forward, Hill dedicated his career to understanding the work ethics of highly successful people like Thomas Edison and Henry Ford, collecting them into his own philosophy and then packaging it into articles, books, and lectures for regular people wanting to achieve more in life. His 1937 book "Think and Grow Rich" is one of the bestselling books of all time. Before he began writing books, Hill ran two magazines with articles that provided the foundation for his most famous work. In the inaugural April 1921 issue of Napoleon Hill's Magazine, Hill wrote about "The Magic Ladder to Success," an essay based on a speech he gave on a tour of the US and would later adapt int

INS Kolkata ( Image credits- Indian Navy) MUMBAI: Terming military might as the biggest deterrent to war, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday said the defence forces will be modernized to ensure that "nobody casts an evil eye" on the nation. "Fighting a war and winning it has now become less difficult these days. But a modern military, armed with state of the arm weaponry alone is a guarantee against war. When we are capable, no one can dare challenge us," Modi said addressing a gathering after dedicating the largest indigenously built warship INS Kolkata to the nation. "When people have a sense of our military capability, nobody will ever dare to cast an evil eye on our nation," he said. Stressing the importance of maritime security in fast expanding global trade and commerce, the Prime Minister said India, with its vast coastline, was playing a major role in it. "In the coming days, INS Kolkata will inspire confidence to those involved in

USS America ( Image credits- Wikimedia Commons/ United States 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, the  L

J-20 ( Image credits- Wikimedia commons/ Author- Baiweiflight) Over the past month, China has showed how its approach to its own rising superpower status applies to its defense policy. The results aren't exactly reassuring. Outside of its borders, China has forged a wide-ranging policy of outreach and investment in Africa. China claims the offshore extractive resources, and even the offshore territories, of nearly all of its immediate geographical neighbors in the South China Sea (see  this Business Insider graphic  for more). The country holds substantial American debt, and commands an enormous trade surplus with the world's largest economy - a label that it hopes to seize from a wheezing U.S. In the military realm, China's ambitions have a tendency to manifest themselves through weapons technologies that skirt the boundaries of international legality. Over the past month, it's been proven to be working on two such capabilities. This is an asymmetrical ta

United States Secretary of State addressing a meeting at Delhi  (  Image credits- Wikimedia commons/ United States State Department) India is getting spoilt for choice and faces a problem of plenty, as major world powers woo the new Indian government led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi; but Russia need not worry. The United States is trying its best to build bridges with the Narendra Modi government at a time when the West is staring down at a Cold War 2.0 scenario with Russia. America and European countries have slapped sanctions on various Russian companies for Moscow’s alleged role in the Ukrainian crisis and Russia has matched the fast and furious retaliation by banning all food imports from the West. While the Modi government is just about 75-days old, many momentous changes are likely to take place. More importantly, that time is going to start now. The big picture that is likely to emerge so far is that India will move very cautiously and consciously in managing its ties wi

In a dramatic move, a Chinese official had a single-page advertisement for Taiwan’s  Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation for International Scholarly Exchange  taken out of the program at the  20th conference of the European Association of Chinese Studies  (EACS), held at the University of Minho in Portugal on July 22-26. The Chinese official was reportedly Madame Xu Lin, an adviser to China’s State Council and director general of the Chinese National Office for Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language, known as “ Hanban . ” Xu’s high-handedness shocked many in and outside of Taiwan,  at a time when cross-strait relations are relatively stable . Swift and harsh  responses from Taiwanese officials  and the public condemned the act and blamed Xu for hurting Taiwanese feelings and harming cross-strait relations. The Minho incident is a blow to  China’s soft power . It not only widens the political and psychological gap between Taiwan and mainland China, but also risks canceling out much of the g

Kargil War Memorial ( Image credits- Wikimedia commons/ Arunjith) A saga of unparalleled bravery. Only Indian Army produces such real life heroes. Proud to serve in THE Indian Army. On June 2, 1999, General V. P. Malik, the then army chief held a " Sainik Darbar" at Gumari in the Drass sector after three failed attempts to recapture Tololing Hill, which stands at 15,000 feet. Fifty- nine Indian soldiers from different regiments had already died, following which Gen Malik summoned the commanders of the 2 Rajputana Rifles to present their plans. The Army chief was just not convinced by their plans when a 30- year- old commando from the last row got up, summoned all the courage that an Army Naik would need to speak to the general, and said: " I am Naik Digendra Kumar known as Cobra, the best commando of the Indian Army. Sir, I have a plan that guarantees our victory." " Explain," said the general. " Sir, the hill is straight,&q