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

Varyag ( Image credits- Wikimedia Commons / Author- United States DOD)   Source- The National Interest Author- Zachary Keck A Hong Kong-based businessmen bought China’s first aircraft carrier under false pretenses, according to a new report in the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post. In a two part expose published over the weekend, the South China Morning Post gave the inside story of Xu Zengping’s quest to purchase China’s first aircraft carrier, which later became the Liaoning. The piece draws heavily on interviews with Xu himself. Xu reveals that he first stepped foot on the Ukraine built vessel in 1988, although it didn’t go up for sale until 1992. At that time, it was around two-thirds complete. The Ukrainian shipyard, who had been commissioned to build the carrier by Moscow in the early 1980s, was nearly bankrupt after the Soviet Union’s collapse and sought to find a buyer for the vessel. It approached the Chinese government about purchasing the v

German Type-212 Submarine ( Image credits- Wikimedia Commons/ Author) Source- Aspi Strategist Author- Michael Ward There has been considerable public debate about Australia’s future submarine program with much of the focus being centred on whether submarines should be produced locally or procured offshore. But surprisingly little of the debate has touched on the imperative to avoid a capability gap once the Collins-class submarines begin to be retired from service in the latter half of the next decade, nor on how Australia might best utilise existing sovereign submarine capabilities to achieve that. Given the unique nature of the Australian requirement, it seems highly unlikely the solution for Australia’s future submarine would be either an ‘off-the-shelf’ purchase from an offshore supplier or an onshore design-and-build activity. Notwithstanding the fact that Australia doesn’t have the design capabilities to go it alone on the future submarine program, any existing

Israel-Japan relations ( Image credits- United with Israel. org) Source- The Diplomat Author- Alvite Singh Ningthoujam Israel has been busy of late, strengthening its ties with East Asia, and Japan is no exception. The flurry of diplomatic initiatives by both countries come after a period of prolonged silence. While the magnitude of cooperation with Tokyo is not on a par with that of Israel’s engagements with China and South Korea, emerging developments may well take the bilateral ties to a new level. Israel’s rapidly rising importance to Japan has come at an opportune time for Tel Aviv, with an evident decline in the strength of its ties with the European Union and its major partner, the United States. In the Middle East too, there has been a further widening of Israel’s isolation, particularly after the Gaza crisis last summer. How to explain the warming of relations between Israel and Japan? There are several factors. From Japan’s perspective, stepping up coope

Tiananmen square, Beijing (Image credits- Wikimedia Commons / Author- Derzsi Elekes Andor) Source- The National Interest Author- Julian Snelder The Black Swan, by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, is a parable for unanticipated risk: the possibility of 'unknown unknown' events that no-one sees coming. In a new essay, The Calm Before the Storm, Taleb further posits that perceptions of risk are distorted by “fragile stability.” Some countries (eg. Saudi Arabia) are inherently more vulnerable to exploding one day in spite of – or likely because of – their continuity, concentration and monolithism. The flip-side of this concept, less intuitively, is that “anti-fragility” can be borne out of the very experience of crisis. The likes of Italy may be resilient precisely because they continually face chaos and flux. Taleb's idea isn't a new one – the economist Hyman Minsky noted “the instability of stability” decades ago – but his anecdotal depth and topical underst

United States Tomahawk Missile ( Image credits- Wikimedia Commons/ United States DOD) Source- The National Interest Author- Zachary Keck A number of media outlets have reported in recent days that China has deployed a new missile defense system on many of its ships that has a 90 percent success rate against hypersonic missiles. The same reports also unwittingly highlight that this assertion is false. All the reports appear to originate from a story the Taiwan-based Want China Times carried last month. Citing a report in its “Chinese-language sister paper Want Daily,” which itself cited a story by an unnamed Russian media outlet, Want China Times reported last month that “that China's latest indigenous Type 1130 close-in weapon system can fire 10,000 rounds per minute and destroy 90% of hypersonic missiles traveling at a speed four times the speed of sound.” The Want China Times report has been picked up by numerous news outlets since— either directly or indire

Future of Indian Navy : A complete compilation | Indian Defence Forum

PM Narendra Modi with the President of EU ( Image credits- Wikimedia Commons / Author- Narendra Modi ) Source- The Eurasia Review Author- Samir Saran What is a security actor and how is it different from being a great or major power? In many ways, this question is central to understanding the lack of appreciation of the European Union (EU) as an actor in the security arena in India and certainly in some other parts of Asia. The use of the word ‘security actor’ by EU agencies and research institutes is itself perhaps a neutralisation of the phrase ‘major power’. This reveals the ambivalence of the EU to power in contemporary times, despite having given the world several great powers in the past. This ambivalence, and the hesitant Asian comprehension of the EU’s role in the security domain shape the current debate. However, to move beyond this general understanding and to try and understand the Indian perspective on this issue, three key enquiries are essential. First,

LCA Tejas ( Image credits- Wikimedia Commons / Attributes- Vishak ) Original source- The Defence News Tejas, India's first indigenous Light Combat Aircraft (LCA), which is all set to replace the MiG-21 series, is a result of several years of design and development work from the DRDO. What's special about India's own LCA? How does it rate on the global scale? We take a look at some lesser-known salient facts about the Tejas that set it apart from those in its league.  'Best in its class' :: According to Ravi Kumar Gupta, the Directorate of Public Interface at DRDO, 'Tejas is the best in its class in the world. It is a four plus generation aircraft.' Gupta said that it is 'not appropriate' to make a direct comparison of the Tejas with its global counterparts. 'It is a beautiful machine, designed for our own people,' he reiterated. The technology used to manufacture the aircraft is such, that it 'will not go obsolete&#

Image credits- Wikimedia Commons  Source- The Eurasia Review Author- IDSA/ Avinash Godbole Mahindra Rajapaksa lost to his rival and one time ally Maithripala Sirisena in the Presidential elections held on 8 January 2015. Sirisena of the New Democratic Front (NDF) won 51.28 percent of the votes against the 47.58 percent secured by Rajapaksa of the United People’s Front Alliance. Given Rajapaksa’s popularity in the aftermath of the decisive victory against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in the summer of 2009, Sirisena’s triumph in these elections has come as a surprise to many. But a peak below the surface brings out a different reality of the Sri Lankan political landscape. China emerged as Sri Lanka’s most benevolent friend during the reign of Rajapaksa. This friendship reached its zenith when in September 2014 Xi Jinping became the first Chinese President to visit Sri Lanka. Between 2004 and 2014, domestic changes in Sri Lanka, coupled with China’s expan

Hambantota Port, Sri Lanka ( Image credits- Wikimedia Commons / Attributes- Deneth17 ) Source- The Diplomat Author- Victor Robert Lee Democracy has taken many knocks in recent years. Russian President Vladmir Putin has twisted a supposed Russian democracy into a dictatorship. Beijing is touting its single-party autocracy as superior to democracy. And in Washington, democracy looks like a legislative train wreck. But the island nation of Sri Lanka this past week proved that democracy is alive and well in at least one corner of the world, by throwing out its own Putinesque figure. On January 8, a diverse coalition of Sri Lankan parties led by Maithripala Sirisena defeated Mahinda Rajapaksa, president since 2005, who was seeking to secure a third six-year term. Rajapaksa, whose administration in 2009 finally crushed a longstanding Tamil separatist movement in the country’s northeast, presented himself as a god-like figure and set about placing numerous relatives in key