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

Image source- Wikimedia Commons / Author- Sergey Krivchikov Source- Russia & India Report Source- Rakesh Krishnan Simha America’s F-35 Lightning II stealth fighter may end up becoming cannon fodder for Russian Sukhois, suggests an August 2015 report by the US-based National Security Network (NSN). In ‘Thunder without Lightning: The High Costs and Limited Benefits of the F-35 Program’, the think tank’s policy analyst Bill French and researcher Daniel Edgren say the F-35 is likely to be “outmaneuvered” and “outgunned” by its “near peers” such as the Russian Su-27 series Flanker fighter jets. The report backs what a number of independent aviation experts have been saying all along – the F-35 is a truly useless aircraft that will be a sitting duck if it comes up against a serious air force. “The F-35’s performance characteristics compare unfavourably with already deployed foreign 4th Generation fighters such as the Russian designed MiG-29 Fulcrum and Su-27 Fla

Hypersonic vehicle  ( Source- Wikimedia Commons / Author- David Neyland) Source- The Diplomat Author- Franz Stefan Gady Last Wednesday, China conducted its fifth test of the WU-14 hypersonic glide vehicle (HGV) – an ultra high-speed missile purportedly capable of penetrating U.S. air defense systems based on interceptor missiles, Bill Gertz of The Washington Free Beacon reports. “The latest test of what the Pentagon calls the Wu-14 hypersonic glide vehicle was carried out from the Wuzhai missile test range in central China. The test was judged successful, according to defense officials familiar with details of the event,” Gertz notes. This was the fifth time that China tested this new weapon (See: “Will This Chinese Weapon Be Able to Sink an Aircraft Carrier?”) and it could be an indication that the W-14 may soon become operational. Similar to the June 7 test, the WU-14 HGV again performed evasive actions  - extreme maneuvers – which makes the detection and tr

USS Howard, DDG-83 ( Image source- Wikimedia Commons / Author- United States Navy) Source- The National Interest Author- Marvin G. Ott As any close observer knows, the South China Sea is a rapidly evolving—and increasingly perilous—strategic arena. China’s assertion that almost the entire sea is “indisputably” Chinese territory has been backed by a rapid buildup of maritime military power and an audacious series of land grabs. The most dramatic of these has been the construction of multiple artificial islands. The military utility of these formations has hardly been disguised.  On Fiery Cross Reef, for example, a long military runway with attendant radars is being constructed. Reactions among Southeast Asian claimants to maritime tensions in the South China Sea have varied along a spectrum of alarm, fear, anger, defiance, and resignation.  There is no indication that Beijing regards any of these countries—Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia, Brunei, and the Philippines—as a

Shanghai Stock exchange  ( Source- Wikimedia Commons / Author-  螺钉 Source- The Diplomat Author- Eric Tegler Almost immediately after the Chinese National Bureau of Statistics released its second quarter GDP growth estimate of 7 percent in mid-July, a group of China watchers were crying foul. China officially targeted full-year growth of around 7 percent in 2015, a number matched exactly by its reported GDP figures for the first half of the year. Last week, Forbes ran a piece by hedge fund manager Jay Somaney, who argued that China’s growth is significantly lower. Somaney cited as evidence data points from the precipitous drop in the Chinese stock market and an 8.3 percent drop in exports to a glut in the country’s real estate market and the devaluation of the renminbi (RMB) by Chinese monetary authorities. Ivan Glasenberg, CEO of the commodity trading and mining firm, Glencore, speculated that China’s crackdown on corruption has stalled infrastructure projects, slow

USAF F-117  Night Hawk ( Source- Wikimedia Commons / Author- Staff Sgt Aaron Allmon II) Source- The National Interest Author- David Axe The U.S. Air Force officially retired its 52 surviving F-117 Nighthawk stealth fighters in 2008, transferring their radar-evading attack mission to B-2 bombers, F-22s and — eventually — F-35s. The Air Force claimed it would preserve the F-117s for future use, but it’s possible most of the Nighthawks actually wound up in a landfill inside the Air Force’s highly secure Tonopah Test Range in Nevada. But the flying branch has held on to at least two of the sensor-dodging F-117s, which first entered service in the early 1980s. Amateur plane-spotters packing powerful cameras have photographed and videotaped F-117s flying over the desert test range and taxiing on a remote runway, sometimes singly and sometimes in pairs. The most recent snapshot of F-117s in flight are dated July 22 and can be found here. Why would the Air Force wa

USS Carl Vinson ( Source- Wikimedia Commons / Author- United States Navy) Source- The Diplomat Author- Shannon Tiezzi A new report from the U.S. Department of Defense, entitled “The Asia-Pacific Maritime Security Strategy,” provides the clearest look to-date at the U.S. military’s view of the maritime situation in the Asia-Pacific region, particularly the maritime disputes in the South China Sea. The report includes a detailed section on land reclamation in the South China Sea. While it references earlier efforts by the Philippines, Malaysia, Vietnam, and Taiwan, the bulk of the analysis focuses on China’s recent activities. The Pentagon reports that from December 2013 to June 2015, China “reclaimed more than 2,900 acres of land… accounting for approximately 95 percent of all reclaimed land in the Spratlys.” That’s up nearly 50 percent over a previous Pentagon estimate in May, which said China has reclaimed about 2,000 acres. The Wall Street Journal cites a Chi

Singapore Keppel Terminal ( Source- Wikimedia Commons / Credits- Calvin Teo) Source- The Diplomat Author- Anthony Fensom China’s slowdown may have rattled markets, but Asia is still expected to remain the world’s economic growth engine through the end of the decade, according to the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU). In a July 29 presentation, Duncan-Innes Ker, EIU regional editor for Asia, said Asia stood out as the only economic region recording fast rates of growth, in stark contrast to the Eurozone’s woes, conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East and stagnation in much of Latin America. According to the EIU, South Asia is expected to lead the pack with an average of around 7 percent annual gross domestic product (GDP) growth through to 2019, followed by China (over 6 percent) and ASEAN at 5 percent. In contrast, Latin America is forecast to post around 2.5 percent GDP growth, slightly ahead of the United States at over 2 percent and exceeding the Eurozone’s 1.

Minar at Kashgar city ( Source- Wikimedia Commons / Author- Hynek Miravec) Source- The National Interest Author- Robert D. Kaplan THE THOUSANDS of terra-cotta warriors from the third-century-BC Qin Dynasty, first unearthed in the mid-1970s, constitute one of the wonders of the world. I stared down into the vast clay pit where these life-sized soldiers, no two of them exactly alike, stand in a state of freeze-frame marching. They are all headed east. For Qin, though in the heart of today’s China, had been the westernmost of the Warring States. Thus, to the east lay all of Qin’s enemies. Beyond Qin, in the opposite direction westward, the agricultural cradle that has always defined Chinese civilization begins to give way to the emptier deserts of Central Asia. A short drive from the site of the terra-cotta warriors in Shaanxi Province brought me to the Great Mosque of Xian, an eclectic confection of Arabic script underneath a traditional, upturned Chinese roof decorated