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

USS Lassen  ( Image credits- Wikimedia Commons/ United States Navy) Source- Want China Times President Xi Jinping of China is faced with a dilemma on how to respond to a US Navy vessel's patrol close to two reefs controlled by China in the disputed South China Sea, Ding Shuh-fan, director of the Institute of International Relations of National Chengchi University in Taipei said Tuesday. The USS Lassen sailed to waters within the 12 nautical mile territorial limit claimed by China around the artificial islands China has built on Subi and Mischief reefs earlier in the day in a challenge to China's territorial claims to uphold freedom of navigation. Ding said both China and the US will maintain their "fight without breaking" strategy, meaning exercising self-constraint to avoid further escalation of tensions while continuing to compete with each other. Ding said the US is fully justified in its action based on legal principles as the United Nations C

HAL Tejas ( Image credits- Wikimedia Commons / Subharnab) Source- Want China Times India plans to export its LCA Tejas multirole fighter to Sri Lanka to compete with the JF-17 Thunder or FC-1 Xiaolong multirole fighter developed jointly by China and Pakistan, according to a senior officials from Colombo, the Sunday Observer, an English-language weekly based in Colombo, reported on Oct. 25. Air Marshal Gagan Bulathsinghala, commander of Sri Lanka Air Force, will visit Pakistan next month to learn more about the Thunder, as Sri Lanka wants new supersonic fighter jets to strengthen its air defense. However, air force officials said Bulathsinghala's visit to Pakistan is only a routine official visit. The nation has not made a final decision about purchasing the fighter from Pakistan. Pakistan and Myanmar are the only two operators of the JF-17, developed jointly by the Pakistan Aeronautical Complex and China's Chengdu Aircraft Industry Group. Since China does not

Image credits- Indian Navy Source- The Diplomat Author- Abhijit Singh Earlier last week, India and the United States held the 19th edition of Exercise Malabar, a joint naval exercise, in the Bay of Bengal. This year, the interactions were an improvement over previous engagements, owing not only to the closely coordinated nature of combat drills, but also because of the presence of Japanese navy that took part in an Indian Ocean iteration of the Malabar for the first time in eight years. Importantly, the interaction has transitioned from being an India-U.S. bilateral engagement into a formal structured trilateral exercise, which maritime analysts say may be aimed at countering growing Chinese military presence in the Indian Ocean. An abiding symbol of warming strategic relations between the U.S. and India, Exercise-Malabar is the most wide-ranging professional interaction the Indian Navy has with any of its partner maritime forces. Even so, the decision to include Japa

Akula class SSN Vepr ( Source- Wikimedia Commons / Ilya Kurganov) Source- Russia & India Report An agreement on leasing another Russian nuclear-powered submarine to India is to be signed at the Russian-Indian summit in December, a source at India’s Defense Ministry told TASS. The possibility of leasing a second submarine from Russia will be studied when India’s Defense Minister Manohar Parrikar will visit Moscow next week," the source said. "Parrikar will hold talks on this strategic project with his Russian counterpart Sergey Shoigu. After the ten-year contract is signed another two or three years will be required for upgrading the submarine in keeping with India’s requirements," he said. Over the past 45 years Russia and India have established reliable, time-tested strategic ties in the field of defence. India’s armed forces are equipped with Soviet and Russian military hardware 70%, the source said, adding that Russia had always provided its best

Iran's new EMAD MRBM (Credits- Internet image) Source- Eurasia Review Author- Debalina Ghoshal Iran recently test-fired the ‘Emad’, a precision-guided medium-range surface-to-surface ballistic missile. The missile has a range of 1700 kms and a payload capacity of 750kgs. Any missile above a 500 kg payload is considered nuclear capable. Emad is liquid-fuelled but with improved accuracy and maneuverable re-entry vehicles for evading enemy defence systems. This improved accuracy is extremely important if Iran is to deliver a conventional payload. The missile is also reported to carry thrusters for course correction. Reports suggest that this missile is an improved version of the liquid-fuelled Shahab missiles. The maneuverability is achieved by steering warheads that can perform last minute maneuvering even at the terminal phase. According to Iranian Defence Minister Hossein Dehghan, Emad is Iran’s first ever missile that can be guided and controlled until the missil

F-35 ( Image credits- Wikimedia Commons / United States Navy) Source- The National Interest Author- James Hasik Last week’s federal electoral victory by Canada's Liberals probably means the end of the F-35A as a prospective fighter jet for the Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF). The immediate bad news accrues to Lockheed Martin, which stands to lose $6 billion in future revenue, and its remaining customers, for whom smaller volumes will mean as much as one percent more per production aircraft. The remaining longer-term question is what this means for Canada; U.S. Senator Orrin Hatch, after all, called the decision “stupid.”  But it’s not that prime minister-designate Justin Trudeau is outrightly refusing the stealthy airplane. Rather, he’s promising an open competition on a much smaller budget, presumably now for a twin-engined jet, which pretty much restricts the race to Boeing’s F-18E/F Super Hornet and Dassault’s Rafale C/B. The philosophies behind those aircraft

Image credits- Wikimedia Commons / NASA) Source- The National Interest Author- Issac B. Cardon China has nine maritime neighbors (including Taiwan) but no settled maritime boundaries, due in part to Beijing’s unwillingness to specify its maritime claims. Only one partial exception to this imprecision exists: a boundary agreement with Vietnam to delimit the northern part of the Gulf of Tonkin and a fishery agreement establishing a joint fishing regime in that area, both reached in 2000. The agreements offer both positive and negative lessons. At a minimum, they provide important precedents that should be more widely appreciated – foremost among them that it is possible for China to come to the bargaining table on maritime disputes. Meanwhile specific lessons can be applied to China’s bilateral maritime disputes with Japan, Vietnam, and the Koreas. Unfortunately the Tonkin agreements support only modest expectations for resolution of the complex, multilateral Spratly Is

Source- The Diplomat Author- Ankit Panda USS Lassen, DDG-82 ( Image credits- Wikimedia Commons / United States Navy) Early Tuesday morning, the U.S. Navy confirmed that the USS Lassen, an Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyer, had completed the first in a series of planned freedom of navigation operations (FONOPs) in the South China Sea. The operation is the strongest assertion yet by the U.S. Navy that it rejects any maritime claims for Chinese features that were submerged at low-tide in their original, pre-land reclamation state. The FONOP does not, as some reporting has suggested, directly challenge or contest the sovereignty of specific maritime features in the South China Sea. The United States continues to take no position on the actual sovereignty of various disputed maritime features in the South China Sea. Based on the reports available at the time of this writing, the U.S. Navy has not specified the exact location or duration of the Lassen‘s passage

INS Arihant ( Image credits- Wikimedia Commons / Indian navy) Source- Russia & India Report The India-Russia partnership has resulted in a string of successful defence projects, but none is more strategically important than INS Arihant, India’s first indigenously developed nuclear powered ballistic missile submarine. The 6000 ton Arihant, which has completed sea trials, is likely to undergo its maiden missile test-firing this month. The test will in all likelihood involve the 700 kilometre range K-15 submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM) or the 3,500 kilometre K-4. If successful, India will finally be able to complete its nuclear triad, giving the country’s strategic planners multiple options if it comes to a nuclear confrontation. A nuclear triad refers to the three components of atomic weapons delivery: strategic bombers, intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) and SLBMs. Of the three elements of the triad, the SLBMs are considered the most importa

Chinese DF-21 A Missile ( Image credits- Wikimedia Commons / Max Smith) Source- The National Interest Author- Michael Peck It's time for America to worry about Chinese ballistic missile defenses (BMD). That's the conclusion of a new study by the Federation of American Scientists, which found that while Beijing has not yet decided to build strategic missile defenses, Chinese leaders are seriously thinking about it. "Unlike some years ago, there is little doubt today that China is developing a strategic BMD capability; their flight tests alone make that clear," said authors Bruce MacDonald and Charles Ferguson, who spoke with more than 50 Chinese and American experts, including Chinese officials, military officers and academics. While Chinese BMD is in the development stage, it does give Beijing the option of deploying a missile defense capability – or not – depending on its assessment of the international situation. "At a minimum, it ap