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

Chinese Air Craft Carrier Liaoning ( Credits- Internet image) Source- The National Interest Author- Harry J. Kazianis The People’s Republic of China: The only nation on Earth building not one but two “carrier-killer” missiles. Yet, China is also one of just a handful of countries who wants to build more carriers. Odd? Not exactly, if you know the history and why Beijing wants carriers in the first place. Indeed, there is a tremendous amount of publicly available information when it comes to Beijing’s carrier program, with the history of the program being completely fascinating. For example, in a recent article for U.S. Naval War College Review, Andrew Scobell, Michael McMahon and Cortez A. Cooper III explain the drivers behind the program, operational capacities and possible future directions. The full article is available here. Don’t have time to read the whole thing? No problem, I personally feel understanding the drivers of the program are key. With that said, here

Indian Army Sikh light infantry ( Image credits- Wikimedia Commons / Antônio Milena ) Source- The National Interest Author- James Jay Carafano Bharat Karnad is a professor of National Security Studies at the Centre for Policy Research in New Delhi—and the Machiavelli of India. His new book, “Why India is Not a Great Power (Yet),” lays out everything that’s wrong with his country's foreign policy, bureaucracy and defense establishment and how to fix it. What distinguishes Karnad's thinking about the future place of India in the world is that he is a true realist in the Machiavellian manner. Realism is often confused with being realistic. That's just wrong. Strategic thinkers of every stripe think they are realistic. Being realistic is figuring out what works. Realism is about why it works. Realists contend ‘power’ serves as the operative force governing the relationship between states. Everything else—structure, treaties, bargains, deals, rules, sanctio

PLAN Type-94 class SSBN ( Image credits- Wikimedia Commons / United States Naval Institute) Source- The Diplomat Author-  Benjamin David Baker During the Cold War, nuclear deterrence was ultimately perceived to be an effective way of keeping tensions between the Warsaw Pact and NATO from exploding into war. Although much of the rhetoric surrounding Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) disappeared along with the Soviet Union, nuclear states still keep sizable arsenals to dissuade others from attacking them. A central part of having a credible nuclear response option is to develop a so-called “nuclear triad.” This consists of having ground-, air- and sea-based nuclear capabilities, in order to retain a “second strike” capability in case an opponent launches its nukes first. Submarines and small, mobile land-based launch platforms armed with nuclear ballistic and so-called Multiple Independently Targetable Reentry Vehicles (MIRVs) are crucial to a second strike capability,

PLAN Type- 54 Frigate ( Image credits- Wikimedia Commons / 樱井千一) Source- The National Interest Author- Dave Majumdar The next major war, should it happen, will require a higher level of coordination among air-, land- and sea-based forces across a larger area than ever before. Such networking is precisely what the Chinese People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) tested this week as it conducted its war games in the South China Sea. According to the PLA Daily—which is the service’s official publication—at least three destroyers participated along with submarines, early warning aircraft, fighters and other forces. “This battle today was like fighting with your hands and feet bound. It was not fun to play,” Adm. Li Yan, deputy chief of staff of the South China Sea Fleet, told reporters. “However, this feeling is precisely the true state of the battlefield. Only through practicing in a variety of difficult situations in peacetime can you prepared for wartime without panic and

 Peoples Liberation Army ( Image credits- China Daily) Source- The Diplomat Author- Michael Raska While China’s foreign policy has traditionally relied on economic leverage and “soft power” diplomacy as its primary means of power projection, Beijing has also been actively exploiting concepts associated with strategic information operations as a means to directly influence the process and outcomes in areas of strategic competition. In 2003, the Central Military Commission (CMC) approved the guiding conceptual umbrella for information operations for the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) – the “Three Warfares” (san zhong zhanfa). The concept is based on three mutually reinforcing strategies: (1) the coordinated use of strategic psychological operations; (2) overt and covert media manipulation; and (3) legal warfare designed to manipulate strategies, defense policies, and perceptions of target audiences abroad. Operationalizing the ‘Three Warfares’ At the operational

Harpoon missile being fired ( Image credits- Wikimedia Commons / United States navy) Source- The Diplomat Author- Ben Rimland With the venerable RGM-84 Harpoon growing rather long in the tooth, the U.S. Navy has begun searching in earnest for a new and cutting-edge anti-ship missile (ASM) in both air and ship-launched varieties. Unsurprisingly, the Navy has looked to further evolutions of two legacy weapons systems, the Tomahawk and Harpoon, to replace its fleet of 1980s-vintage weapons. Of course, weapons procurement – especially for the world’s greatest maritime superpower – does not occur in a vacuum. While the Navy has distressingly neglected to construct new warships with organic Harpoon capability since 1999, China, Russia, and other adversaries have begun fielding advanced supersonic, long-ranged ASM like the SSN-27A Sizzler, the YJ-18, and other such weapons. America’s longtime technological and quantitative edge in wielding a “big stick” in the Asia-Pacific,

Chinese Beidou system ( Image credits- Internet source) Source- Russia & India Report / Sputnik Russian and Chinese experts have developed a draft project to create a global international navigation system based on China’s BeiDou and Russia’s GLONASS satellite navigation for the member states of BRICS group and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, Russian Space Systems company said in a statement on Tuesday. On Monday, Russia's GLONASS Union said Russia and China would also finalize a deal this month to establish two joint ventures to develop, manufacture and sell new satellite navigation devices that would receive signals from three major navigation systems, BeiDou, GLONASS and US Global Positioning System (GPS). "The project was approved at the second meeting of the Chinese-Russian committee for important projects in the sphere of strategic cooperation on the satellite navigation," the statement reads. The Chinese-Russian project is based o

Image credits- NASA Source- Eurasia Review From a dusty atmosphere stretching across the Atlantic Ocean to daily views of clouds at sunrise, a new NASA camera keeping a steady eye on the sunlit side of Earth is yielding new insights about our changing planet. With NASA’s Earth Polychromatic Imaging Camera (EPIC), affixed to NOAA’s Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) about one million miles from Earth, scientists are getting a new view of our planet’s clouds, land surfaces, aerosols and more. Science results from the first EPIC images were discussed Monday at a media briefing at the American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco. EPIC captures a color image of the sunlit side of Earth at least once every two hours, allowing researchers to track features as the planet rotates in the instrument’s field of view. “With EPIC, you see cloud structure from sunrise on the left to sunset on the right,” said Jay Herman, EPIC instrument lead investigator at NASA’s Go

USS John C. Stennis  ( Image credits- Wikimedia Commons / White House ) Source- The National Interest Author- Dave Majumdar India hopes to build its own indigenous nuclear-powered aircraft carrier—complete with electromagnetic catapults—with the cooperation of the United States. In recent years, Washington and New Delhi have drawn closer together in the maritime security realm, due in part to China’s more expansive maneuvering in both the Pacific and Indian Oceans. The South Asian nation is already building a conventionally powered indigenous carrier called Vikrant, which India expects to commission into service in 2017. However, the 40,000-ton Vikrant follows a design philosophy similar to Russian vessels like the 45,000-ton INS Vikramaditya—which was originally commissioned into the Soviet Navy as Admiral Gorshkov. After extensive modifications that included the removal of its missile armament, the former Soviet vessel was equipped with a ski-jump aircraft launch

Swarm of bees ( Image credits- Wikimedia Commons / Zantastik) Source- Eurasia Review Author- Ben Zweibelson Since the 1990s, Western military organizations have demonstrated periodic interest in whether the emergent behavior of decentralized systems, commonly referred to as ‘swarm theory’ or ‘swarm behavior,’ might be relevant in military applications. Defence innovators such as the RAND Corporation sponsored multiple studies on swarm theory in the past decade and a half, and recent popular books such as The Starfish and the Spider offer tantalizing prospects on decentralized organizations for future military applications.2 Clearly, the notion of alternative organizational intelligence and decentralized problem solving has sparked the interest of military academia. Is this another techno-centric fad, or does swarm theory offer military applications superior to traditional methodologies? Can the joint military community gain anything from considering swarming constructs?