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

Indira series of joint Indo-Russian exercises ( Image credits- Wikimedia Coomons / Mil.ru) Source- Russia & India Report / TASS A second round of consultations on planning the Russian-Indian war games Indra-2016 will be held in India in June, Col Alexander Gordeyev, the chief press officer of Russia's Eastern Military District said on Tuesday. "At the second planning conference that will be held in India, representatives of the Eastern Military District and the Indian Armed Forces will coordinate a calendar of the war games, the types and quantities of weapons and the procedure for the handover of arms, equipment and specialized technologies to the Indian army servicemen who will take part in the maneuvers," he said. Avia Indra-2014 teaches pilots tactics and precision The Russian-Indian anti-terrorist exercise Indra-2016 will take place in the second half of 2016 on the Sergeyevsky training ground located in the Far-Eastern Primorsky (Maritime)

PLAN Type- 54A Frigate Daqing ( Image credits- Wikimedia Commons / Simon Yang) Source- The National Interest Author- Dean Cheng There is a lot going on in Southeast Asia. The United States has conducted another freedom of navigation operation in the area of several disputed islands. The American Aegis destroyer USS William P. Lawrence sailed within 12 nautical miles of the artificial Chinese island built atop Fiery Cross Reef. Because Fiery Cross Reef began as a “high tide elevation (HTE),” (meaning: a rock) it is entitled to a 12 nautical mile zone of territorial waters. The United States therefore chose to conduct an “innocent passage,” sailing across the 12 nautical mile zone with its radars off, helicopter grounded, and weapons aimed fore-and-aft. Its main challenge to the Chinese was conducting its passage without giving the People’s Republic of China prior notification. So, the administration continues to conduct freedom of navigation operations at a de

Arihant Class SSBN ( Image credits- Wikimedia Commons / GAGAN@BRF) Source- The Diplomat Author- Ankit Panda Sartaj Aziz, adviser to Pakistan’s prime minister on foreign affairs, presented an interesting proposal to the Pakistani Senate on Thursday. He said that he would consider having Pakistan introduce a resolution at the United Nations that would urge the body to declare the Indian Ocean a “nuclear free zone.” Leaving aside the fact that the United Nations isn’t in the business of declaring nuclear weapon free zones, Aziz’s comments reflect increasing anxieties in Pakistan about India’s burgeoning sea-based nuclear deterrent. With the first of Arihant-class of domestically designed ballistic missile submarines rolling out and testing underway of Delhi’s K-4 submarine-launched ballistic missiles ongoing, Delhi is coming closer to operationalizing its sea-based deterrent. (The K-4 has been test launched from the Arihant‘s on-board silos, as I discussed last month.)

Source- Eurasia Review Author- Syed Badrul Ahsan / South Asia Mirror Pakistan’s politicians are quite a sight these days: they are hopping mad; they are huffing and puffing. They simply have no idea what to do about Bangladesh. After all, the sovereign nation which was once their eastern province, has had the audacity to send their ageing, Bengali-speaking loyalists to the gallows one after the other. These five men who have faced justice have not merely been proven to have committed crimes against humanity in 1971. In a larger way – and that is why Pakistanis like Sartaj Aziz have gone apoplectic – the evidence against the five collaborators is also a clear reflection once again of the guilt of the state of Pakistan itself. The war crimes trials remind Sartaj Aziz of the crimes committed by the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, in the name of Islam, in Bangladesh. The discomfort is palpable. Of course we have always known that. Pakistan’s leaders and people have also known