On this Army Day, India needs to analyse why it has failed to deter its adversaries from executing plans to change the status quo on both working boundaries. Indian Army is forced to salvage the situation. As the saying goes ‘jo mare so meer’ - who hits first wins. Indian strategy of (not)managing …

The Central Asian republics have lately been in the news for the very wrong reasons. Five authoritarian dictators are ruling these republics. Three of them (Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan) are governed by leaders of the Soviet era who have retained the presidencies. All three are …

Post- independence the defence industry followed the Nehruvian philosophy on the lines of the Russian model, which treated the defence sector as a strategic sector as totally under the government with no involvement of the private sector. The first Ordnance factory came up in Ishapur in the year …

Australia's decision to scuttle a $66 billion contract to jointly build diesel-electric submarines with France and sign a new deal with the US and Britain to buy eight nuclear-powered subs has nearly torpedoed relations between the Western allies. With France describing it as a stab in the back and …

The 5th Battalion (Napiers), The Rajputana Rifles, one of the oldest battalion (Bn) of the Indian Army, in which I was commissioned after passing out from Officers Training School, Madras on April 24, 1966, and had the honour to command the same unit and take it to operations during Operation Pawan …

India’s intervention in Sri Lanka in July 1987 was the first overseas deployment of the Indian Armed Forces outside the UN charter post-independence. When this operation is reviewed many flaws that ailed the planning and execution are noteworthy even this day. If war is the continuation of politics …

Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF) military operations cannot be looked at in isolation from the Indo-Lanka Accord of July 29, 1987, which is inherently flawed from India’s standpoint. Serious practitioners of geopolitics will always wonder as to how India, which vigorously pushed its way to get the …

The USA went into Afghanistan not to occupy the country but to smoke out and bring the perpetrators of 9/11 to justice. The Taliban was ruling then and they refused to support the USA in their hunt for the Al Qaeda Terrorists who were holed up under the Taliban patronage. This mission which was to …

The victory of the Taliban in Afghanistan shocked the world, with the US being shocked more than others. The blazing speed and unpredicted victory of the Taliban against the mighty US Army which was equipped with the most modern and latest generation of arms and ammunition. The Americans used the …

The Indian Armed Forces have been undergoing rapid modernisation over the years. There has been a progressive upgradation of our weapon systems and platforms in keeping with our threat perceptions. However, due to budgetary constraints and other factors we have not been able to achieve our desired …