A comparison with the number of senior ranks in the Israeli Defence Forces shows that Indian Army is overcrowded at the top.
In response to this Times UK article on the burgeoning number of senior officers in the British Army, KoW blog compares them to the number of senior officers in the Israeli Defence Forces.
By contrast, [...]
India is ideally suited to provide the military trainers that NATO needs in Afghanistan.
Afghanistan needs more military trainers — NATO has been able to provide only 541 out of 1278 trainers needed for the growing Afghan Army and Police forces — and they aren’t getting them from anywhere. Pakistan has been rather keen to provide [...]
By Fourth Eye.
[The Guest blogger, Fourth Eye is a retired Indian Air Force officer, who holds a postgraduate degree in Operations Research from a foreign university. He has undertaken many studies on the subject while serving with the Indian Air Force. This is his response to the blogpost here on the way we allocate our [...]
Incremental budgeting for defence expenditure by the government demolishes all talk of budgeting based on capability-based, long-term integrated defence planning.
Amidst all the pretentious talk about LTIPP (2007-2022), five-year defence plans, forward planning, capability based restructuring and more such gibberish put forth by the defence services, defence ministry and myriad strategic commentators on allocations for the [...]
The biggest service that Mr. Antony can do to national security is resign as the defence minister.
Congress MP and spokesperson, Manish Tewari’s recent piece suggesting that the defence ministry has not done enough to strengthen national security — though written in his personal capacity — has suddenly put the defence minister, AK Antony in the [...]
Can we start framing similar questions in India?
From the novel A Soldier’s Duty by Thomas E. Ricks:
We as a nation have not really come to grips with what should be the proper role of uniformed officers in debates about issues that affect the armed services. It is especially problematic in an era of deference to [...]
An exclusive focus on legacy efforts of military modernisation has done a huge disservice to national security.
When the new defence budget is announced in a few weeks time, we will again witness — to paraphrase Richard Betts — that the sluice gates of military spending have been opened not because it is the [...]
Let us stop this jamboree of a Republic Day Parade.
Even if there is no fog on this 26th January, Delhi will still come to a standstill. Blame it on the Republic Day celebrations. As this news report suggests, the state seems to be taking a kind of perverse pride in converting the national capital [...]
Varying reactions — balanced, confused and ridiculous — from ex-military officers to the army corruption debacle.
The action initiated by the army chief against the four generals, who were indicted by the Court of Inquiry in the Sukhna land scam, was unsurprising and on predictable lines. Incessant media spotlight on the troubling issue has elicited a [...]
The next army chief says Indian Army is designed for defence of India within the sub-continental domain.
Here is an excerpt from an interview in Salute with Lieutenant General VK Singh, who — in all likelihood — will be the next army chief in a few months time.
Warfare [...]
2009 has been a year of setbacks for the DRDO. It is a great opportunity to reform the organisation.
The DARPA — Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency — was set up by the US government the same year, 1958, the DRDO — Defence Research and Development Organisation — was born in India. Well, the similarities end [...]
Why do terror incidents in India that are counted refer only to Pakistan-backed Islamist terrorist attacks in major urban centres outside Jammu & Kashmir?
An error is simply a failure to adjust immediately from a preconception to an actuality.~John Cage
At the turn of the year, Ajai Sahni critically examines the hugely publicised statement — “no terror [...]
…if the defence ministry continues to avoid, bypass and confuse those asking the right questions.
In its report on national security in February 2001 — constituted in the backdrop of the Kargil Review Committee report — the group of ministers had recommended that “the Government should constitute a high powered expert committee to reorganise, reform and [...]
Nearly eight years after it was first proposed, the defence ministry has not yet embraced this very sensible idea.
For the uninitiated, here is a primer to understand the concept of Zero-based budgeting. United States implemented it in 1977, the Chinese claim to have done so in 2004. In fact, there have been renewed calls in [...]
It is a process, not a state.
From a dated blogpost by Hilzoy at Obsidian Wings that explains the oft-used term — a broken army.
It’s not as though one day we will hear a loud snap and find the Army broken in two. We will not get up one morning, flip a switch, and discover that [...]
Indian armed forces need to actively court and embrace intellectualism.
In the latest issue of Marine Corps Gazette, Lt. Colonel Michael D. Grice of the US Marines asks his Corps the rhetorical question — Where is our Kilcullen?
We have brilliance within our ranks; that is inarguable. What we do not have, however, is a systemic way [...]
Pratap Bhanu Mehta makes a valid case for engaging Pakistan, but there have to be other prongs in the strategy.
In today’s Indian Express, India’s foremost columnist Pratap Bhanu Mehta makes a case against Indian military involvement in Afghanistan. He instead asks India to make bold attempts to engage larger Pakistani public opinion to meet Indian [...]
There is no rationale to start another Officers Training Academy at Gaya when the existing one at Chennai is under-subscribed by 55 percent.
Earlier this week, Defence Minister Mr. A. K. Antony informed the Parliament about the pattern of cadet intake from 2006 to 2009 in various military academies, viz., the National Defence Academy [NDA], the [...]
The lessons from the story of the Army land scam remain the same… unheard.
Forget the supposed evidence , phone records, statement by the real estate developer comparing the indicted General to God, attempts to deflect attention by involving the West Bengal government and the statement by a General’s brother drawing the army chief and the [...]
What is the Indian government policy on defence firms employing retired service officers?
This paragraph from a must-read piece in the USA Today — about retired senior military officers doubling up as mentors with the defence services to earn money while simultaneously working for defence manufacturing firms — spells out US government policy on employing retired [...]
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