Category — Defense/ Security

According to AviationWeek.com, India’s armed services continue to gravitate toward foreign defense equipment.

The Air Force, for example, is about to issue a request for proposals for 56 military transports to replace its fleet of aging Hawker Siddeley HS 748 Turboprops. The contenders include the Italian-made Alenia C-27J and the Airbus Military C295.

From the charts below, we can see that the United States spend a lot more money on armed forces compared to China and India. The country has spent $160bn in 2011 whereas India only spent $38.5bn. Those charts, made by Amritt, used figures from the FDi report 2013

According to Ibnlive, the Indian Army is currently working on a $ 7.35 million plan which will allow a modernization of the infrastructure of two of its main field firing ranges.

The enhancement of the infrastructure at the ranges would make the training there more realistic and provide a “close-to-real battlefield scenario for troops”. Up to now, the Army has 66 field firing ranges but, according to Defense Minister AK Antony, 15 are currently de-notified by various state governments.

According to an Indian defense source, a highly-maneuverable version of a sea-based Brahmos supersonic cruise missile was successfully tested by the Indian Navy .

India has updated BrahMos missiles by installing the advanced satellite navigation systems from Russia’s Kh-555 and Kh-101 strategic long-range cruise missiles, adding GPS-GLONASS technology to the existing doppler-inertial platform.

The BrahMos missile has a range of 180 miles and can carry a conventional warhead of up to 660 lbs. It can effectively engage targets from an altitude as low as 30 feet and has a top speed of Mach 2.8.  The Indian Air Force is planning to arm 40 Su-30MKI Flanker-H fighters with BrahMos missiles. Moreover, Russia and India recently agreed to develop hypersonic BrahMos 2 missile capable of flying at speeds of Mach 5-Mach 7.

According to a senior defense industry official, India is creating a new, long-range missile which will deliver multiple nuclear warheads to different targets. Agni VI, the new missile, will have a range of 3,400-3,730 miles and will also have so-called MIRV (Multiple Independently targetable Re-entry Vehicle) capability. Only a few countries have nuclear missiles with MIRV technology. The announcement of Agni VI is the latest in a series of new weapons systems and projects unveiled by India.