Latest news with #AnilChauhan
Scroll.in
13 hours ago
- Politics
- Scroll.in
Quads, triads and India's South Asia paranoia
Let us not be coy. The limited war between Pakistan and India this past May, not long after the end-April terror attack near Pahalgam in Kashmir, has unlimited consequences for South Asia. As we know, avionics, strike and defensive systems got a massive workout. Vulnerabilities and strengths were duly exploited. And, duly noted – including artfully minimised losses in aircraft, equipment, facilities, and personnel – by both countries, their defense suppliers and strategic partners, and the world at large. Drone warfare truly joined the destructive drone of warfare by 'social' media, manned by keyboard warriors of South Asia. Ceasefire has now lapsed into uneasy détente. Leaders of India and Pakistan have moved on from claiming victory for their domestic audiences – while the leader of the United States as typically claimed the victory as his. We in South Asia are urged to take a deep breath and carry on. That is where the consequences enter, now brought to sharp relief by this on-again off-again conflict seemingly without end. If we were to telescope to India's security perspective – the perspective of a country that, significantly, shares borders with both China and all South Asian countries except Sri Lanka and the Maldives – the steady-state tandem enmity of Pakistan and China is joined by Bangladesh. This is being disseminated as an unholy triad, if you will, that carries both potential and demonstrable ill-will towards India. Indeed, India's newly voluble Chief of Defense Staff General Anil Chauhan indicated as much on July 8 at an event at a major establishment-oriented New Delhi think-tank. 'There is a possible convergence of interest we can talk about between China, Pakistan and Bangladesh,' said Gen Chauhan during an address at Observer Research Foundation, 'that may have implications for India's stability and security dynamics'. There are reasons for this and all of them, to India's mind, are collectively a clear and present – and future – danger. A dominant narrative in India is predicated on the South Asian ring of fire that its neighbours would be naïve to discount. Equally, India needs to accept that, while its regional strategic flex remains, its presumptuous South Asian zamindari, driven by sheer size and the geographic reality that no other South Asian country shares a land border with any other South Asian country but India, is over. Let us pan this out. Repeated calls for 'destroying' Pakistan – mainly by India's establishment-fed media and ruling party bots – is akin to Fool's Gold. This goes beyond the silliness of Indian government officials claiming that turning off the tap of the Indus will bring Pakistan to its knees. A fractured Pakistan will be a nightmare for India even though there are those among establishment hawks who see in such an eventuality the reclamation of all Kashmir. Add nuclear capability to that fracture and the future becomes a full-blown catastrophe that India's ultra-Right ecosystem nurtured with disinformation, delusion, and social media strategy masquerading as security imperatives can scarcely comprehend. Visualise generals as warlords. Visualise any number of fractious ethnic and religious groups in Pakistan which would sooner see any attack against India as a mark of faith and fulfilment. Visualise a future post-Pakistan's poverty-stricken millions sloshing about in a fractured land; and consider if any border security in the world is robust enough to withstand a flight of such dismantled people. The upshot: India will have to get its governance and hearts-and-minds act together in Kashmir, the same as Pakistan in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, if either is to withstand the other's rhetorical and actual onslaughts. (Besides, Pakistan needs to get its act together in its massively restive and deliberately under-developed Balochistan province, among other regions.) Over at the eastern arc, India's goodwill had already begun to take a hit in Bangladesh, as public opinion saw India as standing with an increasingly corrupt, electorally wayward, and essentially dictatorial Awami League government led by former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, especially during the past decade. India massively depleted its goodwill in a post-Hasina Bangladesh by standing with a belligerent Sheikh Hasina throughout the political upheaval over July and August 2024. And then, by presenting to outraged Bangladeshi citizenry the diplomatic horror of having India's national security advisor welcome an ejected Hasina at Hindon air force base near Delhi on August 5 – on live television. It was an optics disaster of epic proportion in both the mind's eye of Bangladeshi citizenry and to the emotionally charged and mission-oriented housecleaners of Bangladesh's interim government. It's a disaster from which India is yet to fully recover. It has made India's strategic and economic interests in Bangladesh, transhipment to its entire northeastern region, and India's strategic Siliguri Corridor deeply vulnerable to Bangladeshi policy squeeze. The risk of a squeeze by proxy makes matters worse for India: that slim corridor, the so-called Chicken's Neck, is a short hop for a China nestled in the hotly contested Doklam region just to the north. And for all of Bangladesh's justified moral lament for the democratic dislocation of the Hasina years and the atrocities perpetrated against students and innocent citizens over July-August 2024 – which this columnist observed first-hand – its interim government isn't blameless in adding to the tension. For his part, the head of the interim government of Bangladesh, no slouch when it comes to a networking opportunity polished by a lifetime of limelight, put several words out of place during an official visit to China this past March. Among other things, he publicly marketed Bangladesh to Chinese officials and businesses as being China's entrepôt for a 'landlocked' northeastern India. That too was an optics disaster – an observation which several senior South Asian diplomats have shared with me. With India's ongoing border spat with China, and repeated announcements by various Bangladesh entities to offer Chinese interests a deal to develop the Teesta River basin in northern Bangladesh – close to the strategic hotspot of the Siliguri Corridor – it was akin to waving a red flag to a bull in a China shop. This came in addition to the visible thaw in Bangladesh-Pakistan relations in the post-Hasina era, another huge red flag for India, among several other factors, including the release from jail of several people India views as inimical to its security. Bangladesh's interim government walked back the China-in-Northeastern India talk, but the damage was done. I've heard career-officials gripe about how the interim government should realise its interim nature, scale back knee-jerk pronouncements and Goebbelsian spin, and permit regime-agnostic professionals to go about their business in Bangladesh's national interest. In a tit-for-tat response that one could term Pakistanesque – or Indiaesque, depending on the lens – India has begun to squeeze Bangladesh by withdrawing some trading and transhipment benefits. Citing quite legitimate security reasons India has also refrained from expanding visa issuance for Bangladeshi visitors to the peak-Hasina level of a staggering 1.6 million visas a year – the figure for 2023. There are other indications of this avoidable freeze. With its heightened threat perception and what it perceives as necessary maritime deterrence, enhanced Indian naval and security activity in both the Bay of Bengal and the Arabian Sea has become the new constant. There is the west-to-east arc of Pakistan, China, Nepal, Bangladesh, and Myanmar – where China has displayed deft management to secure its energy, mineral, and territorial interests. From a regional-and-maritime perspective, Sri Lanka is of course another competitive geography for India and China and which, much like its southern co-location with neighbouring Maldives, completes the ring of encirclement for India. There are several instances of the China and India's push-and-shove in Sri Lanka, Maldives, Nepal, Myanmar, and, increasingly, Bangladesh, that this column has variously discussed over the past three years. But just how acute regional threat perception has become is indicated by a churlish incident from early this year – predating the India-Pakistan fracas in May. A Bangladeshi naval vessel was to visit Colombo port for a courtesy call, en route Karachi for a naval exercise – Bangladeshi navy ships had earlier participated in previous editions of the exercise. From available indications, India pressured Sri Lanka to deny the vessel entry. It was touch and go for a while, but the Bangladesh-Sri Lanka 'bilateral' prevailed. Or, from India's freshly jaundiced eye, the Pakistan-Bangladesh-Sri Lanka 'trilateral'. Or to be a bit more provocative, perhaps the China-Pakistan-Bangladesh-Sri Lanka 'quadrilateral' – that would, ironically, run counter to the Quad or Quadrilateral Security Dialogue between India, Japan, Australia, and the United States that is commonly perceived as a strategy to contain China in the Asia-Pacific and Indian Ocean Region. But for all that, there is monumental work to be done to mend the India-Bangladesh bilateral, a rent in which could – with or without China – ruin Eastern South Asia.
The Print
2 days ago
- Business
- The Print
What India can learn from Israel about atmanirbharta in defence
Israel's journey toward defence self-reliance was driven by a combination of existential urgency and a national culture of innovation. When Israel was born, it immediately faced a multi-front military conflict. These wars forged a mindset of necessity-driven invention, unlike India, whose military objectives were shaped by the non-alignment philosophy and a focus on civilian industry. Yet, despite these restrictions and existential threats, Israel rapidly transformed itself into a defence innovation powerhouse, exporting nearly $15 billion in advanced weaponry in 2024, while India continues to rely heavily on arms imports to meet its needs. Understanding this divergence reveals key lessons on strategy, institutional design, and national resolve, which India must learn to become a global powerhouse. India and Israel became independent countries less than a year apart — in August 1947 and May 1948, respectively. Almost immediately, both countries had to wage a war to safeguard their sovereignty and territorial integrity due to their inimical neighbours. As independent states, both countries inherited nascent economies, fragile infrastructure, limited heavy industries, and immediate security threats. In fact, Israel was probably in a more critical situation as it faced a UN arms embargo on all parties involved in the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, which limited its access to military equipment. This was particularly so during the Nehruvian years, when the Armed Forces were seen as a necessary evil and priority was given to the development of the civilian industrial sector at the cost of a firm military foundation. Israel, on the other hand, saw military capability as essential to survival. Every war from 1948 through 1967, 1973, and right up to the ongoing conflict in Gaza, has been a catalyst for innovation, with battlefield necessity spurring not only rapid development of weapons systems, but also new tactics, techniques, and procedures. The urgency to upgrade our defence preparedness has returned to the fore, more so after Operation Sindoor. Limited foreign imports are being considered to plug critical gaps, including the possibility of inducting a foreign-made fifth-generation fighter aircraft. Inaugurating a workshop and exhibition held at the Manekshaw Centre in Delhi on 16 July, Chief of Defence Staff General Anil Chauhan said, 'In today's warfare, you can't win with yesterday's weapon system.' It is logical then that tomorrow's wars cannot be fought with weapon systems based on today's technology. We need a transformative change in our systems. Two contrasting defence sectors Israel carried out institutional integration of its military, academic, and private industrial capabilities, resulting in a tightly coordinated ecosystem. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) worked in close tandem with universities, startups, and defence firms such as Elbit Systems, Rafael, and Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI). This tri-sector collaboration allowed rapid prototyping, battlefield testing, and iterative refinement. Mandatory conscription ensured military-civilian integration while early support from the Jewish diaspora in terms of funds and know-how also helped. This aspect of a strong civil-military-industry interface has been repeatedly stressed upon by Edward N Luttwak and Eitan Shamir in their book The Art of Military Innovation. The result was world-class systems such as the Iron Dome, Trophy active protection system, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), and satellite systems. By contrast, India's defence sector remained largely insulated. Dominated by public-sector entities like DRDO, HAL, and OFB, it followed bureaucratic, slow-moving processes with limited commercial incentives or accountability. Weak feedback loops between users (the military) and designers (DRDO), along with little to no synergy between academia, industry, and the military, further hindered progress. Most importantly, procurement must transition from least-cost (L1) models to highest-performance (T1) evaluations. Emphasising metrics such as lifecycle cost, operational performance, and indigenisation will incentivise innovation and discourage a process-over-product mindset. The L1 system has been the bane of our procurement, encouraging companies to give the bare minimum to win contracts. Except for the Armed Forces, no stakeholder truly has skin in the game. Israel's export success in defence is also a reflection of its strategic necessity. With a small domestic market incapable of sustaining mature industries, Israel pursued exports aggressively. In 2024, Israeli defence exports hit a record $14.8 billion, with 48 per cent comprising rockets, missiles, and air defence systems. These sales — to Europe and other friendly countries — not only validated Israeli technology but also funded future R&D. India, despite its large Armed Forces, has lacked a similar export essentiality, and its fledgling defence industry has struggled to translate capacity into mass production or compete globally, resulting in continued reliance on imports. Also read: A letter to Defence Minister, with lessons from American fighter pilot John Boyd: Jaithirth Rao The real challenge India has initiated policy reforms aimed at shifting this paradigm. Programmes like Make in India, the Defence Acquisition Procedure 2020, and the Strategic Partnership Model have opened doors for private sector participation in defence, raised FDI limits, and corporatised legacy PSUs. Notably, Reliance Defence's recent partnerships with Germany's Rheinmetall and Diehl Defense to produce advanced ammunition and guided shells domestically mark significant milestones. Similarly, the indigenous helicopter gunship and sniper rifle developments reflect gradual progress. India's defence exports, estimated at Rs 21,083 crore in FY 2023-24, to over 100 countries, underscore a nascent export orientation, though much of it remains aspirational. Israel's success is an off-shoot of existential necessity, an integrated ecosystem, a culture of innovation, and export-driven development. India must build upon the momentum by deepening private sector involvement, institutional reform, procurement refocus, and nurturing human capital, to genuinely realise Atmanirbharta in defence. This requires bold structural transformation, sustained political support, and clear strategic direction, with an emphasis on defence preparedness. In this context, it would be worthwhile to recollect what French President Emmanuel Macron said in his speech on the eve of Bastille Day 2025: 'To be free in this world, you must be feared. To be feared, you must be powerful.' India's challenge is not of capability, but of unity and resolve. A focused, innovation-driven, user-integrated defence ecosystem is achievable if the government empowers rather than restrains; the military leads rather than watches; and the industry builds rather than waits to be spoon-fed. India has the necessary talent, demand, and environment to build one of the world's best indigenous defence ecosystems. We just have to put it all together. General Manoj Mukund Naravane PVSM AVSM SM VSM is a retired Indian Army General who served as the 28th Chief of the Army Staff. Views are personal. (Edited by Aamaan Alam Khan)
India.com
2 days ago
- Business
- India.com
Drone Army, Intelligent War Rooms, AI-Powered Systems: How Army Plans To Become Future Combat-Ready By 2026-27
When Chief of Defence Staff General Anil Chauhan recently said that India must invest in and develop homegrown capabilities to ensure its security, he was quite serious. Post Operation Sindoor, where India faces swarmed drone attacks from Pakistan, the Armed Forces have highlighted the role of drones and counter-drone systems in warfare. CDS also underscored that recent conflicts globally have demonstrated how drones can 'shift tactical balance disproportionately' and asserted that self-reliance in UAVs and Counter-Unmanned Aerial Systems (C-UAS) is a strategic imperative for India. Notably, Lt General Rahul R Singh, Deputy Chief of Army Staff (Capability Development and Sustenance), recently said that China provided real-time war inputs to Pakistan during Operation Sindoor. Now, the Indian Armed Forces have expedited their preparations for having drone fleets and real-time battlefield monitoring to be ahead or at par with the enemies. According to reports, the Indian Army has already prepared a roadmap for having drone swarms, real-time war data input, combat simulations training for soldiers, information warfare and the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML), and Big Data Analytics to make data-backed decisions. These systems will be in place by 2026–27. The army will reportedly leverage Artificial intelligence to process inputs from drones, satellites, aircraft, and ground-based sensors, combining this data in real time to enable quicker and more accurate decision-making. According to an Indian Express report, AI will be deployed across a broad spectrum of operations, including decision support systems capable of generating counter-intelligence, improving surveillance, streamlining logistics and supply chain management, analyzing Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) and social media content, mapping enemy capabilities, and conducting wargaming simulations. This will help army not only mobilise troops and weapons in accordance with the real-time data but will also help in the accurate positioning of the important vectors/equipment. The army is reportedly also building an AI lab, which will help in the development of AI tools and applications for the three services. The army is also focusing on the indigenisation of these technologies in collaboration with the industry. CDS Chuahan has already highlighted that indigenously developed counter-UAS systems built according to India's terrain and needs are crucial during military operations "We can not rely solely on these technologies, which are crucial for the offensive and defensive missions. Dependence on foreign technologies weakens our preparedness, limits our ability to scale up production, and results in a shortfall of critical spares for sustenance and round-the-clock availability. Foreign capability is known to all and adversaries can predict tactics based on the capability of these systems," CDS Chauhan has said.
News18
3 days ago
- Politics
- News18
CDS Gen Anil Chauhan visits Defence Services Staff College, Wellington
Chennai, Jul 19 (PTI) Chief of Defence Staff General Anil Chauhan visited the Defence Services Staff College, Wellington in Tamil Nadu on Saturday and addressed the student officers of the 81st staff course, permanent staff of the college and station officers. Referring to Operation Sindoor, he emphasised the importance of Tri-Services synergy demonstrated during the successful operations by the Indian Armed Forces. Later, while interacting with the faculty of the college, General Anil Chauhan stressed the integration and jointness imperatives, capability development, Aatmanirbharat and an in-depth understanding of the transformative changes being pursued in the military, a release said. The CDS was also briefed by the DSSC Commandant Lt Gen Virendra Vats on the ongoing training activities at the college, where emphasis is being laid on fostering jointness and inter-services awareness, specifically with the institutionalisation of the Deep Purple Division. The 45-week 81st staff course is presently underway at the college and it comprises 500 student officers, including 45 from 35 friendly countries, the release said. PTI JSP KH Disclaimer: Comments reflect users' views, not News18's. Please keep discussions respectful and constructive. Abusive, defamatory, or illegal comments will be removed. News18 may disable any comment at its discretion. By posting, you agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.
The Independent
3 days ago
- Politics
- The Independent
Trump says up to five fighter jets shot down during India-Pakistan conflict
Donald Trump has claimed that up to five fighter jets were shot down during the recent military conflict between India and Pakistan. The nuclear-powered neighbours stepped back from the brink of all-out war in May following their worst military escalation in decades which saw dozens of people killed in cross-border shelling as well as drone and missile attacks on both sides. Mr Trump, who has repeatedly claimed credit for brokering the ceasefire that ended the conflict after four days, made the remarks at a dinner with some Republican lawmakers at the White House, without clarifying which side's planes he meant. 'In fact, planes were being shot out of the air. Five, five, four or five, but I think five jets were shot down actually," Mr Trump said while talking about the conflict. India confirmed for the first time on 31 May that it had lost jets during the conflict but refused to clarify their number or nature. India switched tactics after suffering losses in the air on the first day of hostilities and established an advantage before a ceasefire was announced, General Anil Chauhan, the country's chief of defence staff, said. After the conflict broke out in May, both Pakistan and India claimed to have downed each other's fighter jets in a dogfight that reportedly involved over 125 aircraft, making it the largest aerial battle since the Second World War. Pakistan claimed it had shot down five Indian aircraft in air-to-air combat, including the French Rafale. India said it had downed 'a few planes', a claim that was refuted by Islamabad, even though the country acknowledged its air bases had suffered hits. Mr Trump has claimed credit over 60 times for the ceasefire that he announced on social media on May 10 after Washington held talks with both India and Pakistan. India has contested the US president's claim that the truce resulted from his intervention and his threat to sever trade ties if the two countries continued fighting. India has insisted that New Delhi and Islamabad must resolve their problems directly and with no outside involvement. The conflict broke out after India attacked alleged militant camps in Pakistan to avenge the deaths of 26 people, mostly Hindu tourists, killed in a terror attack in the Indian part of Kashmir on 22 April. New Delhi accused Pakistan of backing the gunmen who carried out the massacre in the restive Himalayan valley. Islamabad denied the charge and sought an independent investigation. The Indian strikes escalated the tensions into a military conflict as the two sides exchanged fire along their de facto border in Kashmir as well as missile and drone strikes on military installations. Washington condemned the 22 April attack, but did not directly blame Islamabad.
