ASIAN DEFENCE

Russia’s future main battle tank (MBT) will be equipped with a remotely controlled gun, the Izvestia newspaper said on Monday citing a defense industry source. The gun will be digitally controlled by a crewmember located in a separate compartment, which would be made from composite materials and protected by multi-layered armor. The crew compartment will be also isolated from the motor compartment to increase survivability on the battlefield. The secret project, dubbed Armata, has been approved by the Russian Defense Ministry. It is being implemented by the tank manufacturer Uralvagonzavod in Russia’s Urals region. Work from other projects, including Object 195 and Black Eagle, will be incorporated in Armata's design.

 Shaheen-1A Ballistic Missile Test  A Pakistani military Made an important disclosure: the mysterious range everyone was guessing for the Shaheen-1A is not 2500 kilometers or 5000 kilometers as some exaggerated, it has a maximum range of just 1500 kilometers. According to the official, there were two main objectives of this short test:  Enhance accuracy for pinpoint attacks. Inclusion into the league of nations which have developed intermediate ballistic missiles.   The official stated that Pakistan's deterrence is foremostly against any aggressive Indian adventurism that can turn the region into an inferno. In the official's opinion, India carried out the recent Agni-V ICBM test to send an indirect signal to its rival China, whom it has strong reservations against for various reasons. It was also revealed by the official that India's military establishment has not shared the actual range of the Agni-V ICBM which happens to be 80...

For the first time since 2005, New Delhi has violated a bilateral agreement by leaking to the media news about Pakistan launching a long-range ballistic missile. Pakistan and India normally notify each other seven days in advance if they are to test launch a long-range ballistic missile. In the recent case when on Wednesday Pakistan tested its Hatf IV missile, part of its Shaheen I series, it notified India of the test.However, it was surprising to read on Wednesday reports from New Delhi that Pakistan was to test a long-range missile in the Indian Ocean. Someone from the government leaked the information to the Indian media well before Pakistan carried out the test on Wednesday. The Pakistani officials are not ready, for now at least, to comment publicly except to say that India leaked the news and violated the 2005 bilateral agreement. The spin that India wanted to put on the leaked report was to imply that Pakistan’s test was a reaction to the Indian Agni I...

One Direction's Zayn Malik One Direction's Zayn Malik One Direction's Zayn Malik One Direction's Zayn Malik

Turkey has blocked the participation of Israel in a key NATO summit that will take place in Chicago on May 20 and 21, despite calls from influential allies including the United States, Western diplomatic have sources told the Hürriyet Daily News. The veto was conveyed to the NATO bodies by Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu during the Alliance’s meeting last week in Brussels. “There will be no Israeli presence at the NATO meeting unless they issue a formal apology and pay compensation for the Turkish citizens their commandos killed in international waters” a senior Turkish official told the Daily News. “There are demands from us for the removal of our veto, but this is out of question.” “Those countries who wish to see normalization in ties between Turkey and Israel should advise Israel to apologize and to compensate the killing of Turks in international waters,” the official said.

Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) will test the indigenously developed scram jet engine next year, according to DRDO chief VK Saraswat. “We have demonstrated the performance of a scram jet engine operating at Mach six speed (six times the speed of sound),” he said in an interview given to Doordarshan. Theoretical projections place the top speed of a scramjet between Mach 12 (15,000 kmph) and Mach 24 (29,000 kmph), according to Wikipedia. The fastest air-breathing aircraft is a SCRAM jet design, the NASA X-43A, which reached Mach 9.8. For comparison, the second fastest air-breathing aircraft, the manned SR-71 Blackbird, has a cruising speed of Mach 3.2. After the successful launch of Agni-5 Inter-Continental Ballistic Missile (ICBM), India is all set to develop reusable rockets which will combine the technologies of both ballistic and cruise missiles. On the range of Agni-5 missile, which was successfully test-fired recently off Odisha coast, he...

F-35 Stealth Fighter  The US government has agreed to allow the air force to install Israeli-produced radio and data link systems onboard the F-35 stealth fighter aircraft. As revealed in the report of the US Congressional Research Service, which IsraelDefense has obtained, this commitment represents the first significant US waiver with regards to the installation of Israeli systems onboard the advanced fighter aircraft. The use of advanced radio and data link systems will provide the aircraft with greater immunity to deliberate jamming of its communication systems. The report further reveals that if Israel were to procure more than 20 F-35s, the US government would consider allowing the country to add “black boxes” to the aircraft’s Electronic Warfare (EW) system, which would present unique Israeli-developed capabilities to the system. The US has so far refused to allow the air force even partial access to the fighter's EW system. A key issue wh...

AGNI-V TEST FIRED  India on Thursday successfully test fired a new missile capable of delivering a one-tonne nuclear warhead anywhere in rival China, marking a major advance in its defence capabilities.   Watched by hundreds of scientists, the Agni V was launched from a test site off the eastern state of Orissa. India views the rocket, which has a range of 5,000 kilometres, as a key boost to its regional power aspirations and one that narrows — albeit slightly — the huge gap with China’s technologically advanced missile systems. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Defence Minister A K Antony congratulated the nation’s defence scientists on the “successful” launch, with Antony calling the achievement “a major milestone in India’s missile programme”. The test leaves India knocking at the door of a select club of nations with inter-continental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), which have a minimum range of 5,500 kilometres. Currently only the ...

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan  Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan was to arrive in Beijing on Monday on an official visit to boost business and political ties between the rising powers with booming economies, despite differences over Syria and China’s ethnic Uighur region.   The visit is the first to China in 27 years by a Turkish premier and follows a February trip by Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping to Ankara and Istanbul, where the countries signed deals worth billions of dollars. The official Xinhua News Agency said Erdogan brought a delegation of 300 businessmen, seeking more Chinese investment in Turkey and increase in Turkish exports. Erdogan said before he left for China that the countries can cooperate in energy, construction, automotive, banking, information and telecommunications, according to Xinhua. China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said Erdogan first stopped in Urumqi, capital of the far west Xinjiang regi...

 India's DRDO Indigenous AWACS Aircraft  India's DRDO Indigenous AWACS Aircraft

An avalanche buried over hundred Pakistani soldiers on a major army base on a Himalayan glacier close to India on Saturday, military officials said. “It is a tragedy,” said Major Gen. Athar Abbas, a military spokesman in Islamabad. According to details, the snow hit a battalion headquarters in the Gayari sector at 5:45 a.m. The death toll was not immediately known. Officials said rescue efforts were underway with tracking dogs, helicopters and snowmobiles. “It is feared that maybe it will become one of the major incidents” of weather-related disasters in the remote, frigid region, Abbas said. Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani expressed his shock at the incident, which he said "would in no way would undermine the high morale of soldiers and officers." That part of the disputed Kashmir region is often called the world’s highest battlefield. Hundreds of Pakistani and Indian troops are based at elevations of up to 22,0...

INS Chakra The nuclear-powered attack submarine INS Chakra, with lethal "hunter-killer'' and intelligence-gathering capabilities'', was formally inducted into Indian Navy on a 10-year lease from Russia at a cost of around $1 billion on Wednesday. Defence minister A K Antony, Navy chief Admiral Nirmal Verma and Russian ambassador Alexander M Kadakin, among others, all extolled the submarine as a "shining example'' of the deep and abiding "strategic partnership'' between India and Russia during the ``welcome'' ceremony at the highly-guarded Ship-Building Centre. INS Chakra, with a dived displacement of 12,000-tonne, will, however, not give India its long-awaited third leg of the "nuclear weapons triad'' since it's not armed with long-range strategic missiles due to international treaties. That will only happen after the country's own homegrown nuclear submarine INS Arihant, armed wi...

China's Type81 LHD Helicopter Carrier