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aksha

Captain
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China has confirmed its participation in the Indian International Fleet Review (IFR) in Visakhapatnam in February 2016, official sources told The Hindu. This is the first time the Chinese Navy will take part in the event.

“Their participation will be in terms of both ship and personnel,” a senior Navy official said. The specifics are being worked out. The development comes at a time of growing competition between the two countries for strategic space in the Indian Ocean with the Chinese Navy’s increasing forays into the region. Commenting on this, the Chief of the Naval Staff, Admiral R.K. Dhowan, recently said that “Chinese naval activities are being closely monitored.”

Despite the growing maritime friction, both nations agreed on increasing bilateral naval cooperation during Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s recent visit to China.

“The two sides will exchange visits of naval ships and hold PASSEX [passing exercises] and SAR

exercises,” said the joint statement issued after Mr. Modi’s discussions with Chinese President Xi Jinping.


While 90 nations have been invited, 10 of them landlocked countries, 46 have so far confirmed their participation.

The first IFR on the Mumbai coast in 2001 had 22 countries participating.

Five-day event

President Pranab Mukherjee, as the Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces, will inspect the fleet review. The event is spread over five days from February 5, beginning with an international seminar.

The fleet review will be the last one for India’s ageing aircraft carrier INS Viraat, which is to be decommissioned after February.
 

aksha

Captain
@twitch posted this at DFI,

Col ( Retd ) Danvir Singh reviewing DRDO's ARDE Multi Caliber Indian Weapon System ( MCIWS) developed by ARDE that was unveiled last year in defencexpo .

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Excalibur and new pump action shotgun by OFB.

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aksha

Captain
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Eying an upcoming Rs 5,000-crore Indian contract to upgrade Kilo class submarines, Gujarat-based Pipavav Shipyard has announced an agreement with Russia that is looking to create a global servicing hub for submarines in India.

The agreement, which is likely to be converted into a joint venture company with a 51% stake for the Indian company, was inked with Russia's Zvyozdochka on Tuesday. Pipavav said this is the first time the work for refit of submarines is being considered for the private sector. As reported by ET, Russia had been scouting for an Indian partner for the programme and had been in talks with Pipavav for the past few months.

Sources said that the understanding is that in the first stage, four Indian Navy Kilo class submarines will be given a second midlife upgrade that will increase their service life by 15 years. This refit contract is currently being negotiated between the Navy and the Russian government.

Once signed, the first of the four Kilo class submarines to be upgraded will be sent to Russia, where engineers and workers from Pipavav will be trained by Zvyozdochka. Work on the remaining three will then be carried out in India. While the initial contract would be for around Rs 5,000 crore, Pipavav has announced that the indicative value of work could be around Rs 11,000 crore.

As reported, Russia is also looking at India as a global repair hub for Kilo class submarines, several of which are operated in the region. Pipavav has said that the joint venture will place it favourably for undertaking similar work for large submarine forces of similar class deployed by countries like Algeria, Vietnam and Iran, with potential additional revenues of approx Rs 20,000 crore.

Zvyozdochka, which conducted a survey of several Indian shipyards in both the public and private sector, has also informed the Indian defence ministry on its selection of Pipavav for the Medium Refit and and Life Certification of Kilo class submarines in India.
 

aksha

Captain
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The Indian Navy’s Directorate of Naval Design, in collaboration with Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) and Steel Authority of India Ltd (SAIL), has developed a special grade of steel for indigenously designed nuclear-powered stealth submarines.

The joint initiative of DRDO and SAIL for local production of the new grade of steel would allow the country to progress on indigenous development of nuclear-powered submarines. It would also help the country to save precious foreign exchange.

The special steel has been tested for use by nuclear powered submarines at SAIL’s Rourkela plant. Codenamed DMR292A, the special steel is exclusively for “underwater projects”. “This a big achievement for the country as other exporting nations that produce the special steel were either unwilling or unable to continue selling it to India. In the absence of the domestic R&D initiative, India’s indigenous submarine development programme would have moved back by several years,” senior officers from DRDO told FE on conditions of anonymity.

The new special steel is military-grade, which means it is far more sturdier than ordinary trpe and is capable of being used in temperatures as low as minus (-) 40°C. Above all, iot has power to absorb ballistic impact. These special features make the steel almost unbreakable, but it could be bent to suit tailor-made requirements of the armed forces.

State-owned SAIL is already actively participating in projects of the Indian Navy. It is supplying steel for country’s single largest military platform — a 42,000-tonne Indigenous Aircraft Carrier. SAIL has so far delivered about 28,000 tonnes of the warship-grade steel for the Indigenous Aircraft Carrier-1, called Project 71 (P-71).

The PSU has set up exclusive facilities at a Special Plates Plant in Rourkela to meet the requirements of the aircraft carrier. A team of scientists of the Defence Metallurgical Research Laboratory worked with technologists to develop and set up a production line of the steel, called DMR249A at the Bhilai plant over the last seven years.

Another variant of the steel, called DMR249B, was made at the Alloy Steel Plant in Durgapur. It is used in the repair of the Indian Navy’s Russian-origin Kilo-class submarines and to build anti-submarine warfare corvette, the INS Kamorta.

“The special steel has twice the price of other grades of industrial-purpose metal but comes at almost half the cost of the imported variety. This would help in saving foreign exchange,” said a SAIL executive not wanting to be named.

SAIL is also producing armoured plates for Russian-origin T-72 and T-90 tanks, the indigenous Main Battle Tank ‘Arjun’ and for mine-protected vehicles.

Earlier SAIL developed both Warship Grade & Aerospace Grade Steel for use in Indian Warships and Satellite Launch Vehicles -
 

aksha

Captain
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The Andhra Pradesh government has set in motion the formal process of acquiring the Centre’s clearance for stationing INS Viraat, the last British ship serving the Indian Navy, once it is decommissioned in 2016.

The oldest aircraft carrier in the world is all set to take a new avatar as an important tourist attraction in the beach off Visakhapatnam after its decommissioning. INS Viraat has been serving the Navy for the last 56 years.

“The aircraft carrier with a huge built-up space could be turned into a museum or a hotel or a mini-township at an expenditure of around Rs. 200 crore in the Public-Private Partnership mode. If it is anchored in the sea, instead of the beach, tourists will be taken on boats to the warship,” official sources said.

INS Viraat, which was launched in 1953 and acquired by India and commissioned in 1987, is slated to get a grand farewell at the International Fleet Review in Visakhapatnam in February next year.

The idea is if all clearances are in place, then once INS Viraat is decommissioned in Visakhapatnam, its possession could be taken by from there itself, sources added.
 

aksha

Captain
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A chink in India’s coastal security armour is that unlike bigger vessels (300-tonne ones and above) that are mandatorily fitted with automatic identification system (AIS) — which provides for automatic locating and tracking — the thousands of smaller vessels operating along the country’s shores are largely unaccounted for, necessitating physical authentication of their identity.

This is set to be passé, if the multi-sensor network developed by the communication cluster laboratories of the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) is chosen to replace the predominantly Israeli sensor suite in the Coastal Surveillance Network steered by the Coast Guard during the project’s Phase-II expansion.

The fully indigenous network — known as the Integrated Coastal Surveillance System — capable of mounting real-time surface and subsurface surveillance over the coastal seas is in the final stages of pilot-testing and trials at coastal Kochi in Kerala, confirm defence sources.

The system has taken about four years to attain a certain level of maturity.

Assembly and trials

Dehradun-based Defence Electronics Application Laboratory (DEAL) has developed the Indian AIS while the coastal surveillance radar for the package has been developed by the Electronics and Radar Development Establishment (LRDE) in Bengaluru, and the electro-optical sight by the Instruments Research and Development Establishment (IRDE) in Dehradun. The Centre for Artificial Intelligence and Robotics (CAIR) in Bengaluru has developed the software and the Kochi-based Naval Physical and Oceanographic Laboratory (NPOL) has put together the underwater sensors (the diver detection system) besides coordinating the project assembly and trials.

Nearly 150 boats — in the under 20-tonne category — operating along the Kochi coast have been fitted with the Indian AIS (IAIS) for trials. Radars have been set up at Aroor, Malippuram, and Fort Kochi.

“The beauty of the project is that it’s all done in-house. The trials have given encouraging results, with just the fine-tuning left to be done now. The network can be scaled up for deployment along the country’s 7,500 km coastline,” revealed a top source.

“Given the asymmetric threats posed by smaller craft, a tracking system for vessels regardless of their size is a hugely positive development. Better still, if the system is indigenous, developed by DRDO labs and productionised for trials by the Machilipatnam unit of Bharat Electronics,” he added.

Once operational, the IAIS can be integrated with the IMO-mandated AIS. While the prototype of the IAIS made for trials cost about Rs.25,000 apiece, volume production will render it far cheaper and affordable to boatmen, said another official.

In return for equipping their boats with the IAIS, fishermen will get weather and fish shoal data from INCOIS (Indian National Centre for Ocean Information Services) relayed to the system, which will double up as a distress alert beacon, he pointed out.
 

Jeff Head

General
Registered Member
The Indian Navy carrier, INS Viraat, R22, was originally the HMS Hermes, R12, built by the UK as a Centaur class carrier.

She was laid down in 1944, but with the end of World War II, was not launched until 1953...and ultimately not commissioned in the Royal Navy until 1959 as the HMS Hermes, R12.

As such she served with distinction in the Royal Navy until 1984. She was actually scheduled to be decommissioned in 1982, but then Argentina invaded and took the Falkland Islands. Hermes was then made the flagship of the British force sent to the south Atlantic to retake the Falklands. She served with distinction in that role...and was ultimately decommissioned in 1984.

India bought her and she was commissioned into the Indian Navy as INS Viraat, R22, on May 12, 1987.

So she has been serving in the Indian Navy now for 28 years. She served the Royal Navy from 1959 until 1984, a total of 25 years. Her total service time is now 53 years, though she herself is now 56 years old. she will add another year to that total.

By comparison, the longest serving US aircraft carrier was the USS Enterprise, CVN-65, which was commissioned on November 25, 1961 and decommissioned on December 1, 2012. She served just over 51 years.

Viraat is now scheduled to become a museum ship for India. That is good news. She will make a wonderful museum ship, like the
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.

Of those five US museum carriers, the longest serving were the:

USS Lexington, CV-16: 48 years
USS Midway, CV-41: 47 years

The super carrier, USS Kitty Hawk, CV-63, served for 48 years. The nuclear carrier Nimitz, CVN-68, has been serving since 1972, a total now of 43 years.

Viraat has served longer than any of them, and, as stated, will add another year to that total before she is retired.
 
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Miragedriver

Brigadier
India, China, Iraq Largest Importers of Russian Military Equipment - Report
Asian countries have become the main importers of Russian military equipment amid sanction imposed by the US.

MOSCOW (Sputnik) – India, China, and Iraq have received the most weapons and military equipment in 2014 from Russia’s state-run Rostec company, according to the company’s annual report published on Wednesday.

“The deliveries of military equipment were sent to 59 countries. The company’s main importers were India (25 percent), China (22 percent), Iraq (22 percent), Syria (5 percent), and Venezuela (5 percent). Geographically, the main exports of military equipment went to Asia (75 percent), Latin America (9 percent), and the Middle East (7 percent),” the report shows.

The company’s annual report also reflects that military exports to the former soviet republics have drastically dropped to $370 million in 2014 from $1.5 billion in 2013.

The company fulfilled 9,400 contracts in 2014; that is 54 percent more than in 2013.

However, western sanctions against Russia have raised Rostec's subsidiaries and could diminish the attractiveness of the corporation's projects for investors, the same report read.

"Sanctions imposed by Western countries against the Russian Federation in relation to the Ukrainian crisis inevitably affected the corporation and its organizations. The sanctions are not aimed to affect the corporation but its subsidiaries, since the corporation receives no funding from abroad. The sanctions could harm investment attractiveness of the corporation's projects and the capitalization of its brand, as well as Rostec's profit received from the subsidiaries' shares and stocks," the report said.

The corporation, which deals with hi-tech industrial products and military arms and equipment, noted that US sanctions specifically prohibited US citizens and legal entities from making any new financial transactions and provisioning new loans to Russian (citizens and legal entities) for a period of more than 30 days.

"This prohibition applies to all the subsidiaries in which the corporation has, alone or together with other persons included on the sanctions list, with more than 50 percent of shares," the report said.

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