Indian Military News, Reports, Data, etc.

aksha

Captain
EXCALIBUR trials seem to be going well.
Army is throwing its weight behind an indegenous product is a pleasant surprise.
that the Army is ready to fund the MCIWS is also an excellent news


Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!



On Tuesday, in a signal of
Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!
chief General Dalbir Singh's determination to arm his soldiers with a 'Made in India' rifle, his infantry chief visited an
Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!
(OFB) facility near Kolkata that is fabricating a batch of 200 Excalibur rifles. The army will formally trial-evaluate these later this year.


With Gen Dalbir Singh throwing his weight behind the Excalibur, the army has begun informal trials on the prototype rifles, to eliminate any chance of failing the formal trials when they are held. So rigorous are the army's trials that four of the world's best rifles - Italian company Beretta's ARX-160; the American Colt Combat Rifle; Israel Weapon Industries ACE-1, and the Czech Republic's CA-805 BREN - failed to pass a three-year-long evaluation.

On his visit to the Rifle Factory, Ishapore (RFI) on Tuesday, Lieutenant General Sanjay Kulkarni, the infantry director general, put the prototype Excalibur through the "water" and "mud" tests, in which the rifle is fired after being fully immersed in those substances. The Excalibur handily passed these tests, which all four foreign rifles had failed to clear.

Kulkarni is also learned to have suggested certain ergonomic changes, which would make the Excalibur more comfortable for jawans to carry and fire.

The Ordnance Factory Board (OFB) has confirmed to Business Standard that the army has pulled out all stops to institutionally oversee the project, something that the navy has often done, but is unprecedented for the army. A number of army shooters are stationed at Ishapore where they carry out extensive test firing daily.

If the Excalibur performs well in trials, the OFB will mass-produce it to equip more than half the army's 12 lakh soldiers. With the Excalibur priced at about Rs 60,000 each, 6 lakh rifles would cost about Rs 3,000 crore, half the cost of equipping the army with foreign rifles.

The OFB says the Excalibur would not need a new production line. It will be built on the
Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!
production line that is still active, building the older rifle for central armed police forces (CAPFs) and paramilitary forces (PMFs).

However it is prestige, not economics, which has made the army chief throw his weight behind the Excalibur. American infantrymen carry the US-made M-16 rifle as their basic weapon; Russians carry the Russian AK-74M; and China's People's Liberation Army (PLA) has indigenously built its new QBZ-95 rifle. Now the Indian Army is gearing up to equip its jawans with the Excalibur.

This will require the Excalibur to overcome the negative legacy of its predecessor, the INSAS (an acronym for Indian Small Arms System). The army has criticised the INSAS rifle, complaining that its components fracture under difficult field conditions, its barrel gets deformed, and its modern, see-through magazine (made of polycarbonate material) frequently develops cracks.

Another complaint arose when the INSAS was used in counter-militancy operations in Kashmir and the northeast. The army complained that the lighter, 5.56 mm INSAS was not killing militants, as the 7.62 mm AK-47 rifle was with its heavier bullet. In fact, the army had itself demanded a 5.56 mm INSAS rifle, in line with a NATO philosophy that wounding an enemy soldier was better than killing him, since that tied down additional soldiers in evacuating the casualty.

Furthermore, the Excalibur incorporates a "direct gas-tapping angle", which reduces its recoil, or the "jump" when it is fired. The rifle has a foldable butt for easy carriage, and a modern "Picatinny rail" on the barrel - a standardized bracket for mounting telescopic sights, night vision sights, laser aiming modules, bipods or bayonets.

Kulkarni followed up his Tuesday visit to Ishapore with a visit on Wednesday to the Armament R&D Establishment (ARDE) in Pune, the Defence R&D Organisation (DRDO) laboratory that has developed the Excalibur, as also the INSAS.

Tushar Tripathi, the OFB's Director, Weapons, says the Excalibur fires in two settings: either single shot or automatic, in which bullets stream out of the rifle for as long as the trigger is pressed and there is ammunition in the magazine. This abandons the INSAS' feature of a "three-round burst", which complicated the design.

The OFB is also providing holographic and laser sights with the Excalibur for firing at night. Bharat Electronics Ltd is currently developing these.

With the rifle tender already scrapped, the army is also scuttling the procurement of a carbine. This tender, floated in 2010, asked for 44,618 close quarter battle (CQB) carbines, with another 1,20,000 being built by OFB. However, after three years of trials that concluded in 2013, the army controversially ruled that only the Israeli carbine met its requirements, leading to protests from other vendors.

Now OFB has been asked to manufacture 100 carbines, to the design evolved by ARDE, for trials later this year.

Source:-
Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!


Earlier in trails conducted by ARDE, Pune in June - The Excalibur had only two stoppages (where the bullet gets stuck in the breech) after 2,400 rounds were fired, close to the Army's specifications of only one stoppage.
 

aksha

Captain
Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!


jh7gGDr.jpg


EfvRIWH.jpg


TNibRw0.jpg


C1Ke0iN.jpg


It was a brutal test of helicopter and pilot. As the
Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!
(ALH) shuddered towards the icy helipad on a 21,000-foot ledge overlooking the Siachen Glacier, the pilots could see wreckage from earlier helicopter crashes dotting the base of the vertical ice walls on either side. Ahead lay the Indian Army’s infamous Sonam Post, the highest inhabited spot on earth, and an extreme example of why the military so urgently wants the Dhruv, which has been customised by
Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!
Ltd (HAL) for high altitude operations.


Very quickly, the Dhruv demonstrated its superiority over the military’s tiny, single-engine Cheetah helicopters, which can barely lift 20 kilos of payload to Sonam. Touching down on a tiny H-shape formed on the snow with perforated iron sheets, the Dhruv’s pilots signalled to one of the soldiers on Sonam to climb aboard. Effortlessly, the Dhruv took off, circled the post and landed again. Another soldier clambered onto the helicopter and the process was repeated, then with a third, and then a fourth soldier. Even with all Sonam’s defenders on board, the twin-engine Dhruv — painted incongruously in the peacock regalia of the IAF’s aerobatics team, Sarang — lifted off and landed back safely.

“This helicopter is simply unmatched at high altitudes,” says Group Captain Unni Nair, HAL’s chief helicopter test pilot, who flew the Dhruv that August morning during “hot-and-high” trials at Sonam. That term means flying at extreme altitudes in summer, when the heat-swollen oxygen is even thinner than usual. “The army wanted the Dhruv to lift 200 kilos to Sonam; we managed to carry 600 kilos.”

Powering that world-beating performance is a new helicopter engine, called the Shakti, which HAL commissioned French engine-maker, Turbomeca, to design for operations along India’s high-altitude borders. It is this engine that makes the new Dhruv Mark III — the first five of which were delivered to the army this month — far superior to the Mark I and Mark II Dhruvs, which were built with a less versatile engine. The Shakti, which will start being built under licence at HAL soon, will now power an entire family of HAL-built helicopters: an armed version of the Dhruv; the
Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!
(LCH); and the single-engine Light Utility Helicopter that is still on the drawing board.

The Shakti-powered Dhruv Mark III is changing the operational dynamics on India’s high-altitude Himalayan defences. The capability to airlift soldiers will allow far-flung posts to be manned with fewer soldiers. In a crisis, jawans can be airlifted quickly from lower altitudes to threatened areas, and casualties can be evacuated.

HAL Bangalore has already begun handing over Dhruv Mark IIIs to the Leh-based 205 Aviation Squadron for operations in Siachen. With the military demanding 159 Dhruvs in quick time, HAL can hardly build these helicopters fast enough. This year’s production rate of 25 Dhruvs will be accelerated from 2012 to 36 helicopters annually. The current order includes 54 weaponised Dhruvs — termed Advanced Light Helicopter — Weapons Systems Integrated, or ALH-WSI — armed with anti-aircraft and anti-tank missiles, rockets and a 20-millimetre turret gun. The ALH-WSI is scheduled to begin weapons trials in Orissa in April.


But HAL chief Ashok Nayak and his helicopter chief, Soundara Rajan, point out that indigenisation does not mean building every component of an aircraft. Citing the example of the Dhruv’s HAL-built mission computer, Rajan asks whether the imported microchips inside make the mission computer any less indigenous. He sums up HAL’s helicopter strategy as follows: “We will design our helicopters; develop the critical technologies of helicopter transmissions; manufacture composites; and integrate and assemble the helicopter. We will outsource the manufacture of sub-assemblies and components and structures to any vendor on the globe that offers us cost-effective solutions.”
 

aksha

Captain
A static display of all the assets of Naval Aviation of Indian Navy were put up on display at the INS Dega for the benefit of the Tri Services Commanders (Southern Theatre) who met in Visakhapatnam. Photos: K.R. Deepak

Iqx6Mkd.jpg


A medium range maritime reconnaisance aircraft Dornier of INAS 311 squadron takes off from INS Dega in Visakhapatnam. Photo: K.R. Deepak

EOd9fY5.jpg


Six AJTs of Aviation wing of the Indian Navy Hawk Mk132 stationed at INS Dega in Visakhapatnam on Thursday. Photo: K.R. Deepak

SRryFB6.jpg


The AJT of Aviation wing of the Indian Navy Hawk Mk132 takes off from INS Dega and flying past Visakhapatnam ATC building. Photo: K.R. Deepak

joAAcYr.jpg

 

aksha

Captain
Lakshya the unmanned target aircraft of the Indian Navy at a static display at INS Dega in Visakhapatnam on Thursday. Photo: K.R. Deepak

miUx1Dt.jpg

The latest acquisition of the Indian Navy the Long Range Maritime Reconnaissance aircraft Boeing P8i put up on display at INS Dega in Visakhapatnam on Thursday. Photo: K.R. Deepak

8Flmcvr.jpg

The pilots of the Aviation wing of the Indian Navy saunter along the aircraft of the Indian Navy at INS Dega in Visakhapatnam. Photo: K.R. Deepak
8XdKHY3.jpg

The AJT of Aviation wing of the Indian Navy Hawk Mk132 takes off from INS Dega in Visakhapatnam on Thursday. Photo: K.R. Deepak
Zq430vN.jpg
 

twitch

New Member
Registered Member
Pretty big development happening. HAL is opening the way for private firms to produce large sections of the LCA . And also full scale license production of Dhruvs by private firms.


It is working on a process to rope in eight to 12 large industry partners as tier-1 or tier-2 suppliers of bigger ‘modules’ or structures, according to HAL Chairman and Managing Director T. Suvarna Raju. He said an industry partner may gear up to the task over a couple of years.


“We are trying to get [certain] modules of the LCA prepared by the private industry. We have given RFIs [the first step of request for information] to those who are interested in being a defence vendor. An RFQ [request for quotation] will follow.

“We have interacted with a few on the fuselage, which gets done in four parts — the front, centre, rear and the wings. We have the jigs and fixtures for them to make, to begin with. They can make on their own later,” Mr. Raju said. The helicopter gear box with its many components was another example.


Mr. Raju said this was its new approach of producing the LCA. It was also ready to look for any Indian vendor to make its other product, the multi-purpose ALH, under licence.

More at the source -

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!
 

SouthernSky

Junior Member
Australia begins to hedge her bets.

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!


Next month, the Indian Navy and Royal Australian Navy will hold their first-ever joint maritime exercise.

The exercise, called AUSINDEX, will he held off India’s Visakhapatnam Port in the Bay of Bengal in mid-September. According to defense sources, Australia is sending Lockheed Martin’s P-3 anti-submarine reconnaissance aircraft, a Collins-class submarine, a tanker, and frigates, while India will deploy assets including Boeing’s P-8 long-range anti-submarine aircraft and a locally manufactured corvette. The exercise will have both sea and shore phases and include table-top exercises, scenario planning, and at sea, surface and anti-submarine warfare.

Unsurprisingly, the media attention has focused on the exercise narrowly as a response to rising concerns about China. For instance, the anti-submarine warfare focus of the exercise – which includes exercises to protect a tanker from a hostile attack submarine – is said to serve as a counter to China’s deployment of a nuclear-powered submarines in the Indian Ocean.

The potential for increased maritime tensions amid rising competition in the Indian Ocean is real. Commenting on this, Captain Sheldon Williams, a defense adviser at the Australian High Commission in New Delhi,
Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!
that there is “potential for increased security tensions in the Indian Ocean.”

“We sit right in the confluence of the Indian and Pacific Oceans. We have a significant responsibility for its security. That’s how we’re looking at it now,” Williams added.

But AUSINDEX should also be seen more broadly as one sign of growing defense ties between Australia and India. While Canberra and New Delhi have participated in multilateral exercises before, including Malabar exercises in 2007 and Milan exercises in 2012, AUSINDEX is the first bilateral maritime exercise between the two nations.

Australia’s defense minister, Kevin Andrews, is also in India for a series of high-level meetings this week in a boost for the relationship. This is the first meeting between the two countries’ defense ministers since the release of a new framework for security cooperation inked by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Australian counterpart following the former’s visit to Australia in November 2014. Regarding his visit to India, Andrews
Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!
that he looked forward to “identifying a range of new ideas to increase our existing defense cooperation.”

Speaking more specifically about AUSINDEX, Andrews described it as “a strong signal of both countries’ commitment to building defense relations.”

AUSINDEX will be followed by Exercise MALABAR in October, which originally began as a U.S.-India bilateral exercise back in 1992. As I have written before, Malabar has been at the center of an ongoing conversation about expanding arrangements in the Asia-Pacific, amid growing trilateral cooperation of various sorts including between India, Australia, and Japan (See: “
Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!
”). Japan is expected to join the Malabar exercises later this year, in line with the occasional broadening of the drills to include other nations (“
Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!
”). Some have also been pushing for a permanent expansion of the exercises to include Australia and Japan (See: “
Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!
”).
 

aksha

Captain
Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!


Vb8BmW9.jpg


kN1XSbf.jpg


Indian Naval Ships Deepak, Delhi, Tabar and Trishul will visit Dubai from Sept 5 to 8. The ships are part of the Indian Navy’s Western Fleet based at Mumbai and are on a long-range deployment to the Arabian Gulf to enhance bilateral ties with friendly regional navies.
During the visit, the warships will have professional interactions with the defence force of the UAE for enhancing cooperation and sharing the nuances of naval operations including disaster management and combating maritime threats of terrorism and piracy. Apart from professional interactions, sports and social engagements are also planned are aimed at enhancing cooperation and understanding between the Navies.
India has an ancient maritime tradition and maritime interaction with the UAE that dates back to over 4,000 years BC.

Navy today has multi-dimensional capabilities comprising aircraft carriers, modern ships, submarines, aircraft and marine commandos. A notable feature of the Indian Navy’s force structure is the fact that the overwhelming majority of its ships are designed and constructed in India.
The Indian Navy has close and friendly ties with all navies in the Gulf and has been regularly exercising with many of them. The Indian navy is also privileged to provide training and hydrographic support to several navies in the region. The involvement of Indian Naval ships in combating piracy off the coast of Somalia since October 2008 has further strengthened bilateral ties and interactions with navies in the region.

Bilateral relations between India and UAE have existed for a long time with treaties and agreements on extradition, mutual legal assistance in criminal and civil matters, judicial cooperation in civil and commercial matters, combating trafficking in narcotics, civil aviation, cultural exchange and information cooperation.
UAE is India’s second largest trading partner and naval cooperation between the two countries have increased steadily since the inaugural Navy-to-Navy Staff Talks in Jan 07, which covered the entire gamut of IN-UAEN cooperation.
Frequent port visits by naval ships of both countries, visit by Service Chiefs and training of UAE Naval officers has further bolstered naval cooperation between the two countries.
India and UAE are also members of Indian Ocean Naval Symposium (IONS); a voluntary and co-operative initiative between 35 countries of Indian Ocean Region.
IONS has served as an ideal forum for sharing of information and cooperation on maritime issues. The current visit seeks to underscore India’s peaceful presence
 

aksha

Captain
Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

zQqvs4k.jpg

European Aerospace major Airbus at Paris Air Show earlier this year offered to assist India in Production of Tejas MK-II aircrafts in India with an Indian Private player. India has responded positively and has held a preliminary rounds of dicussions on the offer.

Sources in MoD have told idrw.org that MOD is now ‘seriously’ examining to establish a private-public partnership (PPP) to fast-track setting up of a manufacturing base for Mk-2 variant in order to bolster the Indian Air Force’s (IAF’s) declining fighter fleet.

Public sector Company Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) which enjoys complete Monopoly when it comes to production of fighter jets in India, have been severely criticised by Airforce over the years over constant delays in delivery schedules and poor quality of many systems made by HAL .

Airbus with an Indian partner (Mahindra) are interested in creating a Production line for Tejas MK-2 when the aircraft will be ready by 2021 to enter production. Airbus along with Indian partner wants to be involved with the program from the first flight of MK-2 since it will allow them time to set up the supply chain for the aircraft.

In 2013 Swedish company Saab had submitted a proposal for partnering on designing the Mark II and establishing a manufacturing line for the fighter, which was rejected by Indian MOD and Indian air force.

Tejas MK-II variant which will incorporate more powerful GE F414 engine along with aerodynamic and avionics improvements required to meet ASR of IAF, will also address shortcomings in the MK-1 variant of the fighter jet.
 

aksha

Captain
Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!


Since April 13, 1984, when the first Indian soldiers deployed along the Siachen Glacier, they have assaulted Pakistani picquets and beaten back waves of attacks without any direct fire support from heavy weapons. All they had was what they could carry on their backs.

Even whilst incredibly capturing the 21,153 feet high Qaid Post in May 1987, Param Vir Chakra winner, Naib Subedar Bana Singh, had only indirect fire support from artillery guns many kilometres away.

This will soon change. Last week, for the first time ever, an attack helicopter landed at a forward picquet in Siachen. The indigenous Light Combat Helicopter (LCH), designed and built by Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd (HAL), performed several such landings as a part of its “hot and high” trials in Ladakh.

In “hot and high” conditions, a helicopter operates in summertime temperatures at extreme altitudes of over 15,000 feet. In these conditions, oxygen in the air is depleted not just by the altitude, but also by the expansion of air due to high temperatures of 13-27 degrees Centigrade. This combination of conditions taxes the helicopter’s engine to the maximum.

In February, the LCH had surmounted different challenges in “cold weather flight trials” in Ladakh. In those, the LCH was “soaked” overnight in winter temperatures of minus 20 degrees Centigrade, and then required to start up on internal batteries and get airborne. Operating from a 15,000-feet-high helipad, the LCH reached altitudes of over 21,000 feet.

In June, the helicopter then faced “hot weather flight trials” around Jodhpur, soaking up desert temperatures of 40-50 degrees Centigrade, when the temperatures inside the cabin approach 60 degrees Centigrade.

“The flight trials at Leh have established hover performance and low speed handling characteristics of the helicopter under extreme weather conditions at different altitudes (3200 to 4800 m). During the trials, the helicopter and systems performed satisfactorily”, says T Suvarna Raju, the HAL chief.

The LCH is specially built to operate above 20,000 feet. HAL and French engine-maker, Turbomeca specially designed an engine called the Shakti for the LCH, which is optimised for extreme altitudes. This allows the LCH to fire its direct weapons --- a rapid-firing turret gun, rockets and missiles --- to support soldiers in battle at altitudes where the thin air does not allow humans to carry heavy weaponry.

An impressed army has already committed to ordering 114 helicopters, and the air force another 65, as soon as the flight-test programme is completed. This is being carried out by three LCH prototypes, the newest of which underwent the recent trials.

“The performance and handling qualities of the helicopter have been established for basic configuration (with electro-optical pod, rocket launchers, turret gun and air-to-air missile launchers)… Further development activities are under progress and the weapon firing trials are planned during in the middle of 2016”, says an HAL release.

The LCH has been engineered, ground-up, for combat. It is heavily armoured to protect its two pilots from enemy fire, and has a “stealthy” fuselage that is hard to detect with radar. A crash-resistant landing gear enables pilots to survive even when the LCH impacts the ground at 10 metres/second. Its state-of-the-art, all-digital cockpit has systems that enable pilots to fly and fight the LCH at night.

HAL has moved progressively in developing the LCH. The flying platform evolved from the successful Dhruv Advanced Light Helicopter (ALH), which has proved itself with the army and air force. The Shakti engine powers both helicopters and they have similar main rotors, tail rotors, and gearboxes.

The LCH is designed primarily for high-altitude operations, but it is equally lethal on the mechanised battlefield. In tank battles on the plains of Rajasthan, Punjab and Jammu, the LCH can destroy enemy tanks with the indigenous HELINA guided missiles at ranges of up to 7 kilometres.

Besides its fleet of LCHs, India’s military will also operate 22 Apache AH-64E attack helicopters, the purchase of which is currently being negotiated. The Apache will replace the air force’s ageing Russian Mi-35 helicopters.
 
Top