India has long sought to maintain an air power advantage over its potential adversaries as a key aspect of its conventional deterrence posture. To get a view of how Indian air power continues to evolve in relation to its...
It is no overstatement to say that the Tejas Light Combat Aircraft (LCA) program has made significant progress of late with the Mk1 variant being officially granted Final Operational Clearance (FOC) on February 20, 2019 and its production picking...
India has long felt the need to develop domestic jet engine capability. Apart from the PTAE-7 turbojet developed by Hindustan Aeronautics Limited's (HAL's) Engine and Test Bed Research and Design Centre, which is used to power the Lakshya pilotless...
The hit-to-kill (HTK) interception achieved by the Defence Research & Development Organization’s (DRDO’s) updated exo-atmospheric ‘PDV’ anti-ballistic missile (ABM) interceptor on February 11, 2017, was a watershed moment in the history of India’s ballistic missile defence (BMD) program. The...
In March 2017, China opened an airport in Nyingchi, Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR), only 30 kilometers from the Line of Actual control (LAC) with India. This is the second largest airport in TAR and is closer to LAC than...
Rising like a phoenix above Bengaluru, Hindustan Aeronautics Limited’s HJT-36 ‘Sitara’ Intermediate Jet Trainer (IJT), took to the sky for the first time in three years on April 17, 2019. The IJT program has been resurrected on account of...
The progress of the Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) Tejas MK-1 build program has become a matter of intense interest for the public. As such, earlier today, a written reply was submitted by India's Minister of Defence for State, Dr. Subhash...
Heading into the 1990s China's air defence (AD) network had found itself straddled with a mass of obsolete equipment & failed modernization programs. China's radar network at the time relied on 1950s Soviet equipment. The Airborne Early Warning &...
With the Indian Air Force’s (IAF’s) MMRCA program getting serially delayed and recast more than once, there was a feeling in various quarters that the Tejas Mk2 design should perhaps evolve further than what was initially envisaged to provide...
In 2003, the then United States (US) Secretary of State, Colin Powell, called man portable air defence systems (MANPADS) ‘the most serious threat to aviation’. Even though the 2002 Mombasa Incident may have been the immediate reason for the...
