Showing posts with label Combat Readiness. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Combat Readiness. Show all posts
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
UK unveils unmanned fighter jet 'of the future'
Tue Jul 13, 5:39 am ET
LONDON (AFP) – An unmanned jet capable of striking long-range targets has been dubbed the "combat aircraft of the future" by the Ministry of Defence.
The Taranis -- named after the Celtic god of thunder -- was unveiled at a ceremony at BAE Systems in Warton, Lancashire, on Monday.
The £142.5 million prototype is the size of a light aircraft and has been equipped with stealth technology to make it virtually undetectable.
In a press release, the MoD described the Taranis as "a prototype unmanned combat aircraft of the future."
UK MoD unveils unmanned fighter jet 'of the future'
Monday, May 25, 2009
India's Greatest Failure
INDIA JOURNAL
MAY 20, 2009, 3:25 A.M. ET.
By PAUL BECKETT of Wall Street Journal/ U.S.
NEW DELHI -- Since he retired as India's most senior civil servant in 1998, T.S.R. Subramanian likes to say that he can be spotted frequently on a golf course. Recently, using a stenographer (four decades climbing the bureaucratic ladder means you don't learn to type) he put his mind to a question that appears to nag him as he marches the fairways: What has gone wrong in official India?
Paul Beckett
It is a timely question, given that we are at the start of a new administration. And it is one Mr. Subramanian is eminently qualified to address, given his rise through the Indian Administrative Service to become Cabinet secretary under three prime ministers. It is also one he is eminently capable of fudging, given that same resume and the many vested interests he might feel obliged to protect.
Fortunately, he takes the attitude that if you're going to go to the trouble of thinking and writing, why coat it in gloss? The result is a pithy tome, almost a Victorian-style treatise, called "GovernMint in India." It assesses whether the Indian government is up to par when measured against the mandate of the Indian constitution. His verdict, if I may paraphrase: If the Indian government were a golfer, it would score quadruple bogeys on every hole, cheat on the score card, then grab the stakes the other players had bet with.
The average Indian, Mr. Subramanian says in a chat over lunch, just wants the basics from his government. "I don't think Indians care about disparity but they want a minimum standard of living, food, a place to stay and clothing," he says. These are all things that the government has singularly failed to provide to the masses in the 62 years since independence.
“Since no part of the Establishment has an interest in punishing corruption, trying for a more sweeping solution quickly leads into the realm of blind hope.”
Why is that so? We start with history. The British may have committed many atrocities here but Mr. Subramanian speaks admiringly about the efficiency with which they ran the civil service and the caliber of those who inhabited it. An important factor in their success, however, was the fact that their political masters were thousands of miles away and unable to interfere.
Then India minted its own constitution. The well-meaning framers, he says, failed to appreciate what would happen when the civil service and politicians operated in close quarters without significant checks -- legal, administrative or otherwise -- on how far the legislative class could influence the executive.
Thus the framework was set for a steady, and alarming, transformation in the balance of power and the purpose of government. Politicians, unleashed by the knowledge that they are very unlikely ever to be called to account for their actions, have come to dominate the civil service and twist it for their own gain.
T.S.R. Subramanian
The executive, staffed by bright men and women schooled in the limits of their authority, have proven no match. As he writes: "Sadly, many of the middle-level officers, with growing children to educate, elderly parents to look after, cannot bear the constant pressure, and buckle; they either switch off and become irrelevant to the system, or they join the politician, and all is well thereafter!"
The judiciary comes in for equally scathing criticism for its failure to bring politicians to heel and to exempt bad behavior that ordinary citizens would be jailed for. I sense no love lost between Mr. Subramanian and his brethren on the bench. At one point, he offers a theory as to the root of these judicial shortcomings. Judges and bureaucrats traditionally stemmed from the same English-educated class of graduates, he says. And "most people who came to the judiciary were people who failed the civil service exams."
Where does all this leave us? "The political class," he writes, "is the only one which is not constrained by any checks or balances, follows no effective code of conduct and considers itself a king or an emperor, while extolling the virtues of democracy." In person, he puts it more starkly: In the last government, there were three Cabinet-level ministers making money. Yes, that kind of money. And nothing was done about it.
GovernMint is a narrow polemic that doesn't go much beyond Mr. Subramanian's purpose of a governance scorecard. He is the first to admit that it doesn't seek to provide big answers partly, I suspect, because that is really where the hard thinking begins.
He does offer a few practical suggestions: Suspend politicians facing criminal charges, as civil servants are suspended pending trial. Establish a fast-track court just for government officials so that cases are resolved expeditiously. Persuade judges to make an example of a few political wrongdoers as a public flogging for the rest.
Since no part of the Establishment has an interest in punishing corruption, trying for a more sweeping solution quickly leads into the realm of blind hope. Mr. Subramanian believes the best way to retake the government and re-bend it to the will of the people is through what he rather surprisingly terms "a messiah."
"Could one hope that there will be a new messiah, who will rise from the political class, to deliver the nation?" he asks in the final paragraph of the book. At a book launch party last week, some members of a panel filled with The Great And The Good (Retd.) of Delhi lambasted that notion, suggesting it was hopelessly naïve.
The criticism seems to have stuck. Over lunch a few days later, Mr. Subramanian suggests that no one else on the panel had any better answers. And he makes a point of explaining that he did not mean "a person falling from the sky" but someone from within the system with the will and the public backing to cleanse it.
Does that person exist today? Maybe, he says, we just don't know yet. Maybe it's Rahul Gandhi, maybe its Nitish Kumar. One thing, he says, the public is starting to send a message with the election's focus on development that if that person emerges, he or she will have mass backing. Of course, the flip side is also true: "This government, if it doesn't look into development, will bite the dust and anger against the political class will come."
—Paul Beckett is the WSJ's bureau chief in New Delhi
India's Greatest Failure
MAY 20, 2009, 3:25 A.M. ET.
By PAUL BECKETT of Wall Street Journal/ U.S.
NEW DELHI -- Since he retired as India's most senior civil servant in 1998, T.S.R. Subramanian likes to say that he can be spotted frequently on a golf course. Recently, using a stenographer (four decades climbing the bureaucratic ladder means you don't learn to type) he put his mind to a question that appears to nag him as he marches the fairways: What has gone wrong in official India?
Paul Beckett
It is a timely question, given that we are at the start of a new administration. And it is one Mr. Subramanian is eminently qualified to address, given his rise through the Indian Administrative Service to become Cabinet secretary under three prime ministers. It is also one he is eminently capable of fudging, given that same resume and the many vested interests he might feel obliged to protect.Fortunately, he takes the attitude that if you're going to go to the trouble of thinking and writing, why coat it in gloss? The result is a pithy tome, almost a Victorian-style treatise, called "GovernMint in India." It assesses whether the Indian government is up to par when measured against the mandate of the Indian constitution. His verdict, if I may paraphrase: If the Indian government were a golfer, it would score quadruple bogeys on every hole, cheat on the score card, then grab the stakes the other players had bet with.
The average Indian, Mr. Subramanian says in a chat over lunch, just wants the basics from his government. "I don't think Indians care about disparity but they want a minimum standard of living, food, a place to stay and clothing," he says. These are all things that the government has singularly failed to provide to the masses in the 62 years since independence.
Why is that so? We start with history. The British may have committed many atrocities here but Mr. Subramanian speaks admiringly about the efficiency with which they ran the civil service and the caliber of those who inhabited it. An important factor in their success, however, was the fact that their political masters were thousands of miles away and unable to interfere.
Then India minted its own constitution. The well-meaning framers, he says, failed to appreciate what would happen when the civil service and politicians operated in close quarters without significant checks -- legal, administrative or otherwise -- on how far the legislative class could influence the executive.
Thus the framework was set for a steady, and alarming, transformation in the balance of power and the purpose of government. Politicians, unleashed by the knowledge that they are very unlikely ever to be called to account for their actions, have come to dominate the civil service and twist it for their own gain.
T.S.R. Subramanian
The executive, staffed by bright men and women schooled in the limits of their authority, have proven no match. As he writes: "Sadly, many of the middle-level officers, with growing children to educate, elderly parents to look after, cannot bear the constant pressure, and buckle; they either switch off and become irrelevant to the system, or they join the politician, and all is well thereafter!"The judiciary comes in for equally scathing criticism for its failure to bring politicians to heel and to exempt bad behavior that ordinary citizens would be jailed for. I sense no love lost between Mr. Subramanian and his brethren on the bench. At one point, he offers a theory as to the root of these judicial shortcomings. Judges and bureaucrats traditionally stemmed from the same English-educated class of graduates, he says. And "most people who came to the judiciary were people who failed the civil service exams."
Where does all this leave us? "The political class," he writes, "is the only one which is not constrained by any checks or balances, follows no effective code of conduct and considers itself a king or an emperor, while extolling the virtues of democracy." In person, he puts it more starkly: In the last government, there were three Cabinet-level ministers making money. Yes, that kind of money. And nothing was done about it.
GovernMint is a narrow polemic that doesn't go much beyond Mr. Subramanian's purpose of a governance scorecard. He is the first to admit that it doesn't seek to provide big answers partly, I suspect, because that is really where the hard thinking begins.
He does offer a few practical suggestions: Suspend politicians facing criminal charges, as civil servants are suspended pending trial. Establish a fast-track court just for government officials so that cases are resolved expeditiously. Persuade judges to make an example of a few political wrongdoers as a public flogging for the rest.
Since no part of the Establishment has an interest in punishing corruption, trying for a more sweeping solution quickly leads into the realm of blind hope. Mr. Subramanian believes the best way to retake the government and re-bend it to the will of the people is through what he rather surprisingly terms "a messiah."
"Could one hope that there will be a new messiah, who will rise from the political class, to deliver the nation?" he asks in the final paragraph of the book. At a book launch party last week, some members of a panel filled with The Great And The Good (Retd.) of Delhi lambasted that notion, suggesting it was hopelessly naïve.
The criticism seems to have stuck. Over lunch a few days later, Mr. Subramanian suggests that no one else on the panel had any better answers. And he makes a point of explaining that he did not mean "a person falling from the sky" but someone from within the system with the will and the public backing to cleanse it.
Does that person exist today? Maybe, he says, we just don't know yet. Maybe it's Rahul Gandhi, maybe its Nitish Kumar. One thing, he says, the public is starting to send a message with the election's focus on development that if that person emerges, he or she will have mass backing. Of course, the flip side is also true: "This government, if it doesn't look into development, will bite the dust and anger against the political class will come."
—Paul Beckett is the WSJ's bureau chief in New Delhi
India's Greatest Failure
Friday, May 8, 2009
India's Fauj: Who rules it?
Many people agree in private but (especially those in power) refuse to admit in public that the Indian Defence Forces comprising the Indian Army, Indian Navy and Indian Air Force (or, briefly, India’s “fauj”) are not treated fairly by government. Of course, there is the fringe opinion that the fauj lives in luxury and is even overpaid, when they observe things like availability of canteen facilities (especially liquor) and the period of leave admissible in a year. They obviously know nothing at all about the risks and hardships that Jawans and young officers face in daily life.
But what risk does the fauj face in peacetime? Actually the word “peacetime” used as the antonym of “wartime” is quite inappropriate, because even if India is not at war with any country, the conditions of service in countering insurgency are just as risky as any wartime deployment if not actually more so. Today, the fauj loses on average one man every day to militant action. And hardship? Even if the subhuman conditions of mere survival on the Siachen Glacier are omitted, there are severe hardships, both physical and mental, in manning posts on the borders and even in participation in military exercises from bases in “peace stations”.
The fauj consists of about 1.4 million personnel below officer rank (PBOR), with leadership provided by about 50,000 officers instead of 65,000 required, the greatest shortage (11,238 against 46,615 sanctioned) being in the army. The actual fighting is done by the PBOR but under the leadership of officers who, in the Indian fauj, have always led from the front, as statistics of officer versus PBOR casualties in operations have always shown. But without PBOR there would be no need for officers and without leadership, PBOR would be ineffective – it is the combination of the two with the right kind of weaponry, equipment, training, and motivation that can maintain India’s territorial integrity and sovereignty, the primary responsibility of the fauj. It is said that the man behind the gun is at least as important as the gun itself, which means to say that superior military technology by itself may win battles but cannot win wars unless the fauji (the soldier, a generic term that includes PBOR and officers of the Army, Navy and Air Force) is adequately equipped, trained and motivated. The examples of the US military in Vietnam and in Afghanistan and Iraq bear testimony to this military truth.
Maj Gen S.G.Vombatkere (Retd)
Maj Gen S.G.Vombatkere was commissioned into the Corps of Engineers in December 1962 and held the position of Addl DG (Discipline & Vigilance) at Army HQ, New Delhi, from which he retired in September 1996. In 1993, the President of India awarded him the Visishta Seva Medal (VSM) for distinguished services rendered in Ladakh.
Complete article with three case studies: click me
But what risk does the fauj face in peacetime? Actually the word “peacetime” used as the antonym of “wartime” is quite inappropriate, because even if India is not at war with any country, the conditions of service in countering insurgency are just as risky as any wartime deployment if not actually more so. Today, the fauj loses on average one man every day to militant action. And hardship? Even if the subhuman conditions of mere survival on the Siachen Glacier are omitted, there are severe hardships, both physical and mental, in manning posts on the borders and even in participation in military exercises from bases in “peace stations”.
The fauj consists of about 1.4 million personnel below officer rank (PBOR), with leadership provided by about 50,000 officers instead of 65,000 required, the greatest shortage (11,238 against 46,615 sanctioned) being in the army. The actual fighting is done by the PBOR but under the leadership of officers who, in the Indian fauj, have always led from the front, as statistics of officer versus PBOR casualties in operations have always shown. But without PBOR there would be no need for officers and without leadership, PBOR would be ineffective – it is the combination of the two with the right kind of weaponry, equipment, training, and motivation that can maintain India’s territorial integrity and sovereignty, the primary responsibility of the fauj. It is said that the man behind the gun is at least as important as the gun itself, which means to say that superior military technology by itself may win battles but cannot win wars unless the fauji (the soldier, a generic term that includes PBOR and officers of the Army, Navy and Air Force) is adequately equipped, trained and motivated. The examples of the US military in Vietnam and in Afghanistan and Iraq bear testimony to this military truth.
Maj Gen S.G.Vombatkere (Retd)
Maj Gen S.G.Vombatkere was commissioned into the Corps of Engineers in December 1962 and held the position of Addl DG (Discipline & Vigilance) at Army HQ, New Delhi, from which he retired in September 1996. In 1993, the President of India awarded him the Visishta Seva Medal (VSM) for distinguished services rendered in Ladakh.
Complete article with three case studies: click me
Monday, March 16, 2009
Bureaucracy out to ruin armed forces in India
It is a sad commentary on the Indian political class that first time in the history of independent India, the armed forces decided to appeal for justice to the political masters against the ongoing mischief of bureaucrats over the Sixth Pay Commission. These gentlemen are ever ready to bring down the stature of the armed forces, but so much are the Indian politicians under the influence of these Babus that they dare not annoy them. There is just no reason why the armed forces should get inferior pay and perks as compared to their pen pushing civilian counterparts in the IAS and other central services working from their plush offices on an eight hour time schedule. What is so special that these Babus are doing for which they must get additional pay and perks? They do not even have accountability.
Since 16 December 2008 ex-servicemen are on relay hunger strike still nobody is taking any notice. A large number of ex–servicemen and their families in disgust have returned their most cherished possession, the medals of gallantry earned by them in defending their beloved country including making supreme sacrifice of their lives, back to the President of India, after a rally on 8 February 2009 in New Delhi. These ex-servicemen are protesting the raw deal given to the armed forces in the Sixth Pay Commission. If this had happened in any other country it would have shaken up the entire nation but not MERA BHARAT MAHAN and its power brokers the NETA-BABU COMBINE. They have sufficient money stashed away in Swiss Bank Accounts to bother about what damage all this is doing to the morale of the armed forces in particular and security of the country in general.
Why should the cream of Indian youth join the armed forces if they are made to feel that they can get better pay and perks as also a comfortable life in pen pushing and no accountability jobs? In any case why should there be a common pay commission for civil services and armed forces with all this jugglery going on for parity? Armed forces have absolutely different working conditions and job requirements then their civilian counter parts. There should be a separate pay commission for the armed forces which is a long-standing demand of theirs. Incidentally this request of the armed forces has now been conceded by the GOM. However for its implementation the forces will have to wait for ten more years.
Bureaucracy out to ruin armed forces in India
Rising Indiscipline In Armed Forces
We need to accept that there is a decline in discipline, culture and ethics of the Army. There are two reasons for this. Firstly, the poor standards of intake of Armed Forces personnel because of the poor pay and allowances commensurate to their hazardous service conditions. Secondly, there is no uniform system of promotions resulting in poor leadership. ----- INFA
(Copyright India News & Feature Alliance)
Rising Indiscipline In Armed Forces- URGENT NEED FOR REMEDIAL MEASURES
By Col. (Retd.) P. K. Vasudeva (Ph.D.)
(Prof, ICFAI Business School Chandigarh)
Declining standards
NEW DELHI: In yet indicator of the declining standards of probity and discipline in the armed forces, two Major-Generals from the Army Ordnance Corps (AOC) are now in the dock for their alleged acts of commission and omission. Placing the Promotion Board high and dry and leaving the general officers and mandarins in South Block squirming. The case meanwhile rests in the court- MOD and AHQ seeking adjournments and playing the cat and mouse game!
2 Major-Generals face corruption charges
Since 16 December 2008 ex-servicemen are on relay hunger strike still nobody is taking any notice. A large number of ex–servicemen and their families in disgust have returned their most cherished possession, the medals of gallantry earned by them in defending their beloved country including making supreme sacrifice of their lives, back to the President of India, after a rally on 8 February 2009 in New Delhi. These ex-servicemen are protesting the raw deal given to the armed forces in the Sixth Pay Commission. If this had happened in any other country it would have shaken up the entire nation but not MERA BHARAT MAHAN and its power brokers the NETA-BABU COMBINE. They have sufficient money stashed away in Swiss Bank Accounts to bother about what damage all this is doing to the morale of the armed forces in particular and security of the country in general.
Why should the cream of Indian youth join the armed forces if they are made to feel that they can get better pay and perks as also a comfortable life in pen pushing and no accountability jobs? In any case why should there be a common pay commission for civil services and armed forces with all this jugglery going on for parity? Armed forces have absolutely different working conditions and job requirements then their civilian counter parts. There should be a separate pay commission for the armed forces which is a long-standing demand of theirs. Incidentally this request of the armed forces has now been conceded by the GOM. However for its implementation the forces will have to wait for ten more years.
Bureaucracy out to ruin armed forces in India
Rising Indiscipline In Armed Forces
We need to accept that there is a decline in discipline, culture and ethics of the Army. There are two reasons for this. Firstly, the poor standards of intake of Armed Forces personnel because of the poor pay and allowances commensurate to their hazardous service conditions. Secondly, there is no uniform system of promotions resulting in poor leadership. ----- INFA
(Copyright India News & Feature Alliance)
Rising Indiscipline In Armed Forces- URGENT NEED FOR REMEDIAL MEASURES
By Col. (Retd.) P. K. Vasudeva (Ph.D.)
(Prof, ICFAI Business School Chandigarh)
Declining standards
NEW DELHI: In yet indicator of the declining standards of probity and discipline in the armed forces, two Major-Generals from the Army Ordnance Corps (AOC) are now in the dock for their alleged acts of commission and omission. Placing the Promotion Board high and dry and leaving the general officers and mandarins in South Block squirming. The case meanwhile rests in the court- MOD and AHQ seeking adjournments and playing the cat and mouse game!
2 Major-Generals face corruption charges
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
