New Delhi- The Indian Air Force (IAF) admitted that it will be difficult for it to tackle a combined threat from China and Pakistan, raising questions about the country’s ability to fight a two-front war, said a report published in Hindustan Times.
The IAF has told an Indian Parliamentary panel that Pakistan would certainly fish in troubled waters if China were to launch offensive operations against India.
However, IAF stressed that China may not pose “a collusive threat” if hostilities were to break out between India and Pakistan. Setting off alarm bells, a senior IAF officer informed the Parliamentary standing committee on defense that a “collusive threat” from China and Pakistan would be difficult to tackle but the air force was prepared for it.
“We have made plans in case of contingency-III (two-front war),” he said, adding that India had upgraded its policy against China from dissuasion to deterrence.
The IAF currently operates 34 fighter squadrons, against a desirable 42. In a report tabled in Parliament on Tuesday, the panel asked the IAF to scale up its capabilities by speeding up the acquisition of 126 French Rafale fighters, a deal worth Rs. 120,000 crore.
The panel flagged concerns about poor border infrastructure on the Indian side, at a time when China has ramped road, rail and air connectivity across the line of actual control (LAC).
The panel warned that the pace of China’s military modernization and infrastructure development had affected the “strategic balance” between the two countries.
“Our defense forces must develop the capability to fight a multi-front war,” the panel said. India is years behind the Chinese military with the neighbor currently outnumbering the country’s combat power by a 3:1 ratio. India’s hopes to bridge the gap in the next 15 years hinge on availability of funds.
Finance minister P Chidambaram on Monday announced that the defense budget for 2014-15 had been hiked from Rs. 203,672 crore to Rs. 224, 000 crore, a 10% increase over last fiscal’s outlay.
However, the meager increase in the capital expenditure could halt the modernization plans of the armed forces. The capital outlay has been increased from Rs. 86,740 crore to Rs. 89,587 crore in the interim budget for 2014-15, a hike of barely 3.2%. China’s official, but underreported, defense budget for 2013-14 stands at Rs. 594,000 crore.
NEW DELHI : A C-130J Hercules cargo plane crashed Friday in central India killing all five of its crew members, an Air Force spokesman said. The US-made military aircraft came down on the outskirts of Gwalior city in Madhya Pradesh while on a routine flight, group captain Gerard Galway told AFP. “We can confirm that all five crew members have died in the crash,” he said.
In a statement, the defence ministry said the aircraft crashed at 10:00 am local time (0430 GMT) after taking off from the tourist city of Agra, home to the Taj Mahal. An investigation into the accident was underway, the statement added. The accident is the latest in a string of deadly mishaps to have hit the country’s armed forces. The chief of the Indian Navy resigned last month on the day a fire on board a nuclear submarine killed two officers off the Mumbai coast. In one of the deadliest incidents in recent years, INS Sindhurakshak burst into flames in Mumbai harbour last August, killing 18 sailors and sinking the vessel. Friday’s accident involved one of the six heavy-lift military transport aircraft which India acquired from Lockheed Martin for around $1.1 billion in a deal signed four years ago. India had recently deployed one of these aircraft to take part in the search and rescue operation for the missing Malaysian MH370 flight. It was the first crash involving a Hercules aircraft in India, which has been troubled for years by crashes of Russian-made MiG-21 fighter planes.
No comments:
Post a Comment