SOLDIERS CHATBOX ..... BIGGER AND BETTER

Saturday, May 1, 2010

comparison : MOD vs MHA

Can we have report card for MOD ???

read these links and judge yourself....

MHA Report Card : http://pib.nic.in/release/release.asp?relid=61260

MOD :

http://pib.nic.in/release/release.asp?relid=61232
http://pib.nic.in/release/release.asp?relid=61140
http://pib.nic.in/release/release.asp?relid=61047
http://pib.nic.in/release/release.asp?relid=61046
http://pib.nic.in/release/release.asp?relid=61045

Could you feel the difference !!!!!!!

IAF's radars 'inadequate, obsolete': MPs' panel

 IBNLIVE

New Delhi: In a damning indictment, a parliamentary panel said on Thursday the surveillance radars of the Indian Air Force (IAF) were not only inadequate but were also obsolete and prone to frequent breakdowns.

Noting that air defence is "critical to the nation's security", the Public Accounts Committee (PAC), in its report tabled in parliament Thursday, said: "The IAF possesses less than the adequate number of surveillance radars needed for providing efficient and reliable detection."

The committee was also "surprised" that none of the Air Defence Ground Environment System (ADGES) plans prepared after 1971 had been approved by the government "although some components have been sanctioned a piece-mean basis".

Thus, a "serious mismatch exists between availability and the IAF's requirements of radars and although the defence ministry has formulated a long-term perspective plan till 2022, which includes the ADGES plans, it is not clear whether the plan is as yet operational or not", the PAC report said.

The committee was also critical of the fact that several contracts had been signed for procuring radars but no delivery timelines had been specified.

"The committee is constrained to point out that even though contracts have been signed, defence ministry and IAF officials could not provide scheduled dates of delivery for the radars and also by when these would be eventually commissioned" and to what extent they would "fill the existing gap in the air defence system" and "how the present threat perception will be addressed".

"To be specific, the committee would like to emphasise that commissioning and installation of medium power radars and low-level transportable radars and completion of associated civil and development projects be expedited so that gaps in provision of AD (air defence) assets can be avoided," the report said.

The committee also noted that the IAF's air defence radars "are facing obsolescence and need urgent upgradation and modernisation".

The ministry's argument that the Defence Procurement Procedure was being followed and the time taken in processing acquisition cases has been reduced "does not satisfy the committee, given the hostile environment in which we live", the PAC said.

"The fact remains that the need for defence preparedness and capability was never so acute as it is today. It is, therefore, essential that the purchases are timed and so sequenced that the armed forces are never short of their requirements," the committee said.

Frowning on the frequent breakdowns of existing radars and the non-availability of spares, the PAC also noted that the "hours of watch allocated to the units of all types of radars are much below the hours prescribed for these units."

"The fact that additional radars are being procured itself indicates that the present position regarding planned hours versus what is actually being achieved is not adequate for proper air defence of the country," it said.

"It may be ensured that watch hours as prescribed by the government are adhered to once new acquisitions materialise and the IAF does not operate with any shortfalls as on date, thereby eliminating any compromise with security considerations," the PAC said.

S-300 DEFENCE FOR CHINA FROM RUSSIA

NEW JAG

PTI 

Major General C S Nair, the senior most law officer in the Army, will take over as the new Judge Advocate General tomorrow.

Nair will advise Army Chief General V K Singh on all legal issues concerning the force in his capacity as the head of the law branch.

A post-graduate in English and an alumnus of the Kerala Law Academy, Nair was commissioned in the Army Education Corps (AEC) in December 1978.

Before joining the Army, the officer had practised law in the Kerala High Court.

After his pre-commission training in the Indian Military Academy at Dehradun, he served in the Education Corps before being transferred to the JAG?s Department in 1980.

Since then, he has held most of the appointments tenable by an officer of the department.

Cops stealing bullets for Maoists to kill men in khaki

TIMES OF INDIA 

I WONDER : SIMPLY GR8... " JAI HO" 

The big question after every big Naxal attack is how Maoists are arming themselves to strike with such ferocity. Part of the answer may have been found, with UP cops stumbling on a massive ring involving UP police and CRPF men which allegedly supplied weapon parts and ammunition to Maoists.

In a crackdown on Friday, the Special Task Force (STF) of UP Police arrested four serving and a retired armourer of the state police and two Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) personnel for allegedly stealing government issue weapon spares and bullets and giving them to criminal gangs and possibly Maoists.

"Though it's yet to be established if the arrested people were supplying ammunition and arms spares to the Maoists, we are sure that the supplies were not meant only for gangsters," said additional director general (ADG), STF, Brij Lal, who supervised the operation.

More than 5,500 live rounds, 245 kg of bullet shells, nearly 2.5 quintals of `used cartridges', 16 bullet magazines and around 100 kg spares of Insas, AK-47 and self-loading rifles (SLRs), 9mm and .38 and .303 bore, apart from Rs 1.73 lakh cash were recovered from their possession, raising suspicion that the huge quantity of ammunition was meant for guerrilla outfits like the Maoists.

The modus operandi of the gang was to convert the `used cartridges' into live ones at different firing ranges in UP. The gang inflated the number of rounds fired during practice and reclaimed more bullets from the armoury and sold these.

According to sources, the STF operation came after probes by central security and intelligence agencies into the Dantewada massacre threw up pointers to such a supply chain. Searches were conducted at 26 locations across eight districts of UP, including the residential quarters of four serving UP policemen and two CRPF personnel posted at the Group Centre and CWF in Rampur.

CRPF director general Vikram Srivastava told TOI that the paramilitary force was in constant touch with the UP Police and was extending all help.

"We have already suspended three CRPF personnel (including the two arrested ones) and ordered an immediate Court of Enquiry," Srivastava said, adding that UP cops in Basti, Moradabad, Lucknow, Allahabad, Jhansi and Gorakhpur might also be involved.

"A third CRPF personnel - Chote Lal Verma - was detained. He was, however, not arrested as no recovery was made from him," said an officer.

The arrested people were identified by cops as Yashoda Nand Singh, retired Provincial Armed Constabulary (PAC) armourer; police armourers Nathi Ram, Bans Lal and Akhilesh Pandey; Vinod Paswan and Dinesh Singh of CRPF units in Rampur. Bans Lal's son Virendra was also held.

Lal told TOI that interrogation of Yashoda of Dandi area under Naini police circle of Allahabad led to the arrest of two CRPF men. Then Nathi Ram, who was posted at Dr Bhim Rao Ambedkar Police Academy in Moradabad, was questioned which led to the arrest of Bans Lal and Akhilesh Pandey both from Jhansi. Raids were also conducted at their native places, leading to the arrest of Virendra after bullets were recovered from his house.

On the modus operandi of the gang, STF SSP Naveen Arora said the armourers told police that the shells provided by Yashodha were mixed with those spared during the firing practice sessions at the police academy and CRPF group centres.

"For example, 800 rounds were fired in a particular training session. The spent shells of these used cartridges, as a rule, are surrendered to the armoury. They mixed 200 shells that they had got from Yashodha and showed in the records the total rounds used in the session as 1,000," Arora told TOI.

The additional SP (STF), leading the investigations, said there were reports that such practices were rampant at 30th battalion PAC Gonda, 36 PAC Varanasi and district police armouries at Kanpur, Allahabad, Varanasi, Basti, Jhansi, Police Training College in Moradabad, Chandauli, Mirzapur and Sonebhadra.