Tuesday, September 29, 2009
More promotion avenues to IFS Officers in Tamil Nadu
Many posts of Indian Forest Service (IFS) belonging to the Tamil Nadu cadre in a recent review have gone up. Posts of Additional PCCF has increased from four to 10.Similarly posts of CCF will be now 23. However, number posts of CFs, which was earlier 20, has been slashed to 16.
Promotion IPS to IG Police ( GP 10000)
1989 batch IPS officers belonging to the Uttar Pradesh cadre are soon going to be elevated as IGs. There are 10 vacancies of IGs in UP.
IIS career boost after Raghu Menon joins as new I&B Secretary
The career prospects of Indian Information Service (IIS) officers are expected to get a boost after Raghu Menon has Joined as the new Secretary in the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting. To begin with Menon has decided to lift the ban on forwarding the names of IIS officers for central deputation besides asking his department for speeding up SAG level promotions upto 1991 batch. One can only wish him good luck given the fact that he is an old I&B hand ,having served as JS in the Ministry earlier.
No doubt about India’s nuclear deterrent: former Navy Chief
NEW DELHI: Amid the controversy over the yield from the Pokhran-II nuclear tests, former Chief of Naval Staff Arun Prakash emphasised there was no room to doubt the credibility of India’s nuclear deterrent even as he advocated institutional checks and balances to take major decisions in this sphere.
“In the midst of the current brouhaha, we need to retain clarity on one issue; given the deuterium-tritium boosted-fission weapons can generate yields of 200-500kts, the credibility of India’s nuclear deterrent is not in the slightest doubt,” Adm.(Retd) Prakash said in his article on the National Maritime Foundation (NMF) website.
While observing that the “unseemly squabbling” among the nation’s senior most scientists would certainly upset and confuse the Indian armed forces, he said “this strong, silent bulwark of India’s security has, so far, accepted the claims and statements of the DRDO (and DAE) scientist at face value and borne the operational consequences of many failed scientific projects with admirable stoicism. Will they continue to do so?”
He said the organisational gap with the detachment of the Service Headquarters (SHQ) from most aspects of nuclear deterrence is well known.
The Army’s missile brigade, the Navy’s Prithvi-armed vessels, and the dual-tasked Indian Air Force units seem to form the only interface between the SHQ on one side, and the SFC as well as the DRDO/DAE, on the other.
Traditionally, Adm. Prakash said, there has been neither interest nor in-depth knowledge of the doctrine or philosophy of nuclear deterrence in the armed forces and this exists all the way up to the top.
This was so because it is only when the Service Chief becomes the Chairman of the Chiefs of Staff Committee that he finds himself in the nuclear chain of command.
Indian Air Force denies "espionage" incident
New Delhi, Sep 28 (PTI) The Indian Air Force Monday said none of its senior officers was made to part with sensitive information by a foreign embassy official posing as a Defence Ministry joint secretary.
"The IAF strongly denies the media report written on the basis of hearsay. The report is full of untruth. At that senior level, no sensitive information is discussed over phone," IAF spokesperson Wing Commander T K Singha said here.
However, he said, the report of a circular on information security from the Defence Ministry's chief security officer routinely alerted officials, both in the Ministry and the Services headquarters, and warned them about the risks of discussing security matters over phone.
No go-ahead from Ministry, so Navy opts out of US exercise
Leaving the US flummoxed, the Indian Navy pulled out of an amphibious exercise with American forces in Japan last week after it failed to get clearance from the Defence Ministry.
The amphibious assault exercise was scheduled to start in Okinawa last Friday and the Navy chose 12 senior officers for the war games. Officers were pulled out from various commands and called to Delhi for final documentation. But the Navy’s participation was called off days before their departure because permission did not come through from the Defence Ministry.
“The officers had been taken off duties, called to Delhi. Even the preparatory embarkment had been done but the permission did not come till the last moment,” a source said, adding that officers spent close to 10 days in Delhi, waiting for clearance.
While no explanation was given by the Defence Ministry for holding back the clearance, this is not the first time that Indo-US defence interactions have been called off by the Ministry this year.
China ahead in warship sprint
China will soon deploy its first aircraft carrier and it will be more advanced than anything India has or plans to get. Varyag – an Admiral Kuznetsov-class aircraft carrier — is more advanced than the INS Viraat —vanguard of the Indian navy — and the still to be procured Admiral Gorshkov (INS Vikramaditya).
Sources from the Indian navy say that the Chinese plan to operationalise the Varyag - purchased as junk from Ukraine for 20 million US dollars in 1998.
In 2005, the dead ship was docked at the Chinese naval base in Dalian. Since then it has been undergoing sophisticated upgrades, reveal sources in the Indian navy.
Hindustan Times has access to photographs of the warship undergoing repairs at a dock in north- eastern China.
A senior officer from the Indian navy, who has been monitoring China’s growing presence in the Indian Ocean, said that it will not be surprising to see the Chinese navy induct Varyag much before India procures and commissions Admiral Gorshkov.
He added that the induction of Varyag was certain as the Chinese had built a ski-jump (part of the aircraft carrier used for take off and landing of aircrafts) facility similar to that on the Varyag at it’s Yuanling airfield –— China’s main aviation test facility. The ski-jump is being used as a testing facility for modified Sukhoi-27 aircrafts, which the Varyag may carry.
“If Varyag was not to be inducted, the question of flight testing at a similar facility does not arise,” the officer observed.
According to sources, the Chinese have plans to get more aircraft carriers by 2020. Commander-in-chief of the Chinese navy, Wu Shengli’s aim to aggressively pursue indigenously built aircraft carriers has been a cause of worry for India.
Of the two other aircraft carriers being built by China, one is expected be inducted by 2015, added sources.
Navy blocks IMD plan for Chinese radar
New Delhi: The India Meteorological Department (IMD) has been forced to look for indigenous alternatives after the navy, citing security, refused to allow the installation of a China-made radar on its land in Mumbai.
Commissioning the advanced-technology radar would have meant allowing Chinese personnel on the premises owned and operated by the Indian Navy.
Because of the delay in installing the radar, which was to be set up at the Naval Colony in Colaba and primarily used to warn of cloudbursts of the kind that deluged Mumbai in 2005, IMD is in talks with government-owned Bharat Electronics Ltd (BEL) to install its locally manufactured radars. IMD had rejected the BEL radars last year, saying they were at an experimental stage and not ready for operational forecasts.
IMD bought 12 Doppler weather radars on 30 May from Beijing Metstar Radar Co. Ltd, a 49:51 venture of China National Huayun Technology Development Corp., a wholly owned subsidiary of China Meteorological Administration and US-based Lockheed Martin Corp. IMD is also buying 550 automatic weather stations and 1,350 automatic rain gauge stations as part of a Rs900 crore modernization plan to move into numerical weather prediction, globally used to give precise weather forecasts, as opposed to statistical techniques still being used in India for monsoon forecasts.
A navy spokesperson said the weather radar clearance was still being discussed, but didn’t indicate when a decision was likely. “There are government orders on such kind of installations and when certain companies are involved. It is an important security issue.” Previously too, defence and intelligences agencies have raised objections to the presence of Chinese companies. According to The Indian Express report on 19 May 2003, the Chinese antecedents of Hutchison Port Holdings disqualified the firm from participating in key construction work at a terminal at Mumbai’s Jawaharlal Nehru Port Trust. Mumbai, being a port and a hub of international maritime traffic, is considered especially sensitive by the navy.
IMD chief Ajit Tyagi and ministry of earth sciences (MoES) secretary Shailesh Naik confirmed that the navy hadn’t cleared the radar’s installation and that talks were on with BEL to use their radar instead of the Chinese one. “Security concerns is one of the factors that has led to this delay. We are in talks with BEL to see if we can use their radars,” Tyagi said.
Mint reported on 18 June last year that Beijing Metstar outbid BEL, which develops weather radars based on proprietary technology of the Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro), and Germany’s Selex Gematronik GmbH, for IMD contract to install the radars in 12 cities and key ports at Mumbai, Delhi, Agartala, Mohanbari, Paradip, Bhopal, Nagpur, Patna, Lucknow, Karaikal, Patiala and Goa. The radars, to be supplied, installed and commissioned by Metstar cost about $17.8 million (around Rs85 crore now).
The Isro radars, say experts, didn’t make the cut as there was a lot of room for improvement in their software. The plan, according to IMD, was to consider Isro radars for the second stage of modernization that would include installing 33 radars in other parts of the country.
“The Isro radars are very good,” said P.S. Goel, former secretary, MoES, who was involved with the tendering process before he retired in 2008. “But the software wasn’t good enough for forecast purposes. So, we told them, then, that the radars would be tested for two years and then considered for evaluation in the second round of acquisition.”
Tyagi said the Isro radars had “improved” and therefore were worthy of being used at Mumbai. He didn’t give a time frame for installing the instrument.
“If it’s a matter of security, the navy’s concerns are nonsense,” said Goel. “There’s no way these radars can be used as bugs or any purpose other than forecasting.”
Doppler weather radars have an edge over other radar systems. The radars the government uses provide information only on the range of a storm whereas a Doppler instrument provides data to accurately estimate an approaching storm’s centre and intensity, fixing its position and predicting its path.
“Now it’s DWRs everywhere. Nobody really uses ordinary weather radars,” Tyagi said.
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