The BMos VLS option is already available,the ship launched version aboard a sub.The BMos-M (mini) will have a smaller warhead ,etc. Its capabilities may be a bit different from the std. version.
The decision taken finally reg. the CNS is welcome,in that a decision was made.In fact ,no disrespect to him,VAdm. Sinha should've resigned on moral grounds after the second sub disaster (SRatna) as he was in command of WC. He should've fallen on his sword instead of Adm.Joshi. I suppose he stayed put taking his cue from Adm.Ramdas who stayed on after INS Andamans sank during an exercise when he was in command of EC.Ramdas went on to become the chief,infamous for his making do with less statement during the "lost decade" when not a single warship or sub was inducted. Now poor VAdm.Sinha has been overlooked-obviously for his performance,and has had to take retirement.
Unfortunate for the other chiefs of SC and EC who have now lost their seniority,but when (was it ACM Katre?) the air chief died in harness decades ago,his deputy,AM La Fontaine succeeded him.So the DCNS stepping into the chief's shoes has a precedent in the Indian armed forces. If an officer can rise to the rank of Deputy in any of the branches of the services,and he has been CO of the fleet of a command,the one who will actually have to take the fleet pout to fight,one cannot discount him from succeeding whatever his lack of heading a Command .It may be unusual,but remember the controversy about a helo/transport pilot being chosen above a fighter pilot for the post of chief,ACM Fali Major?
One must also remember how Adm.Bhagwat was shafted for not promoting an officer whom he felt did not deserve to,and his successor,Adm,Sushil Kumar.Just for the record,the history behind his sacking in this old Frontline cover special.It is a very lengthy article,and has much historical content,background of the personalities involved and other senior officers of the IN,a must read .It lays bare some of the politicking that has afflicted the IN in recent years.
http://www.frontline.in/static/html/fl1602/16020040.htm
Vol. 16 :: No. 02 :: Jan. 16 - 29, 1999
COVER STORY
AN UNJUST DISMISSAL
A communal and unsavoury combine has forced out of its way a Service Chief of uncompromisable integrity, independence and professionalism.
Xcpts:
The proximate cause of Bhagwat's removal was his lawful and professionally uncompromising defiance of the Government's yet-to-be-explained decision to foist Vice-Admiral Harinder Singh, Fortress Commander in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, as DCNS. The Appointments Committee of the Cabinet (ACC) made this choice on December 9, 1998. On the following day, the CNS addressed a note to Union Home Minister L.K. Advani, appending transcripts of telephone conversations that Harinder Singh had conducted with officers at the second tier in the naval hierarchy - Vice-Admirals V. Pasricha, P.J. Jacob and Madanjit Singh - respectively Flag Officer Commanding-in-Chief, Eastern Naval Command, Vice-Chief of the Naval Staff, and officiating DCNS. These recordings had been made by Harinder Singh between March 17 and April 2, 1998, and their transcripts sent to Ashwini Minna, editor of Punjab Kesri, a widely-circulated newspaper published from Jalandhar. Behind the veneer of banter and irreverent chatter between uniformed peers, the intent of the conversations was very clear - to draw out statements to the effect that the CNS was unwilling to entertain Harinder Singh's claims to a higher position in the naval hierarchy, purely on account of personal animus.
Admiral Bhagwat made a formal request that the Home Minister utilise his inherent powers of enforcement to prosecute Harinder Singh for the unauthorised recording of personal conversations. He also told Advani, informally, that he would not respond to provocation by resigning the office he held. The Government, he said, could sack him if it thought fit. Rather than accept a known recalcitrant as his deputy, said Bhagwat, he would consider dismissal a well-merited honour and a challenge.
Entries made in his C.R. for the period ending February 28 had come to his notice, and the Vice-Admiral was at pains to rebut them. There was, for instance, a reference to his very "average" military command capabilities, and his failure to provide NHQ with a "strategic appreciation" of the Andaman Islands littoral region for all of eight months. One specific omission was identified to question Harinder Singh's military leadership skills. While he was on leave from his post in February 1998, a major inter-services operation was launched in the Andamans Sea to interdict a narcotics and arms smuggling operation. The operation yielded a massive haul but the CNS noted that Harinder Singh gave no indication that he would "leave aside his personal concerns and rejoin duty to take charge" of it. There were also adverse notings on Harinder Singh's visit to Russia in May 1997, when he enjoyed the hospitality of two known arms dealers, one of whom had been placed on the MoD blacklist.
The adverse remarks that had been entered into his Confidential Report (C.R.) were entirely motived by this bias, charged Harinder Singh, and solely intended to deny him a higher position in the naval command hierarchy, which would otherwise be his due on purely professional criteria.
Harinder Singh's ROG petition was forwarded to NHQ on April 6. The response was sent within three weeks, signed by the Vice-Chief of the Naval Staff (VCNS), Jacob. The various issues raised by the officer had no bearing on his specific grievance and went far beyond his "competence and locus standi", said the VCNS. The language used and the imputations made were in violation of various statutory regulations of the armed forces. Harinder Singh, said Jacob, should explain within ten days why disciplinary action should not be taken against him for these multiple transgressions of naval discipline.
THE unseemly tale really begins on March 22, 1998, when Harinder Singh despatched a pastiche of wild suspicions, rumours and imagined grievances about the Navy Chief to his immediate superior, the Flag Officer Commanding-in-Chief (Eastern Naval Command). This was supposedly in exercise of the "redress of grievance" (ROG) option available to all officers, and began with the bald assertion that the CNS was "distorting" personnel policies in order to bring up officers belonging to his "constituency". There also seemed a "hidden denominational agenda" in his actions, alleged Harinder Singh, since his actions often suggested an overt hostility towards adherents of the Sikh faith. This, in turn, was perhaps a consequence of the CNS' wife Niloufer Bhagwat being a "half-Muslim" and a "'card carrying member of the Communist Party and their lawyer" (before the Srikrishna Commission of Inquiry). As though this was not enough, Harinder singh flung a wild and incendiary charge against a Muslim officer, Lt. Cdr. A.A. Lone, questioning his patriotism and falsely alleging links with a person involved in hawala transactions for arms for Kashmir terrorists. About Niloufer Bhagwat, he alleged that her "half-Muslmi" origins and CPI links "could possibly explain why so many officers from this denomination remain close to them" and raised the question: "Could this case be a case of 'affirmative action'?"
A NOTABLE effort to mediate a constructive outcome was made by Sharad Pawar, Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha and former Defence Minister. In a letter of remarkable clarity and firmness despatched to the Prime Minister and Defence Minister on September 9, Pawar drew their attention to the multiplicity of petitions pending in court on account of Harinder Singh and counselled them to exert their authority in the cause of sanity: "Had this been a petition by an officer in the civilian services, I would not have felt the need to write to you. However one of my observations as the Raksha Mantri was that, the Armed Forces were not tainted by the divisive forces which are currently at work in our country. My experience was that the Armed Forces were 'Indian' and were not concerned with religious, political or communal ideology except at a very peripheral level. I believe that this is one of the greatest strengths of the country. It would be disastrous to allow anybody or anything to shake this."
George Fernandes felt obliged, as a matter of courtesy, to send a laconic one-line reply to Pawar. But his attention was clearly elsewhere. Relations between the military hierarchy and the MoD bureaucracy were plunging rapidly and Fernandes seemed disinclined to check the precipitate descent. On September 8, he received a letter signed by all three Service Chiefs complaining of the "negative and unsupportive attitude" of Defence Secretary Ajit Kumar. His "brusque and insensitive" manner with even senior military officers did not make for a conducive atmosphere, complained the Service Chiefs.
Former Navy Chief J.G. Nadkarni, who had in 1990 recommended the dismissal of then Rear Admiral Bhagwat for alleged indiscipline.
Subsequent events have been recorded by R. Venkataraman, who, as head of state, had a unique vantage point from which to view them. Shortly after assuming office, Prime Minister Chandra Shekhar made overtures to the President through the Defence Secretary, to ask whether Ramdas' appointment could be rescinded. The President demurred. Orders on the succession had already been issued and their withdrawal would create avoidable confusion and heartburn, he argued. Chandra Shekhar was insistent: could not Nadkarni then be given an extension, he asked. Venkataraman was again lukewarm. There was no obvious rationale for what was clearly an extraordinary step, he responded, and a Service Chief on extension would fail to command the unequivocal allegiance of his men. What these presidential reminiscences point to is an officer cadre in the Navy that was riven by deep factional politics from at least 1990.
In endorsing the dismissal of Bhagwat, Nadkarni and S.M. Nanda are singular in their own ways among former Navy Chiefs. Their reasons are partly congruent. Nanda heads one of the most successful arms brokerage firms in India, with operations in Moscow and London. His son took early retirement from the Indian Navy to join the family business, and is reported to have provided hospitality in London to the wife of Harinder Singh during his overseas visit in May 1997. Nadkarni was investigated by the CBI in 1990-91 for alleged "assets disproportionate to his known sources of income." The matter ended with his paying considerable income tax dues.
BHAGWAT'S personal convictions and deep sense of intellectual rigour made him a misfit in an ambience where the easy and lazy options were preferred. He was known, for instance, to question every major import deal and vigorously argue the case for indigenous production. His experience in the Service similarly taught him to study keenly every procurement deal for evidence of cost-rigging. He was wary in the extreme, even at the cost of alienating his peer group, of military officers who chose to enter the arms bazaar as contractors and middlemen after retirement. The loose and permissive attitude that Harinder Singh displayed during his visit to Russia was, in Bhagwat's code of conduct, deeply repugnant.
The year of naval disasters that we have experienced,is a direct consequence of what transpired a decade+ ago where the "where the easy and lazy options were preferred". Some months ago,one in the know told me of the acute problem the IN was facing with inexperienced officers who had little on-hands experience at command,whose ship-handling capabilities were below par,were rising to the top,avoiding responsibility with indifference.In the USN for example,officers are given command at a young age where they can hone their ship-handling and tactical skills ,equipping them with the experience required for higher command. These lapses apparently have caught up with IN,most unfortunately in a service that was once praised for its professionalism and vision making do with the smallest share of the defence budget but achieving huge successes.
*In another issue-that of the lack of an area-defence SAM for the VikA and the DDGs,and whether Kashtan had been rejected orr not considered for the carrier,an MOD spokesman in a recent report media said that the IN had 10 years to decide upon what SAM it needed,and that Kashtan had not yet been rejected officially.There was only now an IN RFP for a SAM after the carrier was delivered,that too a few years late! In a note to some posters who thought that Aster was not on offer outside NATO nations,the official also said that France was very keen to get into contention.
The Kilo torpedo tubes are of 533 mm dia and are around 8 meters in length 
