International Military Discussion

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Sontu
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International Military Discussion

Post by Sontu »

sum wrote:Since unable to edit my earlier post, a question from the article i earlier posted:
The Peter the Great is one of the largest warships of its kind and carries Su-33 jet fighters and helicopters
A missile frigate carries Su-33?? :eek: :shock:
Googling told me only about the helos but even fighters?
I am 200% sure that this Kirov class Nuclear Cruiser does not operate Su-33 class heavy naval fighter/bomber,until this cruiser is modified to handle Su-33 class a/c, which needs a full fledged carrier runway like Goroshkov.
Jaeger
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Re: International Military Discussion

Post by Jaeger »

Severe case of FDM. :roll:

Either it's the Admiral Kuznetsov that's visitng, or the Foreign Dork Media have take a leaf out of Rajat Pandit's book and have copy-pasted random internet information in the article... :wink:
Philip
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Re: International Military Discussion

Post by Philip »

Here are two intersting sub developments,France to assist Brazil with a nuclear sub and Indonesia to consider S.Korean sub technology/assistance.Indian had it not abandoned our U-209 sub building,would've been in position as a supplier of subs to ASEAN/Asian /S.American nations much earlier.The In must expect that in the near future,we will see reports of a Sino-Pak nuclear sub programme too!It is inevitable once India receives its first ATV/Akula and the Chinese sub will not come with any restrictions for Pak,Pak being China's "Arabian Sea" army in disguise.

http://www.antara.co.id/en/arc/2008/9/2 ... -supplier/

Navy not only considering S Korea as possible submarine supplier
Jakarta, (ANTARA News) - The Indonesian Navy will not only consider South Korea as a possible supplier of the submarine it is planning to buy with an export credit facility, Navy Chief of Staff Vice Admiral Tedjo Edhy Purdijatno said here on Tuesday.

He said his side would entirely let the Defense Ministry decide which country the submarine would be bought from.

"We have set up an assessment team which will also act as a purchase planning team with the Defense Ministry. It will study which type of, how and where the submarine will be purchased," he said.

He said there were several countries which had made an offer such as Germany and South Korea.

The navy chief said the assessment team had formulated the technical specifications for the hardware to be purchased with the export credit facility, namely BMP-3F amphibian tanks, guided-missile sentry estroyers and a submarine.

It was decided that for the purchase of BMP-3F tanks, the number would reach 17 units and be bought from Russia while the number of missile destroyers and the country of origin of one submarine had yet to be decided.(*)

http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=70 ... =351020706

France to help Brazil with nuke submarine
Tue, 23 Sep 2008 06:31:20 GMT

Brazil's Defense Minister Nelson Jobim
Brazil plans to sign a military cooperation treaty with France that would help the South American nation build its first nuclear submarine.

Defense Minister Nelson Jobim announced on Monday that Brasilia expected the treaty to be signed in late December when French President Nicolas Sarkozy is scheduled to visit Brazil.

Jobim said under the military deal, France would provide technology for the construction of Brazil's first nuclear submarine and training for the Brazilian troops.

The announcement comes amid a week-long military exercise coded as Operation Atlantic and held in southeastern Brazil, where the country's armed forces are simulating a war over the control of the region's pre-salt layer oil fields.

On September 10, Brazil's state-owned oil and gas giant Petrobras confirmed the discovery of an oil field 230 km off the coast with its recoverable reserves estimated at three to four billion barrels.

Brasilia has been seeking a nuclear submarine -- the first such vessel in Latin America -- to protect the deep-water reserves, which would promote Brazil to a major oil producer.

In February, Sarkozy said Paris would transfer technology to Brazil for construction of the diesel-powered Scorpene attack submarine which Brazilian officials say will serve as a model for a nuclear one.

Brazil, which has five conventionally powered submarines, has discussed building a nuclear sub for decades, beginning a formal program in 1979.
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Re: International Military Discussion

Post by asbchakri »

Jaeger wrote:Severe case of FDM. :roll:

Either it's the Admiral Kuznetsov that's visitng, or the Foreign Dork Media have take a leaf out of Rajat Pandit's book and have copy-pasted random internet information in the article... :wink:
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/ ... a/1144.htm
The squadron, led by the Northern Fleet’s flagship nuclear-powered Kirov-class battlecruiser Pyotr Veliky (named after Peter the Great, Czar Peter I of Russia) - one of the world’s largest heavily-armed nuclear-powered guided missile cruisers - will participate with the Venezuelan fleet in the Caribbean naval exercise in November 2008. During the joint exercises, the Russian navy is expected to deploy Moscow's most modern destroyer, the Udaloy-class Admiral Chabanenko anti-submarine destroyer, a rescue vessel and a tanker ship. This will be Russia’s first maneuver in the US backyard in nearly 20 years. The naval exercise will be conducted in Venezuelan waters between the 10th and 14th of November. The Russian and Venezuelan Navy will together perform dry runs of relief operations and test their tactical communication systems.

The Russian Kirov Class Heavy Missile Cruise Ship are the world's largest 'cruisers' and might best be termed "battle cruisers". Originally designed as a large antisubmarine warship to search for and engage enemy ballistic missile submarines, the Kirov’s role was expanded to engage large surface targets and provide air and antisubmarine protection to naval forces after the introduction of the Granit antiship missile system. There are substantial differences in the equipment of each unit of this class.

The ship is armed with the Granit long range anti-ship missile system, known in the West as the Shipwreck missile. Twenty Granit antiship missiles are installed under the upper deck, mounted at a 60 degree elevation. The long-range missiles cannot be controlled once launched, but do have a multivariant target engagement program. When ripple-fired the missiles share information while in-flight. The lead missile assumes a high-level flight trajectory enabling it to increase its target acquisition capacity, while the other missiles follow at a lower level. If the lead missile is destroyed, one of the other missiles will automatically assume the lead role.

An S-300F Air Defence Missile Complex is installed on the ship, with 12 launchers and 96 vertical launch air defence missiles. The S-300F is capable of engaging both air and surface targets. The ship has two Osa-Ma double launchers and 40 air defence missiles. The ship is also fitted with a 130 mm AK-130 multipurpose two barrel gun. The ship's 30 mm artillery system is the AK-630 used to engage airborne targets including sea skimming anti-ship missiles, small sea vessels, floating mines and light armoured land based targets. The ship accommodates three Kamov Ka-27PL or Ka-25RT helicopters. The ship has ten missile or torpedo tubes with 20 Vodopad-NK anti-submarine missiles or torpedoes. The ship has two anti-submarine and anti-torpedo rocket systems, the Udav-1 with 40 anti-submarine rockets and the RBU-1000. The ship has two RBU-1000 six-tube anti-submarine rocket launchers, with 102 rockets.
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Re: International Military Discussion

Post by Singha »

unless we can design and produce the power plants and associated machinery of ships and
submarines, we are not in position to export. we need a local pielstick, mtu, cummins or wartsila
with a pyramid of 100s of suppliers attached.

until then everything is Maya and cheap labour arbitrage.

engine - no plan in sight
gearbox - no plan in sight
hull - can do, but need help on stealth techniques
control system - still importing from folks like CAE, CAIR+TCS+Wipro+BEL
could make one if funded.
radar - P28 CAR is our first shipborne modern desi radar
ciws - nothing but easily importable kashtan and phalanx is there
power generators - check
main gun - only 76mm "medak" gun available
torpedo - NSTL HWT is ready? LWT is inducted
sonar - check
comms eqpt - check
ESM - check
ASM - brahmos - check
SAM - barak2 - in progress
IRST - none (need a SIRIUS clone)


engine & gearbox look like the main gaps to me for plugging. Its the old
indian familing - engine. perhaps millenia of travel by bullock cart took
that gene into recessed state. morever the A+ mech & meta students
went to IT sector or Phds abroad.
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Re: International Military Discussion

Post by Anshul »

Are the existing chimps in DRDO,GTRE,CVRDE that bad?I mean even if we lack original ideas,atleast reverse-engineer and master the craft.
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Re: International Military Discussion

Post by srai »

Singha wrote:unless we can design and produce the power plants and associated machinery of ships and
submarines, we are not in position to export. we need a local pielstick, mtu, cummins or wartsila
with a pyramid of 100s of suppliers attached.

until then everything is Maya and cheap labour arbitrage.
...
engine & gearbox look like the main gaps to me for plugging. Its the old
indian familing - engine. perhaps millenia of travel by bullock cart took
that gene into recessed state. morever the A+ mech & meta students
went to IT sector or Phds abroad.
Isn't there a marine engine version of the Kaveri? There were some reports on that recently.


Here's one of the articles:
Kaveri Marine Gas Turbine to Power Indian Navy Ships
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Re: International Military Discussion

Post by asbchakri »

srai wrote:
Singha wrote:unless we can design and produce the power plants and associated machinery of ships and
submarines, we are not in position to export. we need a local pielstick, mtu, cummins or wartsila
with a pyramid of 100s of suppliers attached.

until then everything is Maya and cheap labour arbitrage.
...
engine & gearbox look like the main gaps to me for plugging. Its the old
indian familing - engine. perhaps millenia of travel by bullock cart took
that gene into recessed state. morever the A+ mech & meta students
went to IT sector or Phds abroad.
Isn't there a marine engine version of the Kaveri? There were some reports on that recently.
I think that was for surface ships not for subs. But can that be modified to fit a Sub? And what about Propeller Tech do we have it. I have read somewhere that it is a very closely gaurded secret of its design .
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Re: International Military Discussion

Post by Nayak »

US Army is funding 'redowl' to triangulate shot origination from a sniper.

It uses acqoustic measuring devices and realtime points out to the direction of the shot.

Cant our DRDO whip up something like that ?
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Re: International Military Discussion

Post by Singha »

we trialled sound detection globes from a british co in LOC few yrs back. alleged to be able
to detect snipers and mortar locations using a network of globes. never heard anything later,
so it means did not meet the mark.
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Re: International Military Discussion

Post by Nmistry »

Submarine: The Heat Is On

September 25, 2008: The U.S. is getting some valuable practice hunting submarines by searching for the increasingly numerous drug smuggling semi-submersible boats carrying cocaine from South America. U.S. anti-submarine aircraft are honing their skills at spotting very small objects at sea by spotting heat.

Between 2000 and 2007, 23 of these drug boats were spotted. But so far this year, over 60 have been seen or captured. The two most recent captures were the result of intelligence information at the source, not air and naval patrols out there just looking for them. These boats are hard to spot (by aircraft or ships), which is why they are being used more often. It's very difficult to pick the boats up with airborne radar, but heat sensors are another matter. The boats engines, and the crew, give off heat, and there are airborne sensors that can detect that. The U.S. Navy will not reveal the range and sensitivity of the infrared (heat) sensors used on its P-3C maritime patrol aircraft, but apparently it's possible to detect these boats from their heat. the P-3C has a cruise speed of 610 kilometers per hour, endurance of up to 13 hours. Flying a few thousand meters up, and with a heat sensor with a range of 5-10 kilometers or so, a P-3C can cover a lot of ocean. But the drug boats come up from Colombia, often 500 kilometers off the Central American coast. That's a whole lot of ocean.

These are not submarines in the true sense of the word, but "semi-submersibles". They are 30-60 foot fiberglass boats, powered by a diesel engine, with a very low freeboard, and a small "conning tower", providing the crew (of 4-5), and engine, with fresh air, and permitting the crew to navigate the boat. A boat of this type is the only practical kind of submarine for drug smuggling. A real submarine, capable of carrying five tons of cocaine, would cost a lot more, and require a highly trained crew.

The semi-submersibles are built, often using specially made components brought in from foreign countries, in areas along the Colombian coast, or other drug gang controlled territory. Russian naval architects and engineers have been discovered among those designing and building these boats. Based on interrogations of captured gang members, these subs cost over $600,000 to construct, and carry up to ten tons of cocaine.

At one point it was thought that as many as half of them were captured or lost at sea. But this is apparently not the case. That's because most of these subs are built for a one way trip. This keeps down the cost of construction, and the cost of hiring a crew (who fly home). That one voyage will usually be for about a thousand kilometers, with the boat moving at a speed of 15-25 kilometers an hour. So the average trip will take a few days. But going to Mexico takes about a week, with additional fuel and crew supplies reducing the amount of cocaine carried.

These subs are not stealthy enough to avoid detection all the time, and the U.S. is working to tweak search radars, and other types of sensors, to more reliably detect the drug subs. The U.S. Navy is also going to try using Predators, equipped with a maritime search radar. The heat given off by these boats is comparable to what a diesel-electric sub puts out when semi-submerged (with just its schnorkel, on top of the conning tower, above water to provide air for the crew and the diesel engine). There is technology that can decrease that "heat signature" and the drug gangs may be able to get help from their Russian technical advisors on that subject as well. And then the U.S. P-3C crews get a chance to defeat the improvement. In any event, the U.S. is gaining valuable experience searching to small objects at sea.

http://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htsub/ ... 80925.aspx
Last edited by Rahul M on 26 Sep 2008 09:11, edited 1 time in total.
Reason: avoid large fonts.
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Re: International Military Discussion

Post by neerajb »

Nmistry wrote:Submarine: The Heat Is On
Some images of the captured SPSS used by drug runners.
Link

Cheers.....
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Re: International Military Discussion

Post by Austin »

Russia sends warship to fight piracy near Somalia

MOSCOW, September 26 (RIA Novosti) - Russia's Navy has sent a missile frigate to waters off the Somali coast to fight piracy in the region, a Navy spokesman said on Friday. (Russian Navy modernized - Image gallery)

"The Neustrashimy (Fearless) frigate from the Baltic Fleet left the main naval base in Russia's Baltic exclave of Kaliningrad on Wednesday to ensure security in several regions of the world oceans," Capt. 1st Rank Igor Dygalo said.

He added that Russia had decided to periodically send its warships to regions plagued by sea piracy to protect its citizens and commercial vessels.

Pirates are increasingly active in the waters off Somalia, which has no effective government and no navy to police its coastline. The International Maritime Bureau said more than 30 incidents of piracy were registered in the region in 2007. According to UN data, 26 attacks have been committed so far this year off the coast of the East African nation.

Russian nationals are frequently among the crews of civilian ships hijacked by pirates off the Somalia coast. In the most recent case pirates off the coast of Somalia seized a Ukrainian ship en route to Kenya with three Russian, 17 Ukrainian and one Latvian national on board.

"We are planning to participate in international efforts to fight piracy off the Somalia coast, but the Russian warships will conduct operations on their own," Adm. Vladimir Vysotsky earlier said.

At the beginning of June, the UN Security Council passed a resolution permitting countries to enter Somalia's territorial waters to combat "acts of piracy and armed robbery at sea."

The Neustrashimy is the only Project 1154 Yastreb class missile frigate in active service with the Russian Navy to have been built before the collapse of the Soviet Union. It is designed as a general purpose ASW ship to follow on from the Krivak class frigates and incorporates some 'stealth' technology.

The ship's armament includes SS-N-25 Switchblade anti-ship missiles, SA-N-9 Gauntlet SAM, a 100-mm gun, torpedoes and depth charges.

The frigate also carries a Ka-27 ASW helicopter.
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Re: International Military Discussion

Post by Singha »

swat olympics. we need proper swat teams in each tier-1 city in India and some of the
more terrorist affected tier2 ones.

one unit should be based in azamgarh PS surely and they wont be short of work.
another outside the HQ of the SP party to catch 'guests' coming and going

http://www.swatseries.com/Images/WashPo ... f_SWAT.pdf
http://www.swatseries.com/Images/C_6_06_Suenkler.pdf
http://www.swatseries.com/Images/C_7-8_06_Suenkler.pdf

we also need a Delta/Devgru/Vympel type deep cover unit to assume fake ids and go hunt
down and mercilessly kill financiers and controllers of terrorists in major cities outside India.
perhaps RAW JIT-X can be reactivated and retrained with this new mission - a mix of
field intel and commando work..very very few people can deliver that skill profile ...we would
be lucky to round up 75-100 people of that calibre.

p.s. if you read the first link, the inept Kuwaiti SWAT managed to nearly kill someone
by releasing a shot in the parking lot . :rotfl: vintage arab kamandu - the hostages are
guaranteed to get shot or blown up.
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Re: International Military Discussion

Post by Singha »

imho Russia should tieup with France and Germany and send in a combined task force of
Vympel, GIGN and KSK to "go in" and teach a lesson to whichever band of pirates they can
catch. Cut their heads off, put them on a pike and leave it stuck outside to decorate the
coastal town.

take along some units of chechen militias too for the mopping up. those guys just love a
good fight - esp if they hold the upper hand.
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Re: International Military Discussion

Post by sum »

Russia's Navy has sent a missile frigate to waters off the Somali coast to fight piracy in the region, a Navy spokesman said on Friday. (Russian Navy modernized - Image gallery)
When will our netas grow the b@lls and actually use the good equipment the IN has for such purposes?
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Re: International Military Discussion

Post by Lalmohan »

[quote="asbchakri]
I think that was for surface ships not for subs. But can that be modified to fit a Sub? And what about Propeller Tech do we have it. I have read somewhere that it is a very closely gaurded secret of its design .[/quote]

doesn't a gas turbine's (large) air breathing requirements rule it out of the submarine game?
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Re: International Military Discussion

Post by Austin »

sum wrote:When will our netas grow the b@lls and actually use the good equipment the IN has for such purposes?
Look at it this way , we don't hot pursue the terrorist across the border , who come in our own country kill our own people and jawan and then run off to the other side.

Do you think the policy makers will even remotely agree to send ships to some distant sea to fight the pirates ?
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Re: International Military Discussion

Post by Arya Sumantra »

Austin wrote:Look at it this way , we don't hot pursue the terrorist across the border , who come in our own country kill our own people and jawan and then run off to the other side.
Chasing pirates in International waters is not the same as chasing terrorists inside enemy territory. Only chasing the pirates within territorial waters would be controversial. The netas do have power assertion phobia even where it is legitimate to assert power without being a bully.
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Re: International Military Discussion

Post by Austin »

Well in both cases they are indecisive , They dont have any phobia or any thing , status quo works for them and provides them well.

Any ways to the topic , I wonder if Neustrashimy is equipped for and carrying Russian SF with them , they are quite well armed and just too heavily armed for anti-pirates operations
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Re: International Military Discussion

Post by KiranM »

Austin wrote:Well in both cases they are indecisive , They dont have any phobia or any thing , status quo works for them and provides them well.

Any ways to the topic , I wonder if Neustrashimy is equipped for and carrying Russian SF with them , they are quite well armed and just too heavily armed for anti-pirates operations
Typical Russian way of swatting a fly with the hammer. :D
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Re: International Military Discussion

Post by Arya Sumantra »

Look what the pirates have got hold of this time
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/w ... 831652.ece

Somali pirates land Russian tanks in surprise haul

Rob Crilly, Nairobi
The pirates would hardly have been able to believe their eyes as they inspected the hold of their latest conquest, the Faina.

The Ukrainian vessel was heading for the Kenyan port of Mombasa loaded down with rocket-propelled grenades, anti-aircraft guns and 30 Russian T-72 tanks.
“They really hit the jackpot this time,” said a regional arms expert. “There is not much they can do with the tanks, but the RPGs and the Zu-23 anti-aircraft guns will soon find their way into Somalia’s arms markets.

“These are the sort of weapons that fighters in Somalia really like.”

Almost 60 vessels have been attacked this year as armed gangs of pirates plunder the seas off Somalia.

Its 2,300-mile coastline offers rich pickings for the modern-day buccaneers, who use AK-47s and RPGs rather than the cutlasses and flintlock pistols of romantic imagination.

In a country already awash with weapons, yesterday’s haul will only worsen a bloody conflict that has escalated in the past month as Islamist insurgents battle government troops and their Ethiopian allies.

An international coalition of navies has so far failed to stem the trade, which brings in as much as $1.5 million (£800,000) per ship.
The Ukrainian foreign ministry said today that the Faina’s captain had radioed maritime authorities to say that three cutters with armed men were approaching his vessel at high speed before communications were lost. Her cargo was destined for South Sudan’s government.
It brings the number of ships held by the buccaneers to 14, with 300 crew members held hostage.

They are being held around the tiny fishing village of Eyl in Puntland, a semi-autonomous region of Somalia.

At times it seems as if the pirates can act with impunity. Earlier this week the Danish navy freed 10 pirates it had captured at sea, saying they had insufficient evidence to prosecute them.

But at the same time French officials have filed preliminary charges of hijacking and kidnapping against six suspected pirates captured earlier this month. Commandos snatched the six in a daring raid to free a French couple seized as they sailed their yacht along the Somali coast towards the Suez Canal.

They are currently awaiting trial in a French prison. Six naval vessels are currently patrolling the waters around the Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean as part of an international task force to tackle piracy.

However commercial shipping companies have criticised the mission for failing to make a difference.

Lieutenant Nathan Christensen, a spokesman for Combined Task Force 150, based in Bahrain, said that the naval vessels were having an impact since setting up a safe corridor for shipping four weeks ago.

“We have deterred pirate attacks – 12 in the past month – so we are having an impact,” he said.

“But this is an international problem and needs an international solution. It will take more than the six or seven ships we have in 2.4m square miles of sea.”

Meanwhile, the Canadian navy has said that it will continue to escort emergency shipments of food into Mogadishu.

Its frigate, HMCS Ville de Quebec, was due to return to the Mediterranean tomorrow but will spend another month ensuring that desperately needed supplies can reach Somalia.

The World Food Programme of the United Nations had given warning that its deliveries would cease if an escort could not be found.

Have your say

It is hard to believe that this sort of hardware is being moved around the world without some sort of escort.

Bob, Leeds, UK
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Re: International Military Discussion

Post by Philip »

A must read for sub enthusiasts.Incidentally the "Schuka-B" is none other than our sooon to be commissioned Akula-2 (reportedly the completed "Nerpa") class SSGN!

http://www.kp.ru/daily/24170.4/381718/

Russia’s Shchuka and Dolphin ships are a force to be reckoned with for the U.S.

The Sineva missile. One of Russia’s naval trump cards. The missile can travel 8,300 kilometers.
Фото: http://news.ntv.ru How is the Russian navy stronger than the U.S. fleet
KP.RU, Viktor Baranets — 25.09.2008
In the last issue of our weekly, KP presented readers with a short history of nuclear submarines. Today, military expert Mikhail Polezhaev and KP correspondent, Colonel Viktor Baranets, compare the world’s two strongest naval powers.

KP: Mikhail Aleksandrovich, how many nuclear submarines are in the U.S. and Russia?

Polazhaev: We’re only counting submarines with ballistic missiles, correct? If so, Russia only has 12 . Their average age is 26 years old. We don’t have submarines that carry more than 16 missiles. The basis of our fleet is 6 Dolphin submarine carriers, which go by the NATO codename Delta-IV. The U.S. has 18 Ohio submarines. Four are undergoing repairs and modernization. Each submarine carries 24 missiles.

KP: So we’re losing to the U.S. in terms of the number of our submarines and their nuclear-missile potential?

Polazhaev: That’s obvious .

KP: The Americans say that in the event of a non-nuclear war, Russia’s submarines will be destroyed within 12-15 days. They say our submarines are loud and easy to capture and sink, even with regular torpedoes and bombs. Is that a bluff?

Polazhaev: Even the most invisible submarines makes noise. Everything makes noise: mechanisms, devices, screws and the water surrounding the submarine. Each submarine has its own specific sound. Whoever hears -- meaning discovers -- the enemy first is victorious. And the one hears first has less noise and more sensitive acoustics. This is why a key facet in submarine building is reducing noise. The U.S. nuclear submarine program is known for maintaining superior detection at long distances and mastering noise reduction. The

Ears for submarines

KP: Based on your comments, it seems that we’re losing to the Americans in terms of the number of our arms and their noise level and hydro-acoustic ability. You’re risking making our special agents very angry.

Polazhaev: Arguments about who is stronger and weaker are purely theoretical. Only real-time events are able to reveal the true state of affairs -- meaning war. Today, in peaceful conditions, submarines follow each other attentively, studying their enemy’s defining characteristics. For example, the American submarine called the Los Angeles and the Russian Shchuka (codenamed Victor-III in the U.S.) are nearly identical ships. However, the Americans think the Shchuka can detect the Los Angeles in deep waters at a distance of only 125 miles, while the Los Angeles can detect the Shchuka at a distance of almost 500 miles.

KP: In other words, the hydro-acoustics of the Los Angeles are three times more powerful?

Polazhaev: The Americans can think whatever they’d like. An interesting story comes to mind. Twenty years ago, we held a joint sailing and anti-submarine defense operation with the U.S. forces. As a result, it became clear that in the event that the Soviet Union called a fleet of modern nuclear submarines into action en masse, the U.S. navy wouldn’t be capable of organizing an effective defense. Even the Shchuka ships showed professional combat qualities.

KP: When you speak with our submarine sailors, they often tell tall tales about how they have almost scratched the underbellies of U.S. ships without the Americans even knowing.


The Shchucka has a unique tracing system that reads the wakes of enemy ships hours after they sailed away.
Фото: www.kresta-ii.ucoz.ru

Polazhaev: Would you like to hear a true story? In the winter of 1996, the Russian Embassy in London called the commanding officers of the British navy and requested they lend assistance to a sailor on board our Shchuka. He had come down with peritonitis, which can only be treated at a hospital. They agreed. The Shchuka surfaced and the Glasgow destroyer approached, picked up the sick individual and took him to shore. The British media was immediately confused. At the time the negotiations were being held in London to evacuate the sailor, NATO anti-submarine maneuvers were being conducted in the area where the Shchuka was located. But they only saw the submarine when it hit the surface to pass along the sick sailor.

It’s not all bad

KP: How would you rate the technical capabilities of the Russian and U.S. nuclear submarines that are currently in action?

Polazhaev: The Shchuka has a completely modern “offspring” -- called the Shchuka-B. Its level of noise is 4-4.5 times lower than its “mother’s.” We’ve even surpassed the Americans in this regard. The submarine’s Skat-3 hydro-acoustic system has increased its potential three times and is basically on level with the U.S. AN/BQQ-5.

In addition, the new Shchuka ships have an unparalleled submarine detection system that traces ships based on their wakes hours after their creation. The Shchuka-Bs will compete with the Virginia submarines that aren’t detectable by hydro-acoustics when patrolling at speeds up to 6-8 knots. This is as far as submarine-hunters are concerned. Our missile carriers have also improved. U.S. submarines like the Los Angeles can detect our Dolphins at a distance no greater than 30 kilometers in no-wind conditions. When the wind is blowing, the distance decreases to 10 kilometers, or the Dolphins aren’t detected at all. These are the submarines that have been armed with the Sineva ballistic missiles since their modernization.

KP: How do the agreements on reducing nuclear arms affect the Russian and U.S. nuclear submarines?

Polazhaev: The U.S. navy’s nuclear arms fit the framework of the agreement almost ideally, without having to do any damage to their combat potential. But ours… In 1992, we had 2,792 nuclear warheads on 58 ships. In mid-1998, the number of warheads decreased to 1,854 and the number of submarines to 26. When the agreement was signed in 1993, it was supposed Russia would have 23-25 combat-ready submarine cruisers by 2003.

KP: But a nuclear fleet isn’t only submarines…

Polazhaev: The fleet’s core is the people on board, but how can we even mention preparation if our submarines made only three campaigns last year. Fewer than in 2006! Meanwhile, the Americans always have 7 submarines at sea.
Austin
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Re: International Military Discussion

Post by Austin »

Nice find Philip ...:)

A couple points......

The exercise they are referring to was Operation Atrina , when the most modern of the Victor 3 SSN under the leadership of Shevchenko ( not sure if it was Popov or some one else ) carried an exercise , in which 5 of most modern Victor 3 participated.

The whole exercise was co-ordinated by Shevchenko who himself left for Cuba on a Alfa and co-ordinated the whole exercise via satellite from the bases in cuba , communicating with the submerged submarine.

The exercise took place in the warmer water of Mediterranean, the whole NATO fleet and 6 SSN from US started engaging the Soviets.

Not a single submarine of Soviet was successfully tracked and Soviet managed to show NATO/US that if it wants it can break into their ASW fleet and maintain its independence of operation.

Unfortunately the Victor 3 was some what under rated by the world the last 5 Victor 3 was considered as capable as the Improved LA SSN.

On many occasion the Victor 3 have trailed US SSBN and even LA class SSN

The final jolt was when an Improved Akula ( Shchuka-B ) managed to track a Ohio on alert patrol for long duration in its own bastion territory , which led to US congress inquiry and shock among USN submarine community.

The most modern Akula-2 SSN is capable of moving at 25 knots , yet keep its sonar operational a feat so far achieved only by USN Sea Wolf class SSN

Finally the opinion that Akula-2 can compete with USN newest Virginia class SSN , should make BRF'ite happy :evil:
sum
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Re: International Military Discussion

Post by sum »

In addition, the new Shchuka ships have an unparalleled submarine detection system that traces ships based on their wakes hours after their creation. The Shchuka-Bs will compete with the Virginia submarines that aren’t detectable by hydro-acoustics when patrolling at speeds up to 6-8 knots. This is as far as submarine-hunters are concerned. Our missile carriers have also improved. U.S. submarines like the Los Angeles can detect our Dolphins at a distance no greater than 30 kilometers in no-wind conditions. When the wind is blowing, the distance decreases to 10 kilometers, or the Dolphins aren’t detected at all. These are the submarines that have been armed with the Sineva ballistic missiles since their modernization.
Yipee....
Should make every PLAN and PN sailor say a prayer before he sets sail in to the far oceans when the IN Shchuka(s??) keep prowl....
Philip
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Re: International Military Discussion

Post by Philip »

International outrage about the neglect of anti-piracy patrols off Somalia by the world's merchant marine.Incidentally,the hijacked arms ship by the Somalian pirates is reportedly surrounded by warships at the moment and we might soon see an assault upon the vessel by commandos.

http://africa.reuters.com/wire/news/usnLT607857.html
World shipping "amazed" at naval failure off Somalia
Mon 29 Sep 2008, 16:20 GMT

LONDON, Sept 29 (Reuters) - The maritime industry united on Monday to condemn governments and naval powers for failing to protect merchant shipping from acts of piracy off Somalia and in the strategic Gulf of Aden.

It was the second such rebuke from the industry in the last 10 days, with leading trade bodies again calling for governments to compel their navies to use force to halt the crisis.

The reprimand came as the Bahrain-based U.S. Fifth Fleet said it had sent warships to shadow a hijacked Ukrainian-owned ship carrying tanks and arms, now anchored off Somalia's coast.

Two other ships seized by pirates, the Capt. Stefanos and the Centauri, are anchored in the same place, according to the U.S. Navy.

"If civil aircraft were being hijacked on a daily basis, the response of governments would be very different," top trade bodies and transport unions said in a joint statement.

"Yet ships, which are the lifeblood of the global economy, are seemingly out of sight and out of mind," said the groups, which include the International Chamber of Shipping, Intercargo, Bimco and oil tanker group Intercargo.

More than 90 percent of the world's traded goods by volume are carried by sea.

"This apparent indifference to the lives of merchant seafarers and the consequences for society at large is simply unacceptable," they said.

The groups said they were "utterly amazed" that governments were unable to secure one of the world's most important seaways.

Continued inaction risked causing a repetition of the crisis in the early 1970s when the Suez Canal was closed and merchant shipping was diverted round the Cape of Good Hope, they said.

That re-routing had major consequences for international trade, including higher transport costs and the maintenance of inventories.

Some countries do have naval taskforces patrolling in the region, but they are often prevented from taking an active role by their rules of engagement. (Reporting by Stefano Ambrogi, editing by Tim Pearce)

Hijacked ship surrounded by naval vessels
Published: Monday 29 September 2008 15:24 UTC

http://www.radionetherlands.nl/news/int ... al-vessels

A Ukrainian freighter hijacked by Somalian pirates has been surrounded by foreign naval vessels. A US destroyer is within sight of the Fania, and a Russian ship is nearby. The Fania was seized in the Gulf of Aden on Thursday and has 33 tanks, a quantity of rocket grenade launchers and other munitions on board. One of its crew of 21 has reportedly died of natural causes. The pirates have reduced their initial demand for a 35-million-dollar ransom to 20 million. The Fania's cargo is reportedly bound for the Kenyan army, but the United States has suggested the weapons are actually bound for Sudan. Kenya has emphatically denied the US allegations
shetty
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Re: International Military Discussion

Post by shetty »

Britain considers £9bn JSF project pullout
BRITAIN is considering pulling out of a £9 billion project with America to produce the new Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) aircraft, intended to fly off the Royal Navy’s forthcoming aircraft carriers.

The move is part of an increasingly desperate attempt to plug a £1.5 billion shortfall in the defence budget. The RAF’s 25 new Airbus A400 transport aircraft could also be at risk.

Studies have now been commissioned to analyse whether Eurofighters could be adapted to fly off the carriers.

If Britain abandons the JSF, it will be seen as a further snub to the Americans following Gordon Brown’s decision last week not to send 4,000 more troops to Afghanistan.

Only a week earlier, during a visit to London, Robert Gates, the American defence secretary, had said he understood Britain would be sending more troops to meet what commanders say is a 10,000 shortfall.

The possible ditching of the JSF results in part from spiralling costs that have seen the price of the planned 150 British aircraft rise from the original £9 billion estimate to £15 billion.

Britain has already paid out £2.5 billion in preliminary costs but next spring must start paying for actual aircraft. At that point it is committed to the entire project whatever the price.

Once full production begins, Britain will be paying more than £1 billion a year for the aircraft, exacerbating the already dire state of the Ministry of Defence (MoD) budget.

“That has really concentrated minds at the MoD,” said Francis Tusa, editor of Defence Analysis. “Put simply no-one has the faintest idea how much this project will cost.”

The cost is only part of the problem. There is serious concern over the aircraft’s lack of firepower as it can only carry three 500lb bombs, compared with as many as eight on the Eurofighter.

There is also increasing frustration over the continued American refusal to share information on the technology involved.

President George Bush signed a deal with Tony Blair shortly before the former prime minister handed over to Gordon Brown, promising to share top secret technology with Britain.

The deal has still to be ratified by Congress and the Senate foreign relations committee has written to Bush warning him it will not now be ratified until the new president takes office.

There is consternation over the lack of information Britain is receiving on the aircraft and this country’s lack of input into designing its capability.

BAE Systems, manufacturer of the RAF’s Eurofighter, has been asked to produce a study into whether it could be flown from the carriers, which are due to enter service in 2014 and 2016.

The JSF is a short-take-off-and-vertical-landing (STOVL) aircraft similar to the Harrier aircraft that are currently being flown off the Royal Navy’s two old carriers.

Flying Eurofighter from the new carriers would require pilots to learn a completely new skill of landing conventionally at sea — a task likened by experts to a “controlled crash”.

It would also require the Eurofighter fuselage to be strengthened, the attachment of an arrestor hook to stop the aircraft on landing, and protection against saltwater erosion.

The BAE Systems study, carried out earlier this year, determined that the aircraft could be built to land on carriers without major difficulty.

A company spokesman would only confirm that the study had been carried out and that the MoD had seen the results which confirmed the aircraft could be adapted to fly off carriers.

Replacing JSF with some of the 232 Eurofighters the RAF is committed to buying would be attractive for the Treasury, which has always wanted to find ways to cut its £16 billion cost.

The deal committed all four major partners — Britain, Germany, Italy and Spain — to paying for all the aircraft they originally ordered even if they later decided to cut the numbers they needed.

The cost of the project, now running at close to £1.2 billion a year, is the biggest single contributor to the £1.5 billion shortfall in the defence budget.

Efforts to stave off the payments dragged the government into the controversy over the decision to call off a Serious Fraud Office investigation into alleged bribes paid by BAE Systems.

The probe into the company’s £43 billion al-Yamamah arms deal with Saudi Arabia was expected to examine the bank accounts of members of the Saudi royal family.

A £6 billion deal under which Saudi Arabia agreed to take 72 Eurofighters from Britain — earning the MoD a two-year payments holiday on its own aircraft — was dependent on the probe being called off.

That has only served to focus attention on the fact that when the payments holiday ends, Britain will be committed to a decade of paying well in excess of £2 billion a year for two different strike aircraft.

The additional measure of cancelling the military version of the Airbus A400 would only save a total of £1.5 billion but is attractive to the Treasury because it would cost nothing.

The aircraft has consistently failed to meet deadlines with manufacturer EADS admitting last week that it could not meet the deadline for the first test flight.

“The RAF and the MoD would prefer to enforce penalty clauses providing compensation for delays while continuing with the project,” said defence sources. “But the Treasury would happily bin it.”

The MoD said “marinising” Eurofighter had been looked at as an option but “JSF remains our optimum solution to fly off the carriers”.

A spokesman said Britain remained “fully committed to the defence trade cooperation treaty and we are working closely with the American administration to find a way forward.”
ramana
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Re: International Military Discussion

Post by ramana »

book review;

Maritime Power and the struggle for freedom
Padfield partakes of the popularity of the Nelsonic era of sailing-ship navies in this second installment in his naval trilogy (after Maritime Supremacy, 2000). Not merely describing ships and dramatizing sea battles, Padfield challenges his readers to grasp the strategy of sea power, to sense its interaction with land power, and so to view the course of the wars of the French Revolution on a land-sea continuum. Padfield's organization and clarity make this approach exceptionally accessible. He starts with the naval contribution to the onset of the French Revolution--Louis XVI's construction program. It only exacerbated the financial crisis that was the revolution's immediate trigger; comparable efforts by successive revolutionary governments similarly strained the budget without degrading British maritime and commercial superiority. Discussing internal politics and trade statistics as needed, Padfield then demonstrates the influence of Britannia's rule of the waves in events as separated as Napoleon's invasion of Russia, the War of 1812, and agitation against the slave trade. Discerning the forces behind the broadsides, Padfield is fluidly readable in this perceptive history. Gilbert Taylor
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Philip
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Re: International Military Discussion

Post by Philip »

Britain has been right royally "shafted" by the US.When they shared the Harrier VSTOL technology with the US,who produced the McDonnel-Douglas version for the USMC,they should've inserted a clause for full access to the development and technology of any future VSTOL aircraft by the US.The US during the drunken regime of Yeltsin,"stole" the secrets of the Russian Yak-141 which they used in the JFS design,paying the Russians only a few bottles of bourbon !The RN now has no choice but to sensibly go in for the naval variant of the Rafale instead of another expensive project to develop a naval Typhoon,as they are collaborating with the French in the building of their two new carriers.If the US can treat its closest ally Britain this way (transfer of technology),then just imagine India's fate in the MMRCA contest! The conditions there will make the N-deal terms look like a Boy Scout's picnic,that too for ancient weaponry.

YAK-141 vidoe link.http://www.armchairgeneral.com/forums/s ... hp?t=57423

Here's info about the US's latest "Afrikorps"! (Africa Command).I wonder who the new patton will be!

US launches new Africa command, closely watched by Senator
Thursday 2 October 2008 11:36.
By Daniel Van Oudenaren

October 1, 2008 (WASHINGTON) — The United States military’s new Africa command (AFRICOM) became officially fully operational Wednesday as part of a plan to re-align the military’s regional command structure, consolidating administrative control of programs already run independently by the U.S. Central Command, European Command and Pacific Command.

Although U.S. lawmakers this week are overwhelmingly focused on legislation to address a national financial crisis, Chairman of the Subcommittee on African Affairs Senator Russ Feingold took note of AFRICOM’s official start Wednesday in a statement in which he expressed support for the new command but also concern that it could be perceived as a sign that the U.S. is militarizing its Africa policy.

“Lasting security requires reconciling political grievances, improving governance, strengthening the rule of law and promoting economic development: tasks for which our military, or any military for that matter, cannot be the lead,” said Feingold.

A Defense Department official said Monday that daily command activities will include conferences, officer visits and the implementation of security assistance programs, which will be administered by the new command but ultimately headed by the State Department.

While AFRICOM is designed to include staff from the State Department, Feingold doubted that this is being effectively implemented.

“Despite initial ambitions to have 25 percent of AFRICOM’s headquarters’ positions filled by non-military staff, that number has been severely reduced because of resource and staffing limitations in civilian agencies. … While civilian agencies operating abroad continue to face resource constraints, more and more resources are being invested in military relationships and assistance in Africa,” said Feingold.

Similar statements were made in a July 15 report by the Government Accountability Office, which projected that by Oct. 1 there would be 13 positions filled by non-Department of Defense (DOD) personnel, out of 993 total staff positions.

The report said, “DOD has had difficulties integrating interagency personnel in the command, which is critical to synchronizing DOD efforts with other U.S. government agencies. DOD continues to lower its estimate of the ultimate level of interagency participation in the command. According to DOD, other agencies have limited resources and personnel systems which have not easily accommodated DOD’s intent to place interagency personnel in the command.”

The foreign service officer tasked with helping Gen. William Ward run the new command is Ambassador Mary Carlin Yates, who served in Burundi and Ghana, said Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for African Affairs Theresa Whelan.

Whelan said that the new command will help African partner nations build their military capacities to handle natural disasters, terrorism and conflict prevention.

Sen. Feingold urged that “the United States needs to continue to invest in our diplomatic, economic, humanitarian and development capacities on the continent. We need a unified interagency approach to these challenges in which AFRICOM is supporting, not eclipsing, the work of our diplomats, our aid workers and other key partners.”

Feingold also implied that congress should work to provide more resources to U.S. diplomats.

The new Africa command was not formed in response to recent events in Darfur, says the website for AFRICOM, which is now based in Stuttgart, Germany.

Reportedly, initial discussions for a new command structure preceded the outbreak of the Darfur insurgency in 2003, and a number of initiatives were formed in 2002 for operations in the Sahel and the Horn of Africa, primarily focused on combating the al-Qaeda organization.

(
Sanjay M
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Re: International Military Discussion

Post by Sanjay M »

I notice we don't have any forum on here for Indian analysis of historical battles from world history. Anyway, here is a humorous picture I recently came across:

Image


But the casualty stats make me wonder what the hell happened there. Can anyone explain these lopsided results? I'm also asking because I'm sure this is how the Pakistanis imagine themselves in relation to us.
Baljeet
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Re: International Military Discussion

Post by Baljeet »

Sanjay
You can find some more information here. One part that stands out is the weak PM of Finland who cut finnish army.

Russian-Fin War

As far as its relation to Indo-Pak scenario, it has some relevance that is, India as a nation had string of weak PMs. They don't understand National Security, high on bhasan etc. Second relevance is the geography, we both know this geography, we have trained and fought multiple wars in our terrain, we know each others tactics and at fundamental level training is very much similar however the difference is in equipment, morale, objective focus and supply route. Pakis have advantage in two things that is, their supply lines are closer to their borders compared to ours, their equipment is slightly better than ours, only 19-21 ka pharak. Morale is on equal footing on both sides. Pakis have single minded focus on destroying India, India is clueless about protecting her borders. How can anyone imagine the preparedness of military forces to fight wars when they are distracted by pay issue, equipment issue, absence of clear objectives. This can be very demoralizing to any military force.
Arun_S
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Re: International Military Discussion

Post by Arun_S »

Latest Bulava Tests Part One
by Nikita Petrov
Moscow (UPI) Oct 2, 2008
On Sept. 18 the heavy Akula-class Project 941 nuclear submarine cruiser Dmitry Donskoi -- NATO submarine class designation Typhoon -- side number TK-208, launched an intercontinental ballistic missile, RSM-56 Bulava-M -- NATO designation SS-NX-30.

The launch took place from a submerged position in the White Sea, and, as a naval spokesman said, "The warhead arrived at the test site Kura in Kamchatka as scheduled. Although telemetric data are still being processed, it can be said that the launch and flight proceeded without a hitch," and the missile successfully hit its intended target, he added.

The jury is still out on whether this is true. Tests of the Bulava, a missile designed to be installed on the new Borey-class Project 955 nuclear-powered undersea cruiser Yury Dolgoruky and her sister ships Alexander Nevsky and Vladimir Monomakh, currently under construction at the Sevmash factory in the city of Severodvinsk in the Arkhangelsk region, are conducted amid tight secrecy.

Information, whether good or bad, comes in drips and drabs, sometimes long after launches are made and from unnamed and classified sources.

Russia's navy pins great hopes on the Bulava, which has been plagued by problems for 15 years. The missile is also the focus of intrigue, with some designers wishing it good luck and others good riddance.

The job of developing the new intercontinental missile system for a nuclear submarine of the Borey class, laid out at Sevmash in 1996, was given to the Moscow Institute of Heat Engineering, known for its ground-launched solid-propellant missile systems RT-2PM Topol -- NATO designation SS-25 Sickle -- and silo- and land-based RT-2PMU Topol-M -- NATO designation SS-27.

These systems are expected to form the core of Russia's strategic deterrence now and in the future. The Bulava, in turn, is to be the centerpiece of Russia's naval strategic deterrence. The fact remains, however, that the missile systems now adopted by the navy, and the nuclear submarines carrying them, will retire in the next 10 to 15 years and will have to be replaced with more effective and increased high-precision weapons. All Russia's hopes now lie with Borey-class submarines, Project 955 and its missile Bulava.

The main problem was that the institute had never made missiles for the navy. They were designed and produced at the Makeyev Design Bureau in the city of Miass, which was initially tasked with developing a new strategic missile system called Bark for Yury Dolgoruky and all Project 955 vessels. The missile, however, proved ineffective. A series of three tests ended in failure.

Military experts are at odds over the causes. Some blame defects in manufacturing technology, others the design's imperfections. Still others intimate that behind it all was the man who commanded the armed forces at the time. Being a missileman himself, he warmed to the Moscow Institute rather than to the naval design bureau. So when mishaps followed -- they are inevitable in tests of such sophisticated weapons as strategic missiles -- he decided in favor of his pet institute, since it promised to make the Bulava as unified with the new Topol-M as possible, thus saving the sizable amount of money required for the development of a sea-launched missile.

(Nikita Petrov is a Russian military analyst. This article is reprinted by permission of RIA Novosti. The opinions expressed in this article are the author's and do not necessarily represent those of RIA Novosti.)

(United Press International's "Outside View" commentaries are written by outside contributors who specialize in a variety of important issues. The views expressed do not necessarily reflect those of United Press International. In the interests of creating an open forum, original submissions are invited.)
PaulJI
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Re: International Military Discussion

Post by PaulJI »

Sanjay M wrote:I notice we don't have any forum on here for Indian analysis of historical battles from world history. Anyway, here is a humorous picture I recently came across: <snip>

But the casualty stats make me wonder what the hell happened there. Can anyone explain these lopsided results? I'm also asking because I'm sure this is how the Pakistanis imagine themselves in relation to us.
There are innumerable histories of the war. It's been studied in great depth, for obvious reasons.

I'm not sure if the Soviet casualty statistics in that picture are accurate, but they do reflect pretty well the magnitude of the difference between the forces.

The USSR not only had far more of everything, its heavy weapons were mostly of much better quality. What it didn't have was a good officer corps (purged not long before), organisation (over-centralised, far too rigid), training (soldiers treated as automata), or any idea of how to motivate troops. It shows how much training, leadership & morale (defending your homeland is a good motivator) count for. The Finns also trusted their soldiers, letting decisions be made at the lowest levels, unlike the centralised Soviet command.
rkhanna
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Re: International Military Discussion

Post by rkhanna »

US Army is funding 'redowl' to triangulate shot origination from a sniper.

It uses acqoustic measuring devices and realtime points out to the direction of the shot.

Cant our DRDO whip up something like that ?

India bought the RedOwl System from America recently for the SPG. I posted it in the SF thread sometime back.
neerajb
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Re: International Military Discussion

Post by neerajb »

sum wrote:A missile frigate carries Su-33?? :eek: :shock:
Googling told me only about the helos but even fighters?
At 24K tons displacement and being nuclear powered it would be prudent to call it a heavy missile cruiser instead of missile frigate.

Cheers.....
NRao
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Re: International Military Discussion

Post by NRao »

U.S. Proposes $6.43 Billion Arms Sale to Taiwan
The Bush administration has agreed to sell Taiwan $6.43 billion of weapons, eliciting disapproval from Beijing, which sees the island as part of China.

Chinese Vice Foreign Minister He Yafei called for a meeting with the chargé d'affaires of the U.S. Embassy in Beijing to protest the sale, China's official Xinhua news agency said. A Chinese Ministry of Defense spokesman said the proposed sale had "poisoned" otherwise-improving military relations with the U.S., Xinhua said.

Notification of the sale was posted on a Pentagon agency's Web site Friday. Congress has 30 days from the announcement to comment on the sale, which will proceed if there are no objections.

Image
[Taiwan] U.S. Navy

Karl Duckworth, a State Department spokesman, said that the sale is "consistent" with U.S. policy and that all foreign military sales are discussed and approved through long-established procedures.

"We appreciate [Taiwan President Ma Ying-jeou's administration's] efforts to reduce tensions in the Taiwan Strait and to build on the already excellent ties between the people of Taiwan and the U.S.," he said.

The U.S. previously has approved sales of similar weapons to Taiwan. The two sides have been in talks about the current weapons package for some time, and the sale is only half what Taiwan requested.

China claims Taiwan as a province, but a strong independence movement has developed on the island over the past decades. Washington has recognized Beijing since 1979 but has committed itself to providing defensive weapons to Taiwan.

The last major arms sale to Taiwan was in 1992, just as the current President Bush's father was leaving office. China has since acquired an array of sophisticated weapons that many defense analysts say has slowly been tipping the balance of power in China's favor.

The U.S. has sold smaller batches of weapons to Taiwan since 1992, including a sale totaling $1.9 billion in September 2007.

The latest U.S. arms sales to Taiwan have been held up in part because Taiwan's former President Chen Shui-bian began pushing for formal independence from China -- angering Beijing and irritating Washington. Mr. Ma, who took office earlier this year, has taken a less-confrontational approach toward China.

Gordon Johndroe, a spokesman for the White House National Security Council, said: "We have a wide-ranging relationship with China. They know we are committed to the one-China policy" -- which holds that Taiwan is a part of China -- but also are aware of the U.S.'s commitments to Taiwan.

"We've seen improving relations between China and Taiwan, and we expect that to continue," he said.

Bonnie Glaser, of the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, said that in agreeing to the arms sales now, "on the one hand, the U.S. wanted to send a signal of U.S. support for Ma's less-provocative policy toward the mainland, [and on the other] enable Taiwan to negotiate with the mainland from a position of strength."

But she noted several weapon systems that Taiwan wanted, especially submarines, weren't included in the package -- presumably in deference to Beijing.

Since Mr. Ma was elected in March, relations across the Taiwan Strait have been improving. But the Ma administration wants to keep the balance of power between the two sides roughly equal. His office issued a statement saying he was "delighted" with the announcement.

The weapons package includes antimissile systems sold by Raytheon Co. and helicopters from Boeing Co. The State Department said in a statement that the arms package is "a significant and tangible demonstration of the commitment of this administration to provide Taiwan the defensive arms its needs to be strong."

The package includes Block III Apache Longbow attack helicopters, Harpoon missiles, Patriot Advanced Capability (PAC-3) missiles, Javelin missiles, upgrades for Taiwan's E-2T aircraft and spare parts for Taiwan's air force.
—John D. McKinnon in Washington contributed to this article.

Write to Ting-I Tsai at Ting-I.Tsai@wsj.com and Kara Scannell at kara.scannell@wsj.com
Ameet
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Re: International Military Discussion

Post by Ameet »

The cover story for the latest issue of Business Week

Dangerous Fakes - How counterfeit, defective computer components are getting into US warplanes and ships

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/co ... op+stories

The American military faces a growing threat of potentially fatal equipment failure—and even foreign espionage—because of counterfeit computer components used in warplanes, ships, and communication networks. Fake microchips flow from unruly bazaars in rural China to dubious kitchen-table brokers in the U.S. and into complex weapons. Senior Pentagon officials publicly play down the danger, but government documents, as well as interviews with insiders, suggest possible connections between phony parts and breakdowns.

In November 2005, a confidential Pentagon-industry program that tracks counterfeits issued an alert that "BAE Systems experienced field failures," meaning military equipment malfunctions, which the large defense contractor traced to fake microchips. Chips are the tiny electronic circuits found in computers and other gear.

The alert from the Government-Industry Data Exchange Program (GIDEP), reviewed by BusinessWeek (MHP), said two batches of chips "were never shipped" by their supposed manufacturer, Maxim Integrated Products in Sunnyvale, Calif. "Maxim considers these parts to be counterfeit," the alert states. (In response to BusinessWeek's questions, BAE said the alert had referred erroneously to field failures. The company denied there were any malfunctions.)

In a separate incident last January, a chip falsely identified as having been made by Xicor, now a unit of Intersil in Milpitas, Calif., was discovered in the flight computer of an F-15 fighter jet at Robins Air Force Base in Warner Robins, Ga. People familiar with the situation say technicians were repairing the F-15 at the time. Special Agent Terry Mosher of the Air Force Office of Special Investigations confirms that the 409th Supply Chain Management Squadron eventually found four counterfeit Xicor chips.

THREAT OF ESPIONAGE

Potentially more alarming than either of the two aircraft episodes are hundreds of counterfeit routers made in China and sold to the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines over the past four years. These fakes could facilitate foreign espionage, as well as cause accidents. The U.S. Justice Dept. is prosecuting the operators of an electronics distributor in Texas—and last year obtained guilty pleas from the proprietors of a company in Washington State—for allegedly selling the military dozens of falsely labeled routers, devices that direct data through digital networks. The routers were marked as having been made by the San Jose technology giant Cisco Systems (CSCO).

Referring to the seizure of more than 400 fake routers so far, Melissa E. Hathaway, head of cyber security in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, says: "Counterfeit products have been linked to the crash of mission-critical networks, and may also contain hidden 'back doors' enabling network security to be bypassed and sensitive data accessed [by hackers, thieves, and spies]." She declines to elaborate. In a 50-page presentation for industry audiences, the FBI concurs that the routers could allow Chinese operatives to "gain access to otherwise secure systems" (page 38).

It's very difficult to determine whether tiny fake parts have contributed to particular plane crashes or missile mishaps, says Robert P. Ernst, who heads research into counterfeit parts for the Naval Air Systems Command's Aging Aircraft Program in Patuxent River, Md. Ernst estimates that as many as 15% of all the spare and replacement microchips the Pentagon buys are counterfeit. As a result, he says, "we are having field failures regularly within our weapon systems—and in almost every weapon system." He declines to provide details but says that, in his opinion, fake parts almost certainly have contributed to serious accidents. When a helicopter goes down in Iraq or Afghanistan, he explains, "we don't always do the root-cause investigation of every component failure."

While anxiety about fake computer components has begun to spread within the Pentagon, top officials have been slow to respond, says Ernst, 48, a civilian engineer for the military for the past 26 years. "I am very frustrated with the leadership's inability to react to this issue." Retired four-star General William G.T. Tuttle Jr., former chief of the Army Materiel Command and now a defense industry consultant, agrees: "What we have is a pollution of the military supply chain."

Much of that pollution emanates from the Chinese hinterlands. BusinessWeek tracked counterfeit military components used in gear made by BAE Systems to traders in Shenzhen, China. The traders typically obtain supplies from recycled-chip emporiums such as the Guiyu Electronics Market outside the city of Shantou in southeastern China. The garbage-strewn streets of Guiyu reek of burning plastic as workers in back rooms and open yards strip chips from old PC circuit boards. The components, typically less than an inch long, are cleaned in the nearby Lianjiang River and then sold from the cramped premises of businesses such as Jinlong Electronics Trade Center.

A sign for Jinlong Electronics advertises in Chinese that it sells "military" circuitry, meaning chips that are more durable than commercial components and able to function at extreme temperatures. But proprietor Lu Weilong admits that his wares are counterfeit. His employees sand off the markings on used commercial chips and relabel them as military. Everyone in Guiyu does this, he says: "The dates [on the chips] are 100% fake, because the products pulled off the computer boards are from the '80s and '90s, [while] customers demand products from after 2000."

BusinessWeek traced the path of components from Guiyu to BAE Systems Electronics & Integrated Solutions in Nashua, N.H. The company's confidential reports to the Government-Industry Data Exchange Program were critical to this research. A unit of BAE's $15 billion U.S. division, the electronics operation makes a variety of sophisticated equipment, ranging from missile-warning systems for fighter jets to laser-targeting devices for snipers. It has reported far more counterfeiting incidents than its rivals: 45 over the past three years. Industry executives say that large figure may reflect BAE's candor or its aggressive pursuit of low-priced chips from China. The Justice Dept. is investigating BAE's military electronic-parts procurement, a company spokesman confirmed.

In a statement, the company said that it "has attempted to pursue the origin of components provided through the supply chain, [but] has no further insight, nor certification to the origins of components that are provided by supply-chain distributors." Only a "small percentage" of its parts have turned out to be counterfeit, BAE said. It now has restricted its purchases to original chipmakers and their approved distributors "except in very limited circumstances," such as when it needs a hard-to-find component.

BAE isn't unique. Other contractors that have reported counterfeit microchips to GIDEP include Boeing (BA) Satellite Systems, Raytheon (RTN) Missile Systems, Northrop Grumman (NOC) Navigation Systems, and Lockheed Martin Missiles & Fire Control. The companies all said they take the threat of counterfeits seriously but wouldn't comment on specific incidents.

The flood of counterfeit military microelectronics results largely from the Pentagon's need for parts for aging equipment and its long efforts to save money. In the mid-1990s, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Clinton Administration launched an initiative, continued during the Bush years, of buying all sorts of components off the shelf. In addition to the traditional pattern of purchasing equipment from original manufacturers and their large, authorized distributors, the Pentagon began doing business with smaller U.S. parts brokers that sprang up to offer low-cost items, including microchips. Federal affirmative-action goals have further encouraged the military to favor suppliers that qualify as "disadvantaged." The chips wholesale for as little as 10 cents and as much as $2,000 each, depending on their complexity and quality. The Pentagon spends about $3.5 billion a year on spare chips, many of them for planes and ships that are 10 or 20 years old.

Name-brand manufacturers and well-established distributors, some of which acquire the rights to make obsolete chips, say they mark up prices 10% to 30%. Smaller brokers settle for far less generous margins. The number of small brokers increased sharply after 1994, when Congress stopped requiring government contractors to certify that they were either original manufacturers or authorized distributors. The brokers have to obtain a contractor code but receive little or no oversight. Hundreds are now operating, some out of suburban basements and second bedrooms. A BusinessWeek analysis of a contracting database identified at least 24 active brokers that list residential homes as their place of business. Several have won chip contracts for "critical applications," which the Pentagon defines as "essential to weapon system performance...or the operating personnel." In many cases these entrepreneurs comb Web sites such as brokerforum.net and netcomponents.com, which connect them with traders in Shenzhen and Guiyu. The brokers sell either directly to Pentagon depots or via suppliers to defense contractors such as BAE.
ON A QUIET STREET

Mariya Hakimuddin owns IT Enterprise, a company she runs with her mother out of a modest one-story house in Bakersfield, Calif. Rosebushes line the street, and a basketball hoop hangs in the driveway. Hakimuddin, who is in her 40s, says she has no college education. She began brokering military chips four years ago, after friends told her about the expanding trade. Since 2004 she has won Pentagon contracts worth a total of $2.7 million, records show. The military has acquired microchips and other parts from IT Enterprise for use in radar on the aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan and the antisubmarine combat system of Spruance-class destroyers.

Hakimuddin says she knows little about the parts she has bought and sold. She started her business by signing up on the Internet for a government supplier code. After the Defense Dept. approved her application, with no inspection, she began scanning online military procurement requests. She plugged part codes into Google (GOOG) and found Web sites offering low prices. Then she ordered parts and had them shipped directly to military depots. "I wouldn't know what [the parts] were before I'd order them," she says, standing near her front door. "I didn't even know what the parts were for."

The Navy's Ernst became concerned about IT Enterprise in March 2007. His team found a suspicious transistor—a basic type of microchip—supplied by the firm for use in the AV-8B Harrier, a Marine Corps fighter jet. The transistor, which turned up during an inspection of a military depot in Cherry Point, N.C., was supposed to contain lead in its solder joints, but didn't. That defect could cause solders to crack and the flight control system to fail, Ernst explains. When a member of the team telephoned IT Enterprise in Bakersfield, he heard children chattering in the background, Ernst recalls. "It was the 'Aha!' moment for me on counterfeit parts," he says.

Unknown to Ernst, a separate Defense inquiry later found that at least five shipments from IT Enterprise since 2004 had contained counterfeit microcircuits, including those intended for the USS Ronald Reagan, according to Pentagon records. During her interview with BusinessWeek, Hakimuddin denied any wrongdoing and blamed her suppliers, but she wouldn't name them. In January the Defense Dept. banned IT Enterprise, Hakimuddin, and her mother, Lubaina Nooruddin, from supplying the military for three years.

The Hakimuddins weren't deterred. A month after Mariya was barred, her husband, Mukerram, received his own supplier code, using the same home address with a new company name, Mil Enterprise. This time the Pentagon caught on more quickly, banning Mukerram for three years as well. He couldn't be reached for comment. People familiar with the matter say the Defense Criminal Investigative Service is looking into IT Enterprise.

In written responses to questions about kitchen-table brokers, officials at the Defense Supply Center in Columbus, Ohio—a major Pentagon electronic-parts buyer—said they don't inspect brokers or conduct background checks. "The law does not prohibit" work-at-home brokers or using the Internet to find parts, the officials said. "Is there risk? Yes, there is risk," Brigadier General Patricia E. McQuistion, the center's commander, says in an interview. She estimates that "less than one-quarter of 1% of what we buy is compromised."
RULE CHANGE

Nevertheless, after BusinessWeek's inquiries, the center in August issued new contracting rules for microchips. Suppliers now must document the "conformance" and "traceability" of chips when they place bids. Previously such records didn't have to be filed at the bidding stage and were sometimes missing or faked, industry and government officials say.

Even after the likes of IT Enterprise are identified, it can take time to clean up the mess. On Feb. 5, 2008, a manager at Tobyhanna Army Depot, the Pentagon's largest electronics maintenance facility, in Stroud Township, Pa., notified the supply center in Columbus that his unit had discovered counterfeit chips supplied by IT Enterprise for use in global positioning systems on F-15 fighters, according to internal Pentagon e-mails reviewed by BusinessWeek. The e-mails show that, as late as July, the Columbus center was still trying to locate parts purchased from IT Enterprise.

In a July 24 e-mail, an F-15 engineer, whom BusinessWeek agreed not to identify, wrote: "Suppose that a part like that makes it onto a flight-critical piece of hardware or mission-essential piece of hardware. The[re] is a very good chance that the part may work...but what happens at 40[,000] ft and -50 degrees? Hardware failure. Not good."

Ernst says the Hakimuddin episode helped him realize how blind the military has been: "We don't know how big the counterfeit problem is, and, to me, that is irresponsible." Now he's trying to get others in the bureaucracy to confront what he considers to be a crisis: "The risk of counterfeiting is so high, and the cost to our weapon systems is so great, that we need to take action." Glenn Benninger, a senior civilian engineer at the Naval Surface Warfare Center in Crane, Ind., concurs: "Counterfeiting has literally exploded over the last few years, but not a lot of people have been paying attention."

The pending investigations could force the Defense Dept. to heed such warnings. In addition to the Justice Dept.'s probe of BAE, there is the Pentagon's in-house criminal inquiry. "The DoD takes this threat very seriously," John J. Young Jr., Defense Under Secretary for Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics, said in a statement. "This security threat will require great vigilance by DoD to defeat, but we will do everything within our power to do so."

Policies aimed at promoting "disadvantaged" businesses have apparently encouraged dealings with brokers that otherwise might seem questionable. Federal affirmative-action goals require the Pentagon to seek to make 22% of its purchases from small contractors—as measured by staff and revenue—including those run by women, military veterans, or members of certain ethnic minority groups. A contracting database refers to IT Enterprise as a "Subcontinent Asian American Owned Business." Hakimuddin wouldn't discuss her ethnicity but says she was born in the U.S.

Daniel Spencer designated his wife, Brenda, as the legal owner of his brokering business, BDS Supply. "I thought we'd get some kind of benefit [from being woman-owned]," says Spencer, 54, who acknowledges that he runs the company with his wife. Working from home in Great Falls, Mont., he says, he buys from legitimate suppliers and has parts shipped to him before sending them on to the Pentagon. But he admits that, despite a background in computers, he doesn't have the expertise to identify fake chips. Promod Dubey, who runs Phoenix Systems Engineering, a broker in Lake Mary, Fla., complains that military procurement offices "want the cheapest possible s--t they can get." Dubey, who lists Phoenix as a "small disadvantaged" business on Pentagon documents, says he acquires parts from China only as a "last resort" because "sometimes the quality is questionable." Neither he nor Spencer has been accused of impropriety in their military work.

Contractor reports to the GIDEP counterfeits database show a total of 115 incidents over the past six years. But "everybody believes the [GIDEP] reports are just the tip of the iceberg," says Brian Hughitt, manager of quality assurance for NASA. Hughitt says that, during testing, NASA inspectors have identified two shipments of counterfeit chips in the past 18 months. One lot was installed in flight hardware. "That's something that is going to be launched into space," Hughitt says, declining to elaborate. "It could have been real bad." NASA, which helps launch military satellites and missiles, is investigating the shipments.
TRACKING THE CONNECTION

To understand the counterfeiting phenomenon, BusinessWeek independently traced four incidents of phony parts that BAE Systems reported to GIDEP. The circuitous trails all led back to China, as did those of at least six other BAE incidents that BusinessWeek did not investigate in detail.

In April 2007 BAE reported receiving fake military-grade chips purportedly made by Philips Semiconductor for undisclosed weapon systems. A production date stamped on the supposedly military-grade chips identified them as having been made in 1998. But NXP Semiconductors, a unit spun off from the Dutch company Philips two years ago, confirms that it stopped making military-grade chips in 1997.

BAE bought the chips from Port Electronics, a Salem (N.H.) distributor. Robert W. Wentworth, a vice-president at Port, says in an interview that BAE asked his firm to find a series of older microchips to avoid a redesign of weapon systems "that would have cost [BAE] millions." He declines to specify the weapons but adds: "These people [at BAE] were desperate to find the parts."

BAE said in a statement that, after discovering the counterfeits in 2007, it "immediately ceased" using all independent chip brokers, including Port. Following a careful review, BAE added, it again began buying certain products from Port, which it described as a "small disadvantaged and disabled veteran-owned business." Without commenting directly on Wentworth's account, BAE said that redesigning older weapon technology is expensive and that it sometimes makes more economic sense to seek "small quantities of the original parts."

Port obtained the fake Philips chips from another distributor, Aapex International, in Salem, Mass. Aapex had purchased the components from Hong Kong Fair International Electronics in Shenzhen, according to BAE documents. A brochure provided by Hong Kong Fair at its office on the 15th floor of a well-kept commercial building says it enjoys "a good relationship and faithful partnership" with Aapex. Jiang Hongyan, 43, Hong Kong Fair's export manager, says in an interview that her company never tests the microchips it supplies and rarely knows anything about the companies from which it buys. "We are a trading company," says Jiang, who wears red-rimmed glasses and uses the English name "Snow." She adds: "We buy goods with one hand and sell them with the other hand. We do not have any capability to do research, production, or modifications."
SUPPLIER WARNINGS

The owner of Aapex, Marie Gauthier, says her company purchased chips from Hong Kong Fair only once. She says she doesn't know anything about the brochure in which Hong Kong Fair boasts of its "faithful partnership" with Aapex. She says she made chip sales worth $2 million to Port Electronics between 1999 and 2007. "Ninety-nine percent of it was for BAE," she says. BAE engineers regularly contacted Aapex in their search for older, hard-to-find chips, Gauthier says. She told the defense contractor she was buying parts from China. "We notified BAE that this was high-risk," says Gauthier. "They begged us because they said they needed the product." E-mail exchanges, reviewed by BusinessWeek, confirm that Aapex repeatedly warned Port and BAE about parts from China.

Gauthier says BAE and Port no longer buy from Aapex. "I got thrown under the bus by BAE," she says. "They did not want to take responsibility, so they pointed at us." BAE declined to comment on her assertion or on the e-mail exchanges.

Hong Kong Fair bought the fake Philips chips from the Guiyu Electronics Market, according to the BAE documents. No specific vendor is listed in BAE's GIDEP report. At Jinlong Electronics Trade Center in Guiyu, proprietor Lu Weilong says he could easily supply many types of military-grade chips, including those acquired for BAE. As he speaks, he turns to a PC in the back of his cluttered store and types military part numbers into Google to see from which kinds of circuit boards they can be extracted. "I have the circuit boards at home," he says confidently.

Some Chinese parts providers appear to have set up front companies in the U.S. and sell to brokers that supply the U.S. defense industry. JFBK of Fullerton, Calif., seems to be one such Chinese affiliate. The company is identified in GIDEP documents from this past June as having provided chips to North Shore Components, a distributor in Bellport, N.Y. The chips, typically used in the FA-18 fighter and E-2C Hawkeye surveillance plane, were supposed to have been made by National Semiconductor (NSM) in Santa Clara, Calif., but they turned out to be counterfeits of only commercial grade, according to North Shore's report to GIDEP. North Shore Vice-President Joseph Ruggiero says in an interview that his company found JFBK on the chip-trading Web site NetComponents.

JFBK's office in a strip mall in Fullerton is a single small room that also houses two other companies: MeiXin Technologies and New World Tech, both chip brokers. JFBK's Web site describes a "knowledgeable and friendly staff" with "years of collective experience and professional support." One afternoon in mid-July, four women and a man, who all appeared to be in their 20s, sat at desks with small signs tacked above them bearing the names of the three companies. The employees answered the phone on each desk with the name of the company designated on the card. Asked about microchip sales, one young woman, who declined to give her name, said: "We're not allowed to talk about what we do."

According to the California Department of Corporations, JFBK and New World have been "dissolved" as legal entities since 2000. MeiXin is still listed as active. Public records identify a woman named JianJu Cho as the agent for JFBK. Reached by phone while on vacation in Florida, Cho said neither she nor her staff knows much about microchips. "I don't have any knowledge about electronic components," said Cho. "All the things just depend on what our supplier tells us." Cho says the owners of JFBK and MeiXin are "a couple from China and a man from Taiwan. MeiXin and JFBK [are from] China; New World is from Taiwan."

A company called Tongda MeiXin Electronics operates on the 15th floor of an office building in Shenzhen. Under the MeiXin nameplate is another sign that states, in Chinese, "JFBK Shenzhen office." Asked about the relationship between JFBK and Tongda MeiXin, Wang Tong, general manager of MeiXin, says: "We are their supplier." Wang, 27, says JFBK probably didn't appreciate that the purportedly military-grade chips supplied to North Shore were counterfeit because neither MeiXin nor JFBK knows where the product came from. "They don't understand the technology," says Tong. "They only do trade. None of us understand the technology."

Wayne Chao, secretary general of the China Electronics Purchasing Assn., based in Shenzhen, admits that microchip counterfeiting is rife in China: "It's widespread, and we acknowledge that." Asked why Chinese officials don't shut down the blatant counterfeiting, he says: "Everyone wants to blame China. But it's difficult to differentiate between a legitimate product and a fake."

U.S. chipmakers say it is not their job to police a disorderly global marketplace, although some companies are at least trying to assess the challenge. John Sullivan, vice-president for worldwide security at Dallas-based Texas Instruments (TXN), has traveled to chip markets in Shenzhen to photograph allegedly counterfeit stockpiles and label-printing machines.

U.S. Customs & Border Protection officials at American ports have seized eight shipments of fake military-grade chips purportedly made by Texas Instruments in the past three years, according to GIDEP records. Sullivan says Pentagon representatives have met with TI and other chipmakers. "They're not seeing it as just an economic problem; they're seeing it as a problem that could affect national security and health and safety," he says.

Major chipmakers blame the Pentagon and its practice of buying from small brokers for the spread of counterfeit military-grade chips. "We've been telling people [at Defense] for 10 years to buy only from us or our authorized distributor," says Chuck Mulloy, a spokesman for Intel (INTC). "The military is slavishly following the low-cost paradigm but not following the idea of checking the quality as well."

Hong Kong Fair's Jiang, the alleged supplier of counterfeit chips to BAE, argues that if the U.S. military wants guaranteed high-quality chips, it should purchase them directly from the original manufacturers or their official franchisees. "Why do you come to China to buy it? You know that these things in China are cheap," Jiang says. "Why are they cheap? They have problems with quality."

For a video tour of a microchip bazaar in China where counterfeits are sold, go to www.businessweek.com/go/tv/counterfeit
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Re: International Military Discussion

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U.S. Officials Eye Astor, Stress U.K. Alliance

David A. Fulghum

The British Royal Air Force has a new intelligence aircraft, the Sentinel R1, that’s part of the Astor radar ground surveillance system.

The radar’s resolution is officially described at under one meter, but aerospace specialists say it is at least on par with the U-2’s acuity of well under a foot – and probably just a few inches.

The aircraft is small, fast, can do some things better than the U.S. E-8 Joint Stars, and it’s going to Afghanistan soon.

Increasingly, U.S. officials want a piece of the action. Asked if the technology on Astor could track a walking man on a cloudy day, the head of the U.S. National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, Vice Adm. Robert Murrett, paused, expressed familiarity with the Astor program, and then said: “Yes. As time goes on an increasing share of our collection capability will be less conventional. It will be less electro-optical, black and white, non-time-sensitive imagery. A much larger part of our mission set [as intelligence analysts] will be an array of five or six phenomenologies that can do many things like penetrate clouds [and underground].” (Aerospace DAILY, Oct. 2).

“Radar imagery is becoming more precise all the time,” Murrett adds. “I think I can say the difference between what can be seen with radar imagery and the electro-optical imagery has narrowed by advances in technology. Radar data has advantages for analyses that you can’t get elsewhere.”

Future exploitation of the radar image will involve hyperspectral slicing of the radar return to identify targets and light or laser radar imaging to define the shape, location and altitude of a target, the NGA director says.

“We have a broad set of international relationships that have to do with the exchange of data,” Murrett says. “It’s typically handled in bilateral intelligence channels. The important point is that we are actively engaged with all the services making sure we can get the data we need from our foreign counterparts. The ways that we can torture pixels are truly remarkable. We take advantage of cutting-edge technology every single day no matter where it is.”

From the Sentinel’s operational altitude, the radar’s range will be about 180-200 nautical miles. More importantly for the relatively small three-person mission crew, the system offers automated in-air retasking, motion analysis tools, correlation of radar and terrain data, and fusion of intelligence from multiple sources, as well as a wide range of intelligence exploitation tools and both broad- and narrow-band communications links. The ground segment ensures the aircraft is maneuvered into the right position to deliver the data needed by ground commanders.

The Royal Air Force’s (RAF) ongoing research includes networking Astor’s radar products with the intelligence from the Nimrod R1, the RAF’s renowned signals and communications intelligence aircraft, and a range of new unmanned aircraft built for both reconnaissance and strike that include Predator, Reaper and Watchkeeper. It also will involve solving the knotty, long-term issue of sharing bandwidth with your allies.

“GMTI will be an important mission set for our partners and us,” Murrett said during a Washington interview Oct. 1. “We need the overarching [networking and real-time exchange of intelligence] and we’re as close to the U.K. as anyone.”
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Philip
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http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world ... 53725.html
France's former elite go on trial over arms trade

By Angela Charlton and Pierre-Antoine Souchard, Associated Press Writers
Tuesday, 7 October 2008


The son of a former French president, an Israeli-Russian billionaire and a tycoon with ties to Arizona's jet set were among the headliners yesterday as 42 defendants went on trial in Paris, accused in a worldwide web of trafficked arms to Angola, money laundering and kickbacks.

Defense lawyers and Angola's government are trying to stop the show, however, arguing the trial has no right to go on.

Prosecutors allege that between 1993 and 1998, two key suspects — French magnate Pierre Falcone, a longtime resident of Scottsdale, Arizona, and Arkady Gaydamak, an Israeli businessman based in France at the time — organized a total of $791 million in Russian arms sales to Angola, a breach of French government rules.

Most of the other suspects are accused of receiving money or gifts, undeclared to tax authorities, from a company run by Falcone in exchange for political or commercial favors. Investigators say the corruption grew into a tangle of laundered money and parallel diplomacy that left a stain on France's relations with Africa.

Among the defendants who filed into a Paris courthouse Monday were icons of France's political elite — including late President Francois Mitterrand's eldest son, Jean-Christophe, and an economic adviser to current President Nicolas Sarkozy, Jacques Attali.

They navigated past throngs of journalists and human rights activists to reach the suspects' stands in the stuffy courtroom. Most of the defendants were on hand with the notable exception of Gaydamak, who is the subject of an international arrest warrant.

Gaydamak's lawyer, William Goldnadel, said his client — a candidate for mayor of Jerusalem — did not want to do prison time and was planning to travel to Paris for the proceedings next month.

"My client is not a dishonest man. He's not an arms vendor," Goldnadel told reporters.

Judges read out the list of defendants and charges, based on a 468-page indictment that took investigators seven years to nail down. The reading took most of the day.

Lawyers for Falcone and Gaydamak argue there is no reason to pursue the case in a French court because the weapons never transited French territory. But prosecutors cite the use of a French bank and French companies in the deals.

The case has rankled Angola's leadership. A lawyer representing the country, Francis Teitgen, said Monday he would seek to have the trial called off "to protect the rights attached to its sovereignty." Angola considers many documents used by the prosecution to be defense secrets, Teitgen said. Neither Angola nor any of its citizens is a party to case.

A lawyer for Jean-Christophe Mitterrand insisted in comments published Monday in the daily Le Parisien that his client never received bribes — only payment for advising Falcone's company about Angola. Mitterrand was his father's Africa adviser in the years preceding the arms deals.

Asked in court to confirm his identity, Mitterrand, 61, told the judge that he lives at his mother's apartment on Paris' Left Bank. "I have no income, I have no real estate assets," he said.

Another defendant, former Interior Minister Charles Pasqua, said Monday that he had nothing to do with the events in question. He said the case was trumped up to thwart him from running for president in 2002. Pasqua is charged with "passive arms trafficking" and "receiving misused funds."

The 81-year-old Pasqua, Gaydamak, 56, Falcone, 54, and Mitterrand, face a maximum of 10 years in prison and thousands of euros in fines if convicted.

Most of the other defendants are accused primarily of "receiving misused funds;" the voluminous indictment describes envelopes of cash changing hands and a shopping list of Kalashnikov rifles, land mines and tanks.

Angola's 1979-2002 civil war served as a Cold War proxy conflict between the Marxist army of President Jose Eduardo dos Santos, backed by Cuban soldiers, and the forces of U.S.- and South Africa-backed rebel leader Jonas Savimbi.

The trial is expected to last until March.
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