[skanchan95]

Originally Posted by skanchan95

IAF to kick off induction of indigenous light combat helicopter next month

Brilliantly made video by the IAF as the final countdown to Induction begins.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-EUGkQx6fPo

[SmartCat]

Gents, where do you go for defense related news? I have bookmarked:

https://idrw.org/
http://www.indiandefensenews.in/

[dragracer567]

Originally Posted by SmartCat

Gents, where do you go for defense related news? I have bookmarked:

https://idrw.org/
http://www.indiandefensenews.in/

The YouTube channel ‘Defence Matrix’ is pretty reliable, they only talk about credible news reports and they never give exaggerated hyper-nationalistic and biased comments like some other channels.

The defence section of ‘The Print’ is pretty reliable and has regular updates too thanks to their defence editor Snehesh Philip.

Another good source I have is @TheLegateIN on Twitter.

For international defence news, the ‘war zone’ section of ‘the drive’ magazine is updated regularly and provides quite the insight on defence related stuff. ‘Breaking defense’ is good too but is primarily focused on the US!

[sierrabravo98]

Originally Posted by SmartCat

Gents, where do you go for defense related news? I have bookmarked:

https://idrw.org/
http://www.indiandefensenews.in/

IDRW is basically all you need for the "news" part. Most of their content is curated from reliable syndicates like ANI, PIB etc. Just take their "Individual Contributors" section with a bucket of salt. That section has lots of chaff. BRF (Bharat Rakshak Forum) and Strategic Frontier forum has some contributors who have been pretty reliable with respect to insider updates. Saurav Jha (@SJha1618) can be considered to be pretty close to gold standard wherever indigenous equipment is the subject.

However, if your interests stretch beyond the plain weapons news domain and into strategic directions, IDSA is a good place to start.

[ads11]

Great question Smartcat! Always good to see what others are reading. Plenty here I've not come across directly so will be paying a visit.

https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone

For most defence news I tend to land on The War Zone (TWZ) first. Mostly it's because as far as any defence commentators go, Tyler (Rogoway) is about the most balanced. I've followed him since his Foxtrot Alpha days on Jalopnik and he's done a sterling job of taking TWZ into possibly one of the strongest defence news brands, assembling an excellent team of commentators. When it comes to coverage of emerging issues relating to defence and conflict, I always wait to see their rolling coverage because they synthesise the work of some of the most reliable commentators on Twitter, parsing through a lot of the guff and flotsam that erroneously gets picked up by major news stations. And, I know US commentators have a bad rep here, Tyler is anything but blinkered, he's always been brutally objective about any capabilities whether its the US or any other country.

In terms of naval affairs, I tend to follow what H I Sutton is up to. Mostly through his twitter, and of course his website: http://www.hisutton.com/ better known as Covert Shores

There's a few other sources I tend to follow but they're not websites as such but more their twitter pages. I can list them if you want? Each I essentially follow for their coverage of a particular niche. Off the top of my head they're as follows:

• https://twitter.com/CombatAir, aka Thomas Newdick - he's now a TWZ alum. Good landing page for military aerospace. Coverage is pretty global.
  
• https://twitter.com/KofmanMichael, Dr Michael Koffman - excellent analysis on Russia, as you can imagine a strong follow for current circumstances
  
• https://twitter.com/thegeneralboard, one more for V.Narayan I'd imagine in terms of their coverage of naval history. Very useful for providing wider context to how we arrived where we are today with naval developments.
  
• https://twitter.com/TheDEWLine, Steve Trimble - must follow for military aerospace news and current affairs. Steve is an insightful commentator and mostly he has access to some cool rooms he tries his best to share with us.
  
• https://twitter.com/RALee85, Rob Lee - currently doing his PhD in Russia studies but his twitter threads are a treasure trove of information. Can see him quickly becoming a major face at a big brand think tank.
  
• https://twitter.com/AncientSubHunt, Kevin Noonan is his name I believe - absolute treasure trove of Cold War ASW stories and another good source of context through the lens of personal experience when it comes to the evolving undersea domain.
  
• https://www.youtube.com/c/SubBrief, Aaron Amick - ex bubblehead. If it's the undersea domain, another great recourse for info. Has a wide ranging interest as well, just keep in mind that obviously he thinks as a retired USN submariner so will have some instances of bias (or a lack of historical context). Otherwise an excellent source.
  
• https://twitter.com/RupprechtDeino, Rupprecht Deino - PLAAF watcher primarily but also other elements of mostly the Chinese defence sphere. Obvious one to follow to keep track of emerging developments north of the border. For eg, was one of the earliest to trawl Weibo and notice that the J-20 had a twin engine prototype making the rounds.
  
• https://twitter.com/IntelCrab - what I haven't covered are OSINT pages but a good one to start would be something like this.
  
• https://twitter.com/TheAviationist - oh another great military page to follow.

The rest are mostly a mish mash of stuff like the Livefist handle (I mostly keep that just to occasionally see what Shiv Aroor is rambling on about this time, for the most part I find him a bit insufferable in the same sense some of the typical US commentators can be, just this time he looks like me and is wearing an Indian suit).

Once you start following a few key twitter handles half the battle is won in the sense you'll start seeing other solid handles coming up through engagement by your currently followed accounts, in your twitter feed. You can then grow it accordingly.

There are a few other commentators worth keeping an eye on considering their reach and exposure, obviously exercise judgement. A few names off the top of my head, Shashank Joshi, Ajai Shukla, etc.

My only advice is if you see any defence related website resorting to that most base of journalistic hooks, a listicle, avoid at all costs. It's primarily why I steer well clear of The National Interest (if that's even active still) or some of its alum like Kyle Mizokami - tabloid defence journalism is how I put it. It's basically where I rank Shiv Aroor and say NDTV's Vishnu Som. There isn't much choice in terms of dedicated defence journalists in the Indian news sphere that I'm aware of so that's what we're left to make do with (take with a copious pinch of salt imo).

[aim120]

Drive/TWZ is heavily biased atleast when it comes to conflicts with outright information manipulation. Even when proof is shown they do not correct the info. Any comments that shows them in poor light is deleted.

Even articles on defense hardware, the actual relevant content is only 10%, rest of the article is just recycled stuff from old news. They really scrape bottom of the barrel to make article long.

Like if they spot a new image of a chinese J20, an entire new article will come up, with recycled news and viewpoints.

But they do have good images.

[ads11]

Originally Posted by aim120

Drive/TWZ is heavily biased atleast when it comes to conflicts with outright information manipulation. Even when proof is shown they do not correct the info. Any comments that shows them in poor light is deleted.

Really? This is a first - if anything TWZ is widely regarded for its ability to cut through the chaff and deliver solid rolling coverage of upcoming conflicts. The Ukraine War, the Nagorno-Kazabakh flare up, and much further besides, they've always been on top of things. If anything, they were one of the few places that (with no small measure of frustration at the childish slandering that no doubt ensued) was willing to call out a lot of the rubbish that was doing the rounds after the last major flare up in our neck of the woods (they do well to cut through a lot of the jingoism that unfortunately is a natural corollary of any defence chat). I will admit I'm not as actively engaged with the comments there as I used to be back in the day but for the most part it was about as solid a self-policing but lively community the defence blogosphere could hope for - a lot of the ex-service men who contributed basically become regular guest contributors on the basis of the comments section.

To accuse them of information manipulation is pretty damning so I'm keen to hear where this is coming from.

Even articles on defense hardware, the actual relevant content is only 10%, rest of the article is just recycled stuff from old news. They really scrape bottom of the barrel to make article long.

I think I see where you're coming from. Tyler's always had a penchant to self-cite, and he takes the teasing about that on board, much like his often-woeful spelling. But the reason any new article is able to call back on previous content is because of the very volume of content TWZ already has written on a subject. Referring to those earlier pieces just provides that additional context that helps anyone landing on a topic first time round (it's also part of the reason you can end up in a veritable rabbit hole of their long reads). I'll admit to skimming sections if I recognise it's calling back to previous content.

Look at it another way - in peer reviewed publications, you'd probably have 90% content just "recycling" material, but that's just the way it is in terms of the new findings of said publication being presented in terms of the wider context of the scholastic body of work.

If anything, it's TWZ content that often gets cited or scraped without attribution on other platforms - Tyler and crew have always been pretty solid when it comes to proper reference of any external sourcing. The fact that even mainstream outlets turn to it is testament to its credence these days, far removed from a niche defence blog by one pokey, massively overworked defence journalist on old Jalopnik.

Like if they spot a new image of a chinese J20, an entire new article will come up, with recycled news and viewpoints.

In fairness most of the time a whole new article is just the team getting ahead of the latest revelation doing the rounds in the defence twittersphere. Now that there's a bigger team behind TWZ, it's just a natural coincidence that they'd have the headroom to quickly slap together copyboard on a current topic. The best thing is that TWZ is a wide tent and with the larger team on board they have the ability to devote more articles covering a greater array of what can at times be minutiae (but is manna from heaven to that particular niche enthusiast).

Besides if you think about it, beyond niche twitter circles, if it weren't for busier websites like TWZ, even seemingly innocuous looking images of a frontline PLAAF asset, would otherwise get lost in the chatter when it could in fact point towards a key development - it's essentially how news broke of the testbeds with the domestic WS-10 being spotted for eg.

[aim120]

Originally Posted by ads11

Really? This is a first - if anything TWZ is widely regarded for its ability to cut through the chaff and deliver solid rolling coverage of upcoming conflicts. The Ukraine War, the Nagorno-Kazabakh flare up, and much further besides, they've always been on top of things. If anything, they were one of the few places that (with no small measure of frustration at the childish slandering that no doubt ensued) was willing to call out a lot of the rubbish that was doing the rounds after the last major flare up in our neck of the woods (they do well to cut through a lot of the jingoism that unfortunately is a natural corollary of any defence chat). I will admit I'm not as actively engaged with the comments there as I used to be back in the day but for the most part it was about as solid a self-policing but lively community the defence blogosphere could hope for - a lot of the ex-service men who contributed basically become regular guest contributors on the basis of the comments section.

To accuse them of information manipulation is pretty damning so I'm keen to hear where this is coming from.

So I will just give you one example, if you want more examples I will be happy to share via PM.
In the below article, title is self explanatory. Images in the article are all made to make one country look bad.
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zon...dependence-day

Here is the truth, all the western media and western affiliated defense websites will show anything to make one country look bad, whether its selective editing, posting info from UK defense ministry for updates but not from their most hated country or posting only losses from the side they hate. They perfectly have access to all the sources from the other side, its just that they don't report it.

In the below video taken from the same location, just pause the video and see what can you find on the train particularly at the back, according to Ukraine and the west its was civilians, according to the most hated country it was a legitimate military target. Remember the western media and defense websites have used the stills from the video below from different angles but by just not showing the still of the entire train, you can manipulate your target audience.
https://twitter.com/Kozlova_photo/st...29434521329664

FYI, The drive was notified by several people in comments section but they are promptly deleted or the user is banned.

[skanchan95]

Livefist reports that at the LCH induction ceremony, the LCH has been named Prachand / प्रचंड (Meaning: Fierce) and newly raised 143 HU is the first LCH unit.

The Army Aviation inducted the LCH last week in a quiet ceremony and their LCHs have a wonderful green camo painted on them.

[sierrabravo98]

As I stated in my earlier posts, the dual-pulse Astra Mk-2 (ejector launched) , equipped with an indigenous Ku band AESA seeker with a max range of about 160km, has been in UDT for some time now with induction slated early next year. First pictures coming in of trials (undated)from a Su-30MKI. You can see "BVR Mk-II Astra" written on the forward section of the missile. This is HUGE news for people who understand fighter engagements. This missile outranges the AIM 120D by some margin and the PL-15E by a big margin.

Full Video below. (Time Stamp: 4:10)

https://youtu.be/geVNCAPeSPQ

[sagarpadaki]

Originally Posted by sierrabravo98

As I stated in my earlier posts, the dual-pulse Astra Mk-2 (ejector launched) , equipped with an indigenous Ku band AESA seeker with a max range of about 160km, has been in UDT for some time now with induction slated early next year. This missile outranges the AIM 120D by some margin and the PL-15E by a big margin.

Full Video below. (Time Stamp: 4:10)
https://Youtu.be/geVNCAPeSPQ

That is very good news indeed. Indigenous BVR missile would be much needed armaments' in IAF arsenal. This way we can tweak and customize them to our requirements. I hope, one day Astra replaces the R77 missiles in our arsenal.

I also hope the Probability of Kill(Pk) is similar to that of AIM 120D, R77, Derby. I believe the missile will be under continuous improvement by DRDO.

Kudos to DRDO.

[sierrabravo98]

Originally Posted by sagarpadaki

That is very good news indeed. Indigenous BVR missile would be much needed armaments' in IAF arsenal. This way we can tweak and customize them to our requirements. I hope, one day Astra replaces the R77 missiles in our arsenal.

I also hope the Probability of Kill(Pk) is similar to that of AIM 120D, R77, Derby. I believe the missile will be under continuous improvement by DRDO.

Kudos to DRDO.

The R-77 is an obsolete missile in our current threat matrix which the IAF, much to its detriment, discovered quite uncomfortably on 27th Feb 2019. What followed was an emergency purchase of the R-77-1 & the i-Derby-ER missiles both of which are already outranged by the Astra Mk-1. Hence, your wish of the complete phasing out of the R-77s will come true as soon as the Mig 29s indigenous mission computer upgrade is completed as only the MKIs are capable of firing the Astra as of now (in addition to the Tejas but only 32 of those are in service right now so it doesn't really matter).

The Astra Mk-2 will be a game changer because it outranges the best of Pakistan (AMRAAM C-5 & PL-15E) by quite some distance. Moreover, with Uttam Mk-2 radar upgrade on the MKIs, we will have 260+ fighters with BVR performance matching the Rafale+Meteor combo within 2-3 years.

What still remains a concern is that we still don't have any answer to the 200km range PL-15. The Astra Mk-3 (with the 340km max range) is unlikely to enter service before 2025 (or even later) and there is no Western missile we can buy (The Meteor does not match the PL-15 on paper) as a stop-gap measure.

[aim120]

Has DRDO or IAF released the official ranges of Astra missiles.
Also even the US has not released any official range figures for the AIM-120D.

We also do not know what new missiles we purchased from Russia, media is filled with speculation from R27ER to R77-1.

Also unlike the US AMRAAM missiles which needs interoperability with NATO. The Russian air to air missiles for the export are dummed down versions.

Considering India purchased the missiles as a emergency, did we get a non- export version from Russia.

[V.Narayan]

Originally Posted by sierrabravo98

I cannot even begin to state how wrong the above assumption is.

Originally Posted by sierrabravo98

At the outset, let me state that I appreciate your response that I don't intend to cause any offense whatsoever in the course of our discussion.

1.) While you are indeed correct about the GaN Uttam Mk-2, ....

Originally Posted by sierrabravo98

As I stated in my earlier posts, the dual-pulse Astra Mk-2 (ejector launched) , equipped with an indigenous Ku band AESA seeker with a max range of about 160km, has been in UDT for some time now with induction slated early next year....

Dear @sierrabravo, Thank you for your enthusiastic participation on this thread and the rich bouquet of information you often present. No doubt it is of value to all readers. I am as proud as the next guy that at long last we are making progress with developing our own weapon systems and missiles. With reference to your posts there are only three points I wish to make:

First there is a very long journey from developing a functioning prototype and test firing it from a Su-30MKI to actually getting it into squadron service. A very long journey which sadly our scientists always underestimate and start making bombastic announcements too early. This trend of over announcing started in the early 1980s with the Tejas LCA and Arjun battle tank projects. I have been reading and wondering for 40 years now.

Second there is an equally long journey from getting into squadron service and maturing the product like wine so that it truly becomes effective in the rough and tumble of a live war. While our weapon systems might be at the first step {earlier para} or moving to the second step {this para} I would not buy into the claims of journalists on everything being fully operational and outstanding on Astra, AESA etc. At best these are work-in-progress.

Third these published figures of range of an air-to-air missile don't mean much as the multitude of factors in a real live situation can make a scrambled egg in a second of any performance parameters. At 100+ kms air to air identification of friend or foe {IFF} is so much more difficult that I wonder how it would work in real life where civilian and military aircraft might be occupying that vast volume of airspace 100 km radius horizontal x 20,000 metres of vertical airspace.

Just my thoughts. Not wishing to discourage you in any way.

[Alfresco]

The first part of an interesting 3 piece series.
I have generally found writings on defence matters quite balanced in ThePrint.

https://theprint.in/defence/air-deni...e-war/1167547/