National Security and Strategic Studies
India’s Defence Exports: Recent Trends and the Way Forward

In a highly competitive international defence market, India has recently made its mark and has huge opportunity to become a significant player. India’s defence exports have reached to an all-time high of approximately ₹16,000crore (US $ 1.94 billion) in the FY 2022-2023, a notable ten-fold increase from the FY 2016–17, when exports were merely ₹1,521 crore (US $ 184.59 million). This is a significant step towards India’s stated goal of exporting ₹35,000 crore (US $ 5 billion) worth of aerospace and defence equipment annually by 2025 and becoming a net defence exporter.

Drone Warfare Capacity Building in Securing India’s National Interests

This paper seeks to make a case for the utility of drone warfare in securing India’s national interests. It begins by establishing how drone proliferation acts as a threat and opportunity in the context of India’s security objectives and discusses the importance of drone warfare capacity building in countering the security threats faced by India. It then highlights the benefits and areas of operation where the Indian military could use drone warfare to achieve its objectives from ISR and Dull, Dirty and Dangerous’ missions to counter-terrorism and logistics.

Challenges of Military Leadership in the Indian Context

The current geo-political environment indicates the enhanced challenges placed before military leadership, more so in the Indian context, as it experiences both external threats imposed by China & Pakistan and internal threats imposed by various actors with varied allegiances, aided & abetted by external forces.

Security Vision 2047: A Hundred Years since Independence

… India must become the bulwark of an alternative Asian and international security system … in this context India’s continental threat gravitates on the defensive construct of ‘not ceding an inch of territory,’ and limited-depth offensives. This goes against the very fundamental doctrinal premises of the employment of offensive air power followed by all Air Forces ...

Emergence of China as a Military Space Power and Ramifications for India’s Security

China’s space programme can be described as a mystery within a maze. The visible elements of the programme include space launch vehicles, launch sites and satellite systems. However, various components of its organisational structure and architecture are shrouded in obscurity. Since the birth of China’s space programme in 1956, its development has mirrored the progress of the nation as a whole.

Implications of China’s Hydro-Hegemony on River Yarlung Tsangpo: Another Lever of China’s Expansionist Tactics into India’s East

On 11 March 2021, China’s parliament, the National People’s Congress, endorsed a plan to build a ‘super dam’ on the lower reaches of the Yarlung Tsangpo River in southeastern Tibet. According to Chinese media reports, the dam will have an installed capacity of around 60 Gigawatt (GW), the world’s largest, and will be built at The Great Bend section of the Yarlung Tsangpo River in Nyingchi Prefecture’s Medog County close to the Indian border.

Deterrence Theory– Is it Applicable in Cyber Domain?

… effective cyber deterrence policies require regular, sustained disruption of malicious cyber activity. Such disruption can be technical, legal, logistical, financial, diplomatic, and, in some extreme cases, kinetic. Increasing the scope, scale and tempo of disruption activities should impose high costs on adversaries …

Cyber Weapons – A Weapon of War?

… cyber weapons will be used individually and blended simultaneously with conventional kinetic weapons as force multipliers … for both attacker and defender, it is difficult to predict; cyber weapons often achieve things other than their intended purpose … strategic calculation for attackers thus becomes considerably more complex ... over-reliance by strategists and scholars on such imprecise terminology has significant risks for misinterpretation and premature prescription ...

Water Security as Part of Non-Traditional Security: Threat - Implications for India

… it would be important for the Indian government to assess how China could ‘weaponize’ its control over trans-boundary waters and potentially ‘choke’ the Indian economy … there are different opinions about the impact of the proposed dams on the quantity of water flow in the Brahmaputra. A gigantic hydropower project will undoubtedly have some effects ... There is also one school of thought which believes that the negative impact may not be huge.

China’s Cyber-Influence Operations

… With its growing assertiveness in the international arena, China uses new technologies to achieve its foreign policy goals and project an image of responsible global power … spending billions on influence operations across the world ... fits in with China’s larger aim of expanding its soft power alongside its growing economic and military power … reach of Beijing’s overseas media is impressive and should not be underestimated. But the results are mixed ...

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