Russia begins trials of stealth frigate for Indian Navy

MOSCOW: Russia on Thursday commenced sea trials of the India Navy's first of the three advanced stealth frigates in the Baltic Sea and the first of these warships will be delivered by early next year.

'Teg', the frigate of the Project 11356, also known as Talwar Class, is first of the three frigates ordered by the Indian Navy in 2006 under a 1.5 billion dollar deal with Russia.

India Navy already operates three of these stealth frigates and had ordered three more to bolster its fleet.

The two other warships of the same class - the 'Tarkash' (Quiver) and the 'Trikand' (Bow) are at various stages of construction at the "Yantar" naval shipyard in Russia's Baltic exclave of Kaliningrad.

Indian Navy moves to fast-track submarine acquisition plans

Indian Navy moves to fast-track submarine acquisition plans

New Delhi: The Indian Navy has appointed a senior officer to oversee and fast-track all submarine acquisition plans, even as it grapples with a depleting underwater force and rising levels of submarines in the inventories of nations inimical to Indian interests.

Rear admiral MT Moraes has been appointed as the new assistant chief of naval staff (submarines), a position in naval headquarters that is being revived after a long time.

He assumed command on Friday.

He will be replaced as flag officer (submarines) at Visakhapatnam by rear admiral Srikant.

With a rapidly depleting fleet, the Navy has to move fast to get its Project-75 India (P-75I) rolling at the earliest. The Rs50,000 crore P-75I programme envisages acquisition of six new stealth submarines, equipped with both tube-launched missiles for land-attack capabilities as well as AIP (air-independent propulsion) for enhanced underwater endurance.

Even as its older fleet of German HDW and Russian Kilo-class submarines approaches redundancy levels, the ongoing Rs23,562-crore project to build six French Scorpene submarines at the Mazagon Docks is running late by three years.

These submarines will phase into service only in the period 2015 and 2020, by which time it is estimated the Navy will be operating with a fleet level of just five out of its existing 10 Russian Kilo-class and four German HDW submarines.

Consequently, even with all six Scorpenes operational, India will still fall short of the minimum requirement of 18 conventional submarines required to deter arch-enemies Pakistan and China.

India is also set to get the Russian Akula-II class nuclear-powered submarine, K-152 Nerpa, to be rechristened INS Chakra, on a 10-year lease by November-December.

The INS Chakra will be joined in service by the indigenously developed 6,000-tonne nuclear submarine, INS Arihant.

Earlier, navy chief Admiral Nirmal Verma had announced India's nuclear weapon triad will be completed when INS Arihant goes on "deterrent patrols" next year.

The global tender or RFP (request for proposal) for the P-75I project will be floated towards end-2011 to vendors like Rosoboronexport (Russia), DCNS (France), HDW (Germany) and Navantia (Spain).

As of now, the plan is to directly import two submarines from a foreign collaborator, with the next three being built at Mazgaon Docks Ltd in Mumbai and the sixth at Hindustan Shipyard in Visakhapatnam under a transfer of technology programme.

::PHP Developer: Required

::PHP Developer Required:: Jobs for PHP Developer
We at Trivia Softwares (http://www.triviasoftwares.com) we are looking for young and dynamic PHP developers with a good knowledge of developing projects in PHP.

Job Profile:
Develop projects in PHP and MySQL

Salary: Min 8,000/-
Above 20% increment on current CTC (For Experienced)
Please contact
TRIVIA Softwares
D2 Kolungade Estate,
Near Jagmata Shankar Temple
Kolbad Road, Kolbad
Thane (West) 400601
Ph: 91-22-2547 3930
Website: http://www.TRIVIASOFTWARES.com
Email: vaibhav.shete@triviasoftwares.com

India's air travel growth spurs jet orders

Indian airlines walked away from the Paris Air Show with a third of the airplane orders last week -- a $23 billion gamble that air will finally conquer rail despite a formidable list of obstacles.

Malaysia's AirAsia (AIRA.KL) created most buzz with an historic 200-plane order. But its record for the world's largest deal by number of aircraft only just pipped that of Indian budget carrier IndiGo which finalized an order for 180 jets.

GoAir also placed what by any normal standards would have been an eye-catching order for 72 Airbus jets at $6.6 billion.

"It's been a frenzy in Paris with orders from India proving that the industry is in pretty good shape...It's all part of the continuing shift in economic power from west to east," said BGC Partners senior strategist Howard Wheeldon.

India's airlines have orders worth $40 billion in the pipeline, but analysts say their ability to pull through to taking delivery could be tested by high fuel taxes, poor infrastructure, debt and frequently rising interest rates.

"As of today it seems far fetched that they need so many aircraft because India does not have infrastructure to handle this," said Kishor Ostwal, chairman of Mumbai's CNI Research.

"We have to see if we can have the infrastructure to support another 300 to 400 aircraft in coming years. Even today airlines in key metro routes do not get slots to land in time and this pushes up operating costs further," Ostwal added.

There have been improvements, such as the country's longest elevated expressway linking the congested city of Hyderabad to its airport. But analysts say there is much work ahead.

Connectivity remains inadequate through much of India, and airport infrastructure is non-existent in many smaller cities.

Still, airlines are growing their fleets as demand booms in India, where an economy growing at nearly 9 percent is spurring business travel and a burgeoning middle class long accustomed to travelling by rail is now increasingly opting for air. And with a population of over a billion, India does need more planes.

"At the beginning of 2000, there were 100 large passenger aircraft in India for 1 billion people; now there are 300 aircraft for 1.2 billion. The ratio is extremely small," said Kiran Rao, executive vice president for sales at Airbus. Over the same period the backlog of airplanes on order has exploded from just 12 in 2000 to well over 500 after the show.

By contrast, China, which is itself poised for dramatic growth, starts off with 1,400 large jets for 1.3 billion people.

India's largest private carrier Jet Airways (JET.NS), state-run Air India and low-cost carrier SpiceJet (SPJT.BO) have over $12 billion worth of orders, with more in the pipeline.

OVERSEAS LOANS

Indian carriers, whose fares are usually comparable to U.S. prices, are cutting fares to compete with railways, which enjoy a far more comprehensive infrastructure network, covering much of India, and have offered a cheaper way of travel for decades.

Indians have the lowest propensity to travel by air of the BRIC countries, making less than 0.1 trips per capita in 2009, on a par with Belarus and Senegal, according to Airbus data.

With statistics like these, it is no surprise that India's domestic network is expected to generate the world's fastest air traffic growth over 20 years. Airbus (EAD.PA) expects domestic travel to grow on average 9.2 percent over the next two decades.

Boeing (BA.N) sees average annual traffic growth of 9.4 percent between 2010 and 2030 in South Asia.

To feed this demand, India is estimated to need about 1,100 commercial jets worth up to $130 billion over the next 20 years, representing about 4 percent of the worldwide forecast for commercial airplanes, according to Deloitte aerospace analysts.

Plane manufacturers like Airbus are making a strong push to tap that market. Indeed the Indian market is one of the key drivers behind its decision to upgrade its A320 jet with new engines and slanted wingtips reducing fuel burn by 15 percent.

"If ever a country needed an aircraft like the A320neo it is India. Airlines are taxed at 35 percent for their fuel, sometimes up to 50 percent depending on the state," said Rao.

Manufacturers have also leaped in to help address pilot shortages which threatened to stymie the industry's growth, providing help with training and recruiting.

Yet even without poor logistics there are funding concerns.

Borrowing in the capital-intensive industry has become increasingly difficult in India, where the government has raised interest rates ten times since March 2010 to combat inflation.

"There is no way airlines can get loans of this magnitude in the country. So they have to go for overseas loans as it does not make sense to borrow at 12 or 13 percent," Arun Kejriwal, director at research firm KRIS, said.

The top three carriers -- Air India, Jet Airways and Kingfisher -- already have more than $12 billion of debt. Lenders now own nearly 30 percent of Kingfisher (KING.NS).

On the positive side, India has joined the 2004 Cape Town Convention which makes it easier for foreign creditos or lessors to recover aircraft and engines if an airline gets into trouble.

The absence of such guarantees had hampered the aircraft leasing industry, which is a key source of finance for airlines.

"Although airlines in India have a large order pipeline, funding would still be an issue. They may look for private equity players," Nidhi Goyal, Director at Deloitte India, said. * TAKE A LOOK - Paris Air Show 2001 (Additional reporting by Matthias Blamont, James Regan and Aniruddha Basu; editing by Sophie Walker)

::IPL 2011:: Royal Challengers Bangalore Beat Mumbai Indians

Royal Challengers Bangalore have beaten Mumbai Indians in the 2nd Semi Finals of IPL 2011.

7 Asian nations = 45% global GDP by 2050

7 Asian nations = 45% global GDP by 2050

The engines of Asia's re-emergence - India, China and five other economies -- will account for 45 per cent of the global GDP by 2050, according to a report by the Asian Development Bank (ADB).

"Asia's rise will be led by China, India, Indonesia, Japan, the Republic of Korea, Malaysia, and Thailand," the ADB's report, 'Asia 2050 - Realising the Asian Century', said.

In 2010, these seven economies had a combined total population of 3.1 billion, or 78 per cent of Asia, and a GDP of $14.2 trillion.

"These seven economies alone will account for 45 per cent of the global GDP," the report said.
The report compares the potential outcomes for Asia under two competing scenarios - the 'Asian Century' and the 'Middle Income Trap'.

In the more optimistic Asian Century scenario, the region's gross domestic product (GDP) would soar to $148 trillion and account for 51 per cent of global output in 2050.

On a purchasing power parity basis, GDP per capita in Asia would rise to $ 45,800, compared with the projected 2050 global average of $ 36,600, as per the report.

It said that by the middle of this century, an additional three billion Asians could enjoy higher living standards, but only "if Asia sustains its present growth momentum".
The report released on the second day of ADB's annual meeting further said that as the global economy's centre of gravity shifts toward Asia, the region could account for about half of global output in 2050, up from the current 27 per cent.

Asia is also likely to contribute half of global trade and investment. The report, however, cautioned that major Asian economies should ensure they do not fall into the middle-income trap, which could inhibit the growth of emerging markets.

The alternative scenario assumes that Asia's fast-growing economies "China, India, Indonesia, and Vietnam will fall into the middle income trap" of slowing growth rates and stagnating income levels over the next 5 to 10 years, it said.

If these events occur, Asia would account for only 32 per cent, or $ 61 trillion, of the global GDP in 2050, it said.

U.S. ally in hot seat after bin Laden found in Pakistani army town

U.S. ally in hot seat after bin Laden found in Pakistani army town

U.S. officials have left little doubt that they did not sufficiently trust their counterparts in Pakistan to keep quiet on the plan to send a team of U.S. special forces and CIA operatives into the country on Sunday to kill Osama bin Laden. And now that the whole world knows U.S. forces found and killed bin Laden in a large, conspicuously fortified compound in an affluent Pakistani military town less than forty miles from the Pakistani capital of Islamabad, American officials are likewise making it clear that they don't fully buy the Pakistani government's see-no-evil line on bin Laden's whereabouts. It's hard for Pakistani military leaders in particular to make a credible case that they were shocked--shocked!--to learn bin Laden was right there under their noses; the Paksitani army, after all, has a college in Abbottabad only a few hundred feet from the compound where bin Laden was found and killed.
"It's inconceivable that Bin Laden did not have a support system inside the country," White House counter-terrorism adviser John Brennan told journalists at the White House press conference Monday.
Bin Laden's "presence outside the capital raises questions we are discussing with Pakistani officials," he said. But Pakistani officials profess themselves to be "as surprised as we were that bin Laden was holding out in that area," he added.
In other words--gimme a break.
Of course, the official line in Pakistan is that the country has been a loyal and energetic ally for the United States in the struggle against Islamist terrorism. In an op-ed in Tuesday's Washington Post, Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari contended that while Pakistani officials did not take part in the raid on the bin Laden compound, the action nonetheless arose out of "a decade of co-operation and partnership between Pakistan and the United States." He also noted that"we in Pakistan take some satisfaction that our early assistance in identifying an al-Qaeda courier ultimately led to this day."
The U.S. version of events doesn't reflect nearly as well on the Pakistani military. In revisiting the highly classified commando operation for reporters, Brennan pointedly reiterated the degree to which American officials kept their Pakistani counterparts out of the loop about the details of its execution. To carry out the 40 minute raid, Brennan explained, U.S. military planners had to take pains to move in and out of the country without having to shoot at Pakistani military forces:
"We were watching to make sure we could get out of Pakistani air space and to minimize the prospect of engagement with Pakistani forces," Brennan described. "No Pakistani forces were engaged. There were no forces killed aside from those on the compound."
Welcome, in other words, to the twilight zone alliance between the United States and Pakistan: alleged allies who sometimes seem to be double-crossing enemies--or what American high school students would call frenemies.
But Brennan's further comments also explain why the U.S.-Pakistani alliance, for all its "ambiguity," mutual secrets, and occasionally covert but sometimes outright armed hostility, is one that neither country can live without.
"I will point out, that while we have had differences of view on counterterrorism cooperation on what we think they should and should not be doing, Pakistan has been responsible for capturing and killing more terrorists than any other country and by a wide margin," Brennan said. "And many Pakistanis have given their lives ... Although there are some differences of views, we believe our partnership is critically important to breaking the back of al Qaeda."
So why do elements of the Pakistani security services persist in supporting the jihadi terrorists trying to kill U.S.-led forces in Afghanistan and Afghans? And why can't the United States just declare Pakistan a hostile enemy, if that's how significant reaches of Pakistani officialdom are behaving?
There is no simple answer--but the basic truth here is that the United States would be in far worse shape without even the highly imperfect Pakistani government cooperation American officials are now getting. For all the shortcomings of the current U.S.-Pakistani alliance, it would be far worse for the United States to be confronting an openly hostile South Asian terrorist-backing state that has the fastest growing nuclear arsenal in the world and a bitter ongoing fixation on the ambitions of neighboring rival India.
Still, the U.S. discovery of bin Laden in a million dollar, highly fortified compound in the Pakistani military town of Abbottabad, population 90,000, on property only a few hundred feet from major Pakistani military installations, is certainly bringing out into the open what has more often been discussed behind closed doors between U.S. and Pakistani spy chiefs and generals.
"There's no question that once dust settles a little bit that Pakistan is going to be brought under a very harsh light," said former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, who has worked closely with Pakistani civilian and military leaders. "It's not credible that this could guy could live as close to the Pakistani equivalent of Sandhurst"--the elite British military training school--"and someone in Pakistani intelligence did not see outside his villa. That raises questions of its own."
While "it puts a harsher spotlight on Pakistan, it does not however relieve the U.S. of the need to try to work with Pakistan in particular for the betterment of Afghanistan," Armitage added.
"In the short run, this has the potential to make U.S.-Pakistan relations even worse," said Daniel Markey, a South Asian expert with the Council on Foreign Relations. "It is an embarrassment for Pakistan's military and intelligence, given the location, and it follows on the heels of these other 'violations of Pakistani territorial sovereignty'--drones, [CIA contractor] Raymond Davis. From our perspective, it is just more evidence that the Pakistanis are either too incompetent or too complicit to be good partners."
Markey mused there could be a potential silver lining in Osama's killing--but only "if it helps to convince Pakistan's leaders that the United States has the will, capacity, and commitment to go after its enemies and that Pakistan ought not to continue to be an active (or even passive) supporter for these groups."
Gretchen Peters, the former ABC News bureau chief in Pakistan and author of Seeds of Terror: How Heroin Is Bankrolling the Taliban and al Qaeda, said that the current Pakistan dilemma stems from the 1980s. Back then, she explains, Pakistani security and intelligence services forged training and strategic ties with jihadi groups sent over to fight proxy wars against the Soviet forces in Afghanistan (with covert U.S. support), as well as in India in Kashmir. Those formative alliances only strengthened over time--and now, Peters notes, they're very hard for Pakistan to break.
Abbottabad, the town where bin Laden was found, "is one of these places in Pakistan where militancy and the [Pakistani] military are in close proximity," Peters said. Indeed, she notes, it's close to other Pakistani towns that formerly housed mujahadeen and other jihadi group training camps since the '80s.
Peters added she always expected that bin Laden would be "found in a well-guarded compound in a [Pakistani] city, not in a cave." Why? "Because it is easier to hide in places like that," she said.
The compound where bin Laden was discovered is in a relatively new, private military development in Abbottabad, that was built in 2005.
While U.S. officials have not publicly identified the al Qaeda courier they tracked in order to find bin Laden, the Weekly Standard's Thomas Joscelyn reported that a recently leaked U.S. military cable from the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay names an al Qaeda courier close to bin Laden--Maulawi Abd al-Khaliq Jan--who seems to fits the description provided by U.S. officials. The Associated Press reported that the courier is Kuwaiti.
U.S. security officials said they were "shocked" at the conspicuously over-the-top security features of the sprawling compound in the affluent development when they saw it--including 12-18 foot fortification walls topped by barbed wire, a property size roughly eight times larger than others in the area, trash from the compound burnt inside rather than put on the street for collection. Particularly striking for a property they valued at a million dollars, they noted, the facility had no phone lines or Internet connections.
But Peters said that while the specifications are perhaps more extreme, "there are lots of [thick-walled, fortified] houses like that in Pakistan. It's much easier to hide in a [newer development] community like that where the neighbors don't actually know each other than in a small village where the entire village knows each other."
Several major al Qaeda figures have been arrested by Pakistani authorities since 9/11--including Ramzi bin al-Shibh in a Karachi apartment building, Abu Zubaydah in Faisalbad, 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammad, in Rawalpindi or Quetta (depending on who you ask).
It's that sort of cooperation that Brennan praised in his remarks Monday, while making clear the United States is not going to endlessly accept Pakistani excuses for turning a blind eye to forces within its own security structure providing support to the terrorists killing Americans. After all, Brennan notes, such forces are also killing Pakistani citizens.
"The president feels very strongly that the people of Pakistan need to realize their potential for lives of prosperity and security," Brennan said. "And because of the militant organizations in that country, too many Pakistanis have died."