India may accept Vietnam's South China Sea offer

New Delhi: Ahead of the visit of Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung to India next week, India on Friday indicated that it is open to accepting Vietnam’s offer, if found commercially viable, of participation in additional oil blocks in the South China Sea, despite Chinese concerns.

Asked if China’s concern on India’s presence in the South China Sea will be an impediment in the country accepting Vietnam’s offer of additional oil blocks to it, ministry of external affairs spokesperson Syed Akbaruddin said, “Vietnam has offered some oil blocks in the South China Sea.


We are examining it and if they are commercially viable for us we will take that into account and proceed further. India and Vietnam relationship is not contingent on other countries. Our relationship is a bilateral one and we focus on those bilateral issues.”

China and Vietnam have a tense relationship due to their stand-off over the South China Sea, a huge source of hydrocarbons. China has been objecting to India’s oil exploration projects in the South China Sea.

Increased economic engagement will be the focus during the Vietnamese Prime Minister’s visit next week.

On India’s extension of a $100 million line of credit for purchase of defence equipment by Vietnam, the ministry officials said it was under discussion for implementation and the government will see the progress as negotiations continue between Vietnam and Indian defence suppliers.

The Vietnamese Prime Minister will be accompanied by a delegation of 50 businessmen and will hold talks with the top Indian leadership on strategically-important bil-ateral issues of security and energy as well as regional matters on October 27 and 28. Before reaching New Delhi on October 27 evening, he will visit Bodh Gaya.

China to build second aircraft carrier at Shanghai’s Jiangnan Shipyard

Chinese aircraft carrier Liaoning

China will soon start building its second locally designed aircraft carrier in Shanghai, according to a Canadian report.

Kanwa Asian Defence, an English-language monthly defence review produced in Toronto, said Shanghai’s Jiangnan Shipyard was preparing to start work on the carrier. When completed, the carrier and another under construction in Dalian will give the PLA Navy two fully functioning, battle-ready aircraft carriers. The recently completed Liaoning, the refitted former Soviet carrier Varyag, is classed as a training platform, not a full combat vessel, by the navy, since it went into service in September 2012.

Counter to many expectations, the new carrier about to be built at the Jiangnan Shipyard will use conventional, not nuclear power.

The report was also carried in the Chinese-language sister publication, Kanwa Defence Review.

Military experts said China would not attempt a nuclear-powered carrier until a range of issues were resolved, such as the reliability of nuclear-powered engines, crew training and establishing a reliable home port for carrier maintenance.

According to the report, Chinese shipbuilding industry sources said the design for the second carrier had not been completed.

The Kanwa report countered earlier predictions by Western analysts that the new carrier would be nuclear-powered, like the planned Soviet Ulyanovsk-class carrier.

The Ulyanovsk was slated to be Moscow’s first nuclear-powered supercarrier, with an 85,000-tonne displacement. But like the Varyag, the ship was never completed and the hull was scrapped in 1992.

Last year, China Shipbuilding Industry Corp, the largest state-owned shipbuilder, said Beijing had approved funding to develop core technology for nuclear-powered ships, which to many observers indicated plans to build nuclear-powered carriers.

Li Jie , a military expert in Beijing, said China already had experience with maritime nuclear power, but so far the technology was restricted to the PLA’s growing submarine fleet.

“Compared with submarines, a carrier is much bigger. It will take time for our nuclear engineers to develop a safe and powerful engine capable of driving a huge platform of more than 100,000 tonnes,” Li said.

The first locally designed carrier is being built in Dalian, where the Liaoning was completed in a decade-long fit-out.

The Dalian Shipyard completed the new carrier’s steel plate cutting ceremony at the end of last year.

Details emerge on India's super-secret OSS project

IHS Janes

          Details are slowly coming to light of the mystery Indian Navy (IN) vessel being built under the secretive Ocean Surveillance Ship (OSS) project at the Ministry of Defence-owned Hindustan Shipyard Limited (HSL).

           IHS Jane's understands that the OSS project is managed by the Indian Prime Minister's Office (PMO) in a similar manner to the Arihant nuclear submarine project. 

           The layout of the ship - a long open deck with space for several tracking antennae aft of the forward superstructure - suggests it could be a ballistic missile tracking ship operated by the IN for the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO).

China to build airfield on Fiery Cross Reef

To further project its power into the disputed South China Sea, China has decided to build an airfield on Fiery Cross Reef in the Spratlys after its land reclamation program according to the state-run China NewsWeek.

The Chinese foreign ministry claims China has a right to conduct any activity in its own territory and the People's Liberation Army has stated that countries like the Philippines and Vietnam, rival claimants to the island group along with Taiwan, Brunei and Malaysia, do not have any right to comment regarding the construction. The magazine stated that the land reclamation program on Fiery Cross Reef, which China calls Yongshu Reef, indicates that China is constructing a new airfield as a forward base for the PLA Navy and Air Force.


There are four airstrips in the Spratlys at present. The largest is located on Taiping, the largest of the Spratlys, which is administered by Taiwan. Malaysia, Vietnam and the Philippines each have one airstrip in the island group — Malaysia's on Swallow Reef, Vietnam's on Spratly Island and the Philippines' on Thitu. Though ten Spratly islands, reefs and shoals are currently under Chinese administration, the PLA Navy and Air Force do not have an airstrip.

The PLA has constructed an airport on Woody island in the Paracels which extends the combat radius of the PLA Navy's fighters, but it is still too far for them to provide close air support to the Chinese garrison in the Spratlys. To prevent joint military action against China in the South China Sea which could potentially be launched by Vietnam and the Philippines with the support of the United States, the magazine said that it is critical for the PLA to have an airfield in the region.

China is also looking to cooperate with Taiwan in the region, the report said. The airfield in Taiping was constructed at the order of former president Chen Shui-bian in 2006. After the airfield was completed, Chen became the first president of the Republic of China to visit the island in early 2008. Since then, Taiwan's government has begun to strengthen its defense of the island.

Beijing has been critical of the airfield on Taiping and its use by US forces to monitor PLA activities in the South China Sea. The Chinese government's attitude changed however after Ma Ying-jeou succeeded Chen. Beijing hopes that Ma, more friendly to Beijing than the independence-minded Chen, will be willing to cooperate to defend a joint Chinese claim to the Spratlys.

Ma has openly rejected the idea of cooperation with the mainland in the South China Sea, however. A source told the magazine that direct cooperation between Taiwan and mainland China in the South China Sea is impossible within the next 15-20 years because the current Kuomintang regime in Taiwan is still strongly influenced by the US — a claim local commentators would call something of a simplification. Cooperation can only be realized in the event of unification, according to the source.

Unlike Hong Kong, Taiwan will be allowed to keep its security forces in the event of unification, according to prior statements by late Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping. A thinktank under the PLA is now studying how Taiwanese security forces could work together with the Chinese military under the "one country, two systems" policy (again, something which was recently explicitly rejected by the Ma administration). They projected that the Taiwanese garrison on Taiping island could provide logistic support to the PLA through its airfield and port against any potential invasion by Vietnam and the Philippines.

Zhang Jiuhuan, a retired Chinese diplomat, told the magazine that Beijing should express its gratitude to the Taiwanese coast guards agents who defend Taiping for a common greater China. Our sister newspaper Want Daily said that military cooperation across the strait is easier said than done as there must be a certain level of mutual trust reached between Beijing and Taipei before any military cooperation can take place.

Mystery Deepens Over Reported Russian Sub in Sweden

STOCKHOLM — Mystery deepened Sunday over a Swedish military operation triggered by “foreign underwater activity” off the coast of Stockholm, amid an unconfirmed report of a hunt for a damaged Russian submarine.

Late Saturday, Swedish armed forces stepped up an operation — involving more than 200 men, stealth ships, minesweepers and helicopters — in an area about 50 kilometers (30 miles) east of the Swedish capital. The manuevers were initiated Friday after the armed forces said they had been informed of a “man made object” in the water.

Officials denied they were “submarine hunting,” calling the mobilization — one of the biggest, barring purely training exercises, since the Cold War — an “intelligence operation.”

Russia also denied on Sunday that any of its submarines were involved.


“There have been no irregular situations and, even less so, accidents involving Russian naval vessels,” the Russian defence ministry said in a statement.

But the respected Swedish daily Svenska Dagbladet reported that a damaged Russian submarine was at the center of the mystery.

Russian Emergency Transmission
The report said that Swedish military intelligence had intercepted radio signals between an area off the coast of Stockholm and the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad — home to much of Russia’s Baltic Sea naval fleet.

“It was transmitted on a special frequency, used by Russia in emergency situations,” the newspaper wrote, citing Swedish military sources involved in the search.

Sweden’s armed forces remained tight-lipped, but did say its focus was on “underwater activities.”

“The Swedish Armed Forces are not in a position to deny or verify media news or speculations recently published about a missing foreign submarine,” spokesman Erik Lagersten said.

“At the moment we are conducting an intelligence operation in the archipelago of Stockholm with optical reconnaissance as well as with naval vessels equipped with qualified underwater sensors... to establish if there are or has been foreign underwater activities in the area.”

Anonymous military sources told Svenska Dagbladet that the emergency signal in Russian was intercepted on Thursday evening, and that further encrypted signals were sent on Friday after Swedish armed forces began combing the area.

In August 2000 the Kursk, a Russian nuclear submarine, sank in the Barents Sea killing the entire crew of 118. Russian authorities were later criticized for refusing international assistance and for misleading the public about the pace of their failed rescue operation.

In recent months, Sweden has seen an uptick in Baltic Sea maneuvers by the Russian air force. In one incident in September, two SU-24 fighter-bombers allegedly entered Swedish airspace in what Foreign Minister Carl Bildt at the time called “the most serious aerial incursion by the Russians” in almost a decade.

During the 1980s and early ’90s, the then-neutral — and now non-aligned — Nordic country was regularly on alert following Russian submarine sightings, including one notable case in 1981 when a Soviet U-boat ran aground several miles from one of Sweden’s largest naval base.

China's PLA building fleet of 100 large transport aircraft

China is building a fleet of a hundred large transport aircraft that will be able to deploy troops all around the world, according to a Russian military expert.

In an article published Oct. 16 on the Russian Council website, Vasily Kashin, a China expert at the Centre for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies in Moscow, says that the People's Liberation Army hopes to complete the project by 2020.

To reach that goal, China is in the process of acquiring Il-76 multi-purpose four-engine strategic airlifters and Il-78 four-engined aerial refueling tankers from Russia, Belarus and Ukraine, and is also developing its own Xian Y-20 large military transport aircraft.


According to Kashin, the quality of China's military technology has reached a new level, such that the PLA is now a modernized force capable of fighting a technically advanced war. The new generation PLA has a blue-water navy and maritime force capable of operating across the deep waters of open oceans as well as a powerful strategic air force, he wrote.

The project is said to be part of a series of major programs designed to complete China's transformation into a modern military power. One of the programs aims to build an army that can win wars through superior information technology by 2050. To this end, the PLA set a goal back in 2000 for 60% of all new recruits to be university graduates, though by 2009 the number had barely passed 30%. To entice more qualified soldiers, the PLA has also introduced comprehensive insurance schemes and higher compensation that has seen monthly salaries more than double between 2006 and 2011 to around US$840 a month.

Indian Government gives go-ahead to 4 strategic rail lines along China border

The Indian government has kick-started the process of building four top-priority strategic railway lines along the China border — a project that had been stuck in deliberations for years for want of a political decision at the highest level. 

Last week, at a high-level meeting with officials from the Planning Commission, Defence, Railways and Finance ministries, the PMO finally asked the Railways to carry out detailed engineering survey of the 1,000-odd kilometres of lines identified by the Defence Ministry as strategically crucial. They are in Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Himachal Pradesh, and J&K.

The Railways has been given time till next month to come up with a cost of the detailed survey, which will be borne by the government (Defence/Finance). Sources said the cost of the engineering survey could be around Rs 200 crore.


The identified lines are Missamari-Tawang (378 km) in Assam-Arunachal Pradesh; North Lakhimpur-Along-Silapathar (248 km) in Assam, Murkongselek-Pasighat-Tezu-Parashuram Kund-Rupai (256 km) in Assam-Arunachal Pradesh; and Bilaspur-Mandi-Manali-Leh (498 km) in Himachal Pradesh-Jammu and Kashmir. The detailed engineering survey, kind of detailed project report, is the blueprint based on which work is commissioned.

The Railways has informed the PMO that the topography and the geology is such that most of the lines are in the fault and folds of the Himalayan range, which involves stupendous engineering challenges. This means boring railway tunnels through geologically treacherous terrain.

“We had quite a few geological surprises holding up the numerous tunnel works in the Kashmir line many years ago. From that experience, we are sure that these lines will also throw up such surprises. So the detailed engineering survey has to be thorough,” said a Railway Board source. 

The survey will take around two years to complete but sources in the Railways said given the priority attached to it, they might be asked to expedite as well. But a detailed engineering exercise like this cannot be needlessly rushed as well, officials said. 

These four lines are part of the 14 strategically important lines of the armed forces to be used presumably for supplies for the Army and troops movement in times of need. The list was drawn up by the Services based on inputs from the operational commands and validated from an operational and logistics perspective. All these years, the government had been indecisive about who would fund the lines. 

Railways had been telling the government that it would make the lines but cannot fund it because of financial difficulties and also citing the fact that the lines were not part of its operational needs. The matter had been stuck at that. Soon after coming to power, the new government has been holding meetings at the Cabinet Secretariat level to arrive at the decision on this. The lines are part of the government programme of building permanent transport infrastructure along the India China border.