JOIN USRajnath Singh dubs border situation 'volatile', says forces must be ready at short notice
Terming the situation on the borders “volatile”, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh on Wednesday said that the armed forces should be “ready to respond at a short notice to any contingency”.
Singh referred to the situation on the borders and stressed the preparedness of the armed forces while speaking at a conference of the Indian Air Force (IAF) commanders in New Delhi. With the 19-month-long military stand-off along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) between India and China still on and the negotiation to resolve it stalled for weeks, the Defence Minister said that the IAF would have to play a “crucial role” in future conflicts.
He said that the IAF needed to harness the capabilities and opportunities offered by Artificial Intelligence, Big Data Handling and Machine Learning.
Chief of the Air Staff, Air Chief Marshal V R Chaudhari, stressed the need to develop multi-domain capability in order to give a swift and befitting response to any misadventures by the adversaries. He also emphasised the need for the IAF to go for joint training with the Indian Army and Indian Navy to enable synergised application of combat power in future conflicts, according to a press release issued by the Ministry of Defence.
The Indian Army and the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) mutually withdrew front-line troops from the northern and southern banks of Pangong Tso (lake) in February and from the Gogra Post in August this year.
The talks for disengagement from other remaining face-off points along the LAC hit an impasse and the soldiers of the two sides continued to remain engaged in an eyeball-to-eyeball stand-off at several points along the LAC in eastern Ladakh.
The continued build-up by the Chinese PLA and the recent incursions in Uttarakhand and Arunachal Pradesh of India fuelled speculation about tension escalating again, not only in the western sector but also in the middle and eastern sectors of the disputed boundary between the two nations.
Pakistan’s armed forces also of late restarted flouting truce along the country’s Line of Control with India — after a lull for a few months. The Pakistan Army and the border guards also restarted facilitating infiltration of terrorists into Jammu and Kashmir of India.
The Defence Minister on Wednesday also said that the efforts in the field of indigenization through the ‘Make in India’ initiative of the Government of India was showing results and the orders of LCA Mk 1A and C-295 aircraft would open new opportunities in the indigenous aerospace sector.
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