The thirteenth edition of Aero India 2021, the biennial event organized by the Ministry of Defence, Government of India in collaboration with industry associations and government entities, was held in early February at the Yelanka Air Force Station, Bengaluru. Due to the continuing pandemic scenario, the event witnessed limited participation, most deliberations through virtual platforms, fewer flight displays and still fewer exhibition stalls.

On 13 January 2021, Indian Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS), the highest decision making body on military and security affairs headed by the Prime Minister, approved procurement of 73 Light Combat Aircraft (LCA) Tejas Mk-1A fighter aircraft and 10 LCA Tejas Mk-1 Trainer aircraft for the Indian Air Force (IAF) at the cost of INR 45,696 Crore along with design and development of infrastructure sanctions worth INR 1,202 crore. With this order, IAF will have a total of 123 LCA Tejas in its inventory (IAF had ordered 40 LCAs earlier), equivalent to seven squadrons in future.

Amidst the ongoing India-Nepal diplomatic tensions over border disputes, Nepal’s Prime Minister K P Sharma Oli extended support for Indian proposal at the UN for a common definition for terrorism -- Comprehensive Convention on International Terrorism (CCIT) -- during his speech at the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) on September 25, 2020.

Despite substantial progress in the peace talks between New Delhi and the armed groups of Nagaland over the last five years, there are still uncertainties over finalising a permanent peace agreement. The second round of negotiations over a peace agreement with the Naga insurgent groups, including the NSCN-IM (Isak-Muivah), was initiated by New Delhi in 2015. But that appears to be in trouble since October 31, 2019. A fresh informal attempt by the Union Government in this regard with the NSCN-IM in August 2020 in New Delhi also has not moved in the right direction.

India successfully tested an indigenously-developed hypersonic technology demonstrator vehicle (HSTDV) powered by a scramjet (supersonic-combustion ramjet) engine on September 07, 2020. This test is an essential step towards building next-generation hypersonic cruise missiles. The Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO)  achieved a significant technological achievement when it flew a cruise vehicle at a hypersonic speed of Mach 6, for 20 seconds.

Understanding the Technology

Several articles were published in the last week mostly speculative, indicating a doomsday scenario for India-Bangladesh bilateral relations.[1]  Three developments were cited as signals of this new low in the bilateral ties.[2] First, one report appeared in Bhorer Kagoj, a Bengali newspaper in Dhaka, that Indian High Commissioner, Riva Ganguly Das was not granted a meeting with Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, despite her trying for the last four months to have such a meeting scheduled.[3] This news that Indian High Commissioner was not given

The planet Mars is in the news again. Three missions are expected to be Mars-bound during 2020. Typically, it takes between six to nine months to reach Mars from Earth. The minimum distance from the Earth to Mars is about 54.6 million km. Mars launch windows are available only after a gap of 26 months and the present launch window is open till the third week of August. The first Arab space mission to Mars, an unmanned probe dubbed ‘Hope’ (Al-Amal in Arabic), successfully took off from Japan on 20 July 2020. 

While the entire world has been reeling under the COIVD-19 crisis since the beginning of this year, South Asia has witnessed a spike in border disputes, besides facing the rapid spread of the pandemic itself. Although many of these disputes existed before the COVID period, the Chinese claims of territories in India and Bhutan and Nepal’s claim of three disputed territories which India has traditionally claimed to be it's own has brought a new dimension to the security discourse in the sub-continent.