Author: Defenceline Webdesk

Rahul Bajoria, managing director and head of India and ASEAN Economic Research at Bank of America, joins host Tushar Shetty to examine why India’s manufacturing sector has remained stuck at around 15 percent of GDP despite decades of rapid growth.  They discuss the colonial and planning-era roots of India’s weak industrial base, the regulatory and compliance burdens that keep Indian firms small and push them into informality, why regulatory progress has been driven by a handful of competitive states rather than by the center, India’s limited gains from China Plus One and its growing exports to China, the mixed record…

News broke Tuesday that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is planning to order the elimination of one-fifth of the U.S. military’s general and flag billets. There is a legitimate case for examining whether the Armed Forces have have become too top-heavy. There is also a legitimate reason to be concerned about how reductions in the senior officer corps are carried out. For more than 20 years, I worked as a federal contractor operating mission-critical facilities supporting the Defense Department, State Department, and federal law-enforcement agencies. That experience gave me an appreciation for something that can be difficult to quantify on an organizational…

Both in China’s official media and in the world press, the summit between Chinese President Xi Jinping and U.S. President Donald Trump last week – their second so far this year – generated usual, predictable descriptions: “ambiguous,” “highly symbolic,” “historic summit,” and so on. However, a section of China’s strategic affairs community – definitely not the pro-U.S. faction – has taken exception to Trump’s “dramatic,” “personal diplomacy” hospitality in welcoming Xi. Cautioning Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leadership to tread carefully with the untrustworthy, capricious, and unpredictable Trump, a skeptic in China’s “leftist” media even observed, “It’s possible they’re [the U.S.]…

Military drone and counterdrone demand is booming amid a rush to spend funds before the end of the fiscal year—but the Pentagon’s drone marketplace is making it a little easier, defense officials said. “These contracts are available to everybody. And so what we’ve seen across the department is a surge of end-of-year requests for procurement,” Brig. Gen. Matthew Ross, who leads the Pentagon’s Joint Interagency Task Force 401, told reporters Tuesday. “End-of-year spending is nothing new inside of the department, but when you have an available contract vehicle, it makes it really easy to execute. And so, we’ve seen that from…

Tensions are on the rise between Pakistan and Afghanistan once again as both countries have traded fire as well as accusations over the past few days. The current flare-up is a direct consequence of a terrorist attack on a mosque in the north-western Pakistani town of Kohat on September 18, in which at least 31 people, including 16 police personnel, were killed and over 100 injured.  After neutralizing the attackers after an hours-long gun battle, Pakistan launched retaliatory airstrikes against the alleged positions of the Hafiz Gul Bahadur-led Ittehad ul Mujahideen Pakistan (IMP), which had claimed responsibility for the attack,…

WASHINGTON — The Navy will purchase 30 medium unmanned surface vessels (MUSV) from three defense firms after successfully completing at-sea testing as part of the sea service’s novel MUSV marketplace.  The Navy announced today that Galliano Marine Services, Huntington Ingalls Industries (HII) and Saronic Technologies were each awarded contracts for 10 MUSVs, which also will be made available for purchase through the Navy’s marketplace for unmanned surface vessels. The companies are expected to begin deliveries to the service by the end of fiscal 2027, with each system costing roughly $40 million, according to the Navy. Three other companies — Leidos,…

The recent Bhotekoshi-Trishuli flood near the China-Nepal border, described as a “mountain tsunami,” occurred at a time when glaciers across the Hindu Kush Himalaya (HKH) are already melting rapidly. Extreme events like the catastrophic flood are no longer isolated anomalies but signals of a broader regional climate crisis in the fragile mountain region. Translating Earth observation of the HKH into actionable regional preparedness is therefore an urgent requirement for climate action.  The August 26 flood showed how difficult it is to anticipate some of these risks in advance. Scientific assessments and satellite imagery confirm that a massive rock-ice avalanche collapsed…

Throughout its 40-year evolution and more than 11 million flight hours, GE Aerospace’s F110 engine has reliably delivered speed, superior thrust capability, and proven operational efficiency — key demands of critical fighter platforms like the F-15EX and the F-16. But over the past three years, the company has intensified and extended its commitment to this stalwart military engine program to ensure the F110-GE-129 continues to give U.S. Air Force pilots the power and reliability they need to complete the mission and come home safely. That commitment goes beyond reliability and performance alone — it’s about delivering at the speed and scale…

Last week, Kyrgyzstan’s parliament, the Zhogorku Kenesh, officially set a date for the next presidential election: January 27, 2027. The country’s Central Election Commission (CEC) then opened the door for formal nominations. So far, incumbent President Sadyr Japarov and Omurbek Suvanaliev – a politician and former minister of internal affairs – have announced their intentions to run.  In August, Japarov announced that he would seek a second term, something his political surrogates have been floating for some time. Japarov was elected, formally, in January 2021 after rising from literal prison to power amid the October 2020 unrest. At the time,…

WASHINGTON — The Navy has chosen Boeing over Northrop Grumman to build its sixth-generation strike fighter, dubbed F/A-XX, two sources told Breaking Defense ahead of the formal announcement. The selection locks Boeing in as the sole supplier of sixth-generation fighters for the US. In March 2025, Boeing won the right to develop and produce the Air Force’s next-gen fighter, dubbed the F-47. The two wins collectively mean Boeing has iced out both its biggest competitors — Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman — from the sixth-generation American fighter jet marketplace for the foreseeable future, a shocking turnaround for a firm that…