National Defence University News

The perception that Indian Ocean is India's "backyard" may result in clashes, Chinese military officials and experts have cautioned. The Indian Ocean cannot be a backyard of India which navies of other countries could not visit, according the Chinese ministry of defence said. The People's Liberation Army (PLA) Navy expands its profile in the Indian Ocean with recent submarine visits to Sri Lanka and more recently Pakistan. Chinese officials rejects India's concerns by emphasizing its motivations were driven by trade and security and not aimed at India, although with one important caveat: it would be a mistake for New Delhi to consider the ocean's international waters as "its backyard".

The 27th International “What if?” Workshop has brought data farming experts together at the National Defence University in Helsinki, Finland. Data farming is a way to conduct operational analysis through modeling and simulation, high performance computing to build scenarios, and then explore new options for decision makers. The methodology permits planners and decision makers to ask the “what if?” questions to determine the probabilities of various outcomes. The workshop is being attended by representatives from Germany, Sweden, Canada, Turkey, the U.S. and Finland.

The U.S. decision to help Taiwan buy eight diesel submarines will be a boon to the island's navy, enabling it to break any naval blockade imposed by its communist rival China. The submarines will also be a big deterrent to a Chinese attack, and perhaps more importantly, analysts say, they will give Taiwan's navy an offensive capability. "I think the decision to sell us eight submarines is a very exciting development," said military affairs academic and commentator Holmes Liao. U.S. President George W. Bush put off a possible sale of the Aegis naval air defense system to Taiwan on Monday, but offered Taiwan four Kidd-class destroyers, a dozen P-3 "Orion" submarine hunter aircraft and eight diesel submarines built in Europe.