Nato Offers Missile Defence Cooperation To India

 

In a move that holds great strategic significance, Nato has offered to share its missile defence technology with India to build its capability to shoot down incoming enemy missiles, realising the commonality of threats faced by the 28-nation grouping and South Asia's pre-eminent power.

India, thus, becomes the only nation, apart from Russia, outside of the Nato that the US-led military alliance is willing to work in the critical missile defence technology sector.

The Nato missile defence project, launched in May 2001, aims to work with member-countries to meet the group's responsibility of defending itself from missile attacks. India too is in the process of developing its own ballistic missile defence system based on its Prithvi ballistic missile platform considering the missile threats it faces from rivals in the region.

"You (India) have a missile threat that confronts you. We (Nato) have a missile threat that confronts us. Our need to defend against these missile threats might be the same," a senior Nato official told a group of Indian journalists on a visit to the group's headquarters here.

Asked to specify the area that Nato can cooperate with India on missile defence, the official, who did not wish to be named, said: "One will be in the technology of defence."
 

 

 

The official noted that the threats that India and Nato faced may come from different directions and Nato doesn't necessarily see the threats that India sees.

"Because your strategic situation is different from ours. But the technology of discovering and intercepting missiles is the same," he said.

However, he admitted that the cooperation will have to be led by the Americans. The US has an advanced Ballistic Missile Defence (BMD) development project than any other member-nation in the Nato, though India has equally robust bilateral relations with most of them including France and United Kingdom.

"The fact is it is more Indo-US than Nato-Indian relationship. But we are getting into ballistic missile defence in a pretty big way. As a result, there is a repository of knowledge that we can share and we can train together. There are experiences that we can talk about," the official said.

India's BMD programme, launched in the middle of the previous decade, is a two-tiered shield system consisting of two interceptor missiles -- the Prithvi Air Defence (PAD) missile for high altitude interception, and the Advanced Air Defence (AAD) missile for lower altitude interception. It tested the PAD for the first time in November 2006 and the AAD in December 2007.

With these tests, India became the fourth country to have successfully tested the anti-missile system after the US, Russia and Israel. However, the Indian BMD, mainly focusing to counter missiles with less than 5,000-km range, is far from being perfected and further tests of the BMD system are being planned.

The US has a multiple-missile threat defence system called the National Missile Defence (NMD) intended to shield an entire country against incoming missiles, such as intercontinental ballistic missiles of over 7,500-km range and other shorter range ballistic missiles.

Nato is conducting three missile defence-related activities -- theatre ballistic missile defence capability for short- and medium-range ballistic missile threats, missile defence for the entire Nato territory, and missile defence cooperation with Russia.

The Nato-Russian cooperation is a by-product of the group expanding its membership post-Cold War beginning 1989, to make allies out of former enemies from the Warsaw Pact countries such as Poland and Czech Republic.

The Times Of India

NATO And India Would Work Together For Busting Chinese Hackers

Faced with a common cyber security threat from Chinese hackers, NATO is eyeing India as an ally in securing its computers that hold sensitive information and data against malware and Trojan viruses.

With US already signing a cyber security collaboration pact with India this July, the 28-nation American-led political and military alliance is of the view that it can collaborate with the South Asian information technology superpower in protecting the cyber world, one of the global commons.
"You have one of the most advanced cyber industries in the world... and information technology industries. The issue of cyber security is one that affects the United States, NATO and India no matter whether we are aligned or non-aligned," a senior NATO official told IANS at the alliance's headquarters here.

"The cyber world doesn't recognise alignments. It only recognises switches and servers. As a result, we are in this cyber world together, whether we like it or not.

"We better figure out a way to cooperate, particularly since it does matter that you have a neighbour (country) next door, which is pretty much involved in cyber issues, even far away. Because in the cyber world, we are equally close," the official, who did not want to be identified because of the organisation's rules, said.

Although he did not name any of India's neighbours, it was clear he was referring to China, which is suspected of being behind spy software attacks on American, NATO, Indian and Tibetan computers in the last half-a-decade, stealing highly classified military and security data.

In 2009, an investigation by Information Warfare Monitor (IWM) comprising researchers from Ottawa-based think-tank, SecDev Group, and the Munk Centre for International Studies at the University of Toronto, had blamed a spy network of Chinese hackers, called GhostNet, to have breached the firewalls of computers of NATO and other countries, including that of Tibetan leader Dalai Lama.
Their 2010 report claimed that major Indian defence establishments, including the Institute of Defence Studies and Analyses, National Security Council Secretariat, National Maritime Foundation, and armed forces units were targeted and secret presentations on weapons systems stolen by Chinese hackers.

A cyber security report earlier this year had suggested that the worldwide web-based attacks in 2010 were up 93 per cent from 2009.

As recently as July this year, 'Anonymous' hackers had targeted NATO in a cyber attack.
Just a month ahead of the latest attack, NATO had decided to create a special task force to detect and respond to such attacks by beefing up its cyber defence capabilities.

Its 2010 summit in Lisbon too recognised the growing sophistication of cyber attacks and set policies for the alliance to cooperation with partner countries.

NATO has already spelt out its intention of having India as a political and military partner country, considering its growing stature as a regional power.

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Taliban Attacks on Afghan Nato helicopter

At least one person was killed and eight wounded when a rocket-propelled-grenade was fired at a Nato helicopter in Afghanistan, Nato officials say.
They say that the Chinook helicopter had just landed in the eastern province of Kunar and was off-loading when it was hit through its cargo bay.

The attack by the Taliban killed an Afghan interpreter and wounded seven Nato soldiers and an Afghan policeman.

Correspondents say that an attack such as this is rare in Afghanistan.

It is certain to raise questions about security at the Kunar base.

A Nato statement said the landing site had now been secured by troops.


There were about 26 people on board at the time of the attack.

Vigilance Sky 2011

War between Russia and NATO have conducted the first phase of joint exercises Vigilance heaven – 2011 “, during which the Russian aviation” intercepted “Polish veno-transport plane, conventionally captured terrorists

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