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NEW DELHI: With active help from China and North Korea, Pakistan has surged well ahead of India in the missile arena. The only nuclear-capable ballistic missile in India's arsenal which can be said to be 100% operational as of now is the short-range Prithvi missile. Though the 700-km Agni-I and 2,000-km-plus Agni-II ballistic missiles are being "inducted" into the armed forces, it will take "some time" for them to become "fully-operational in the numbers required". Defence sources said the armed forces were still in the process of undertaking the "training trials" of Agni-I and Agni-II to give them the requisite capabilities to fire them on their own. Of the two, the progress report of Agni-I, tested for the first time in January 2002 to plug the operational gap between Prithvi (150-350 km) and Agni-II missiles, is much better. The Army has already conducted two "user training trials", one in October 2007 and other in March 2008,...

NEW DELHI: The Indian Army's endeavour to induct the BrahMos supersonic cruise missile as "a precision-strike weapon" took a hit on Tuesday, with the missile failing to achieve laid-down parameters in a test. This comes at a time when the Pakistan Army is galloping ahead in inducting its nuclear-capable Babur land-attack cruise missile (LACM) - developed with China's help to have a strike range of over 500 km - in large numbers into its arsenal. Initially, the BrahMos LACM test from the Pokhran field firing range at 10.23am on Tuesday was touted as "successful" by defence ministry officials. But later in the day, this newspaper learnt that it had been quite unsuccessful. Top defence officials were, however, still reluctant to dub the test, which was witnessed by Army chief General Deepak Kapoor, as "a complete failure". "BrahMos is a unique missile, which has been tested flawlessly almost 20 times till now. On Tuesday, we were test-firing it ...

WHO CAN UNITE THE NATION ? Terrorist attacks in our bazaars, the violence against Biharis in Mumbai, the Naxalite uprisings, religious strife in Orissa, the list goes on: India is being torn apart . We need strong leadership to bring Indians together to protect our collective national interests. But our political system is dysfunctional and our most important institutions are failing . Our best hope is that a great political leader emerges to build trust across various interest groups and knits our country together. India is a deeply fractured country today . We are divided by state, religion, caste, community, language, forwards vs. backwards, left vs. right, secular vs. communal, promoters vs. workers, and on and on. Tossed about among all these divisive interest groups, the Indian state is floundering . Each interest group seeks to capture the state apparatus to serve its narrow demands ranging from getting hundreds of SEZs approved to reserving seats at higher educational instituti...