PM Cameron in India to increase trade and after major defence contract
Seeking to build “one of the great partnerships” of the 21st century, British Prime Minister David Cameron begins a three-day official visit to India on Monday during which he will meet his counterpart Manmohan Singh and discuss issues of common interest.
PM Cameron arrives in the middle of a major helicopter purchase scandal involving Augusta-Westland for which the Indian government has requested London’s help. He will also try to convince India to purchase the Eurofighter Typhoon, a defence order in the range of 15bn dollars and with France as the main competitor.
Accompanied by a high-level business delegation of over 100 representatives, Cameron will arrive in Mumbai, where his programs include a visit to Hindustan Unilever headquarters, a business interaction at Taj Palace Hotel, a visit to St Xavier School and laying a wreath at the Police Memorial.
Cameron will hold discussions with Prime Minister Singh in New Delhi on February 19 and discuss bilateral and global issues of common interest. He will also call on President Pranab Mukherjee on the same day. The British Prime Minister last visited India in July 2010.
His visit to India comes on the heels of a visit by French President Francois Hollande to drum up trade and bilateral relations. Hollande and Manmohan Singh failed to finalize the 14bn deal to buy 126 French Dassault Rafale fighters. The UK delegation includes defense manufacturers such as BAE Systems, which helps make the Eurofighter jet, EADS UK, Rolls Royce and Thales UK.
Ahead of his visit, Cameron said that he wanted the relationship between India and the UK to be “one of the great partnerships of the 21st century”.
Cameron's delegation will include representatives of Small and Medium enterprises. British retailers are keen to increase their presence in India and executives from the Tesco supermarket chain, Britain's biggest retailer which already has a joint venture in India, are expected to accompany him.
The Prime Minister is confident that he will reach the goal of doubling Britain's trade with India from 11.5 billion pounds in 2010 to 23 billion pounds by 2015.
Cameron will also use the trip to correct any misunderstandings about his government's drive to bring immigration numbers under control amid concerns that Indian students could be deterred from applying to study in Britain.
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“India has lots of available cash”
Actually it doesn't. Many people assume India is in the same path as China and that is far from true.
India doesn't have lots of cash. Indeed it is almost as broke as some European countries. It is running a MASSIVE trade deficit. It's government spends a lot more than it earns and so its debt is increasing.
Its government debt to GDP is at 70% (the same as Brazil's). It has high inflation which it can't control and growth has tanked on the last few years, going from nearly 10% to just above 5%. Such low growth is not enough to lift people out of poverty or provide employment to school leavers.
Indian companies are buying up overseas because they cannot grow in their domestic market.
India has a lot of potential unfortunately it also has the Indian government.
We MIGHT be selling Brazil the Type 26, nothing concrete has been signed and BAE is in competition with a FREMM offering from Italy, France will have a stake in that too.
They only bought those OPVs because Trinidad and Tobago terminated the contract and BAE wanted them gone so the price was dirt cheap.
The future may well be in drones but the kudos rests with the military and the Indian Government.
Never underestimate that.
@4 Very true.
@6 Unmanned fighters are still a looong way off.
Will fighters not be needed to shoot down drones?
Typhoons go for £65m+ a go, whereas Rafales are only about £55m for the land-based variant and £60m for the carrier-based one.
As far as fighter drones are concerned, I'd be imagining them succeeding from the current generation of aircraft when they are retired (bearing in mind that the US is planning on building the F-35 all the way through to 2035, so they'll probably still be servicable for a decate or so beyond that) so that should be sometime around 2050.
Although I won't hold my breath, just looking at scientific “journalism”, it's not so much a science as an art (or a wild guess, if you prefer). Usable (i.e. energy generating) nuclear fusion has been about thirty years away from being practical for about the last thirty years. It's still thirty years away...
Would you send a current type manned super expensive fighter jet into a sky saturated with much cheaper drones armed with air to air missiles?
The entire aerial battlefield is changing - the Americans have said that the current F22 & F35 will be the last in their class.
As for a manned interceptor - I doubt it would last against a far larger enemy force with air to air capability even if it did manage to take out a few. Most of the battle advantage relates to the sophistication of the missile rather than the plane or pilot already.
Conqueror: You are very, very much wrong regarding drones and artificial intelligence.
The US military has been working on artificial intelligence for decades. They've even made an A.I. into World of Warcraft and passed it off as a human successfully.
Both the US and UK have or at least will have very soon unmanned fighter jets designed for combat. They are not slow or unresponsive.
The UK drone can also defend itself without a human flying it.
500 years? it's already here.
These new drones are in some ways superior to manned jets already:
1. There is no need for any life support functions.
2. They do not need a screen for a pilot to view out of and due to this are MUCH more stealthy
3.They can pull off maneuvers that would, to be frank turn any human pilot into jam.
4. The radar and switch to send that air to air missile can be piloted from anywhere across the globe without any risk of the pilot you just spent millions training of being vaporized
5. They are much cheaper than normal attack jets.
6. Because of the lack of need of life support functions, these drones can already fly half way across the world without need to refuel and such things. They have amazing range.
It is for the 'pilots' of the drones! Can you fucking believe it?
www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/9873745/Veterans-attack-boneheaded-medal-for-drone-pilots.html
I have no idea what the US Military General Staff think they are doing other than making a laughing stock of REAL soldiers.
A Distinguished Warfare Medal for operating a cutting edge arcade game with about as much risk to the pilot. FFS!
I bet none of the 'heroes' ever wear it to a real parade with REAL HEROES.
so lets hope he does better this time,
but it still does not exyse the fact we have given over a billion in aid, to a country which is a nuclear power and have a space program,
this should be stopped,
besides some thing he should be home concentrating on the by election he is about to lose .?
“Would you send a current type manned super expensive fighter jet into a sky saturated with much cheaper drones armed with air to air missiles?”
My first question.....:
Would you send a current type manned super expensive Aircraft Carrier into a sea saturated with much cheaper drones armed with supercavitation torpedoes?
My second question would be.....:
Would you send a current type manned super expensive Atomic submarine into a sea saturated with much cheaper drones armed with supercavitation torpedoes?
My final question is....:
Does anybody know a Country currently using hunders of billions of £££
developing, constructing and manning super expensive Aircraft Carriers and super expensive Atomic Submarines?
Chuckle chuckle
Maginot Line version 2.0
But some think this is bad, considering that France is about to cut back on money for its military,
Perhaps some should understand that military on the cheap never works,
And drones [relatively cheap] compared to some other military items, may not be all to end all,
Nothing, at least this side of next century will replace boots on the ground,
Besides it has also been reported that the Americans are already testing lasers on their ships,
The future may or may not be bright,
But drones have a long way to go, before they replace humans I think.
Just a thought.
.
“a sky saturated with much cheaper drones armed with air to air missiles”
they would be fighter drones...which are a long, long way off.
AI or UAV, air superiority will be in the hands of human pilots even if that means flying a giant hybrid-zeppelin armed with thousands of air-to-air missiles and a giant butterfly net to scoop up swarms of cheap drones.
Just think how long we have had the technology to make remote control boats, yet the seas aren't at the mercy of shoals of UNVs.
I suppose guided missiles are UAVs of sorts, so in that sense they are already a crucial part of the armory.
Would you send a man with a gun across a field where somebody's drone had seeded lots of little pressure-ignited bomblets and peasants had strung a bit of razorwire?
Low-tech discourages but it does not stop armies of real people,
and fast patrol boats merely discourage subs and carrier task-forces.
I guess the combatants with the most sophisticated weaponry - skilled human beings with trained brains - generally do pretty good.
A drone without a worker is just an aimless drone.
The real skill is in the deployment of the workers, not the drones.
But as the Queen says “I need workers AND drones; a million years of evolution can't be wrong!”
You ask:
“Would you send a current type manned super expensive Aircraft Carrier into a sea saturated with much cheaper drones armed with supercavitation torpedoes?”
You will find that a carrier always goes at the heart of flotilla, protected above and below. So sweeping up “cheap drones” would not be the task of a carrier.
Would you send a current type manned super expensive Aircraft Carrier into a sea saturated with much cheaper drones armed with supercavitation torpedoes?
My second question would be.....:
Would you send a current type manned super expensive Atomic submarine into a sea saturated with much cheaper drones armed with supercavitation torpedoes?
So dickhead who is driving these drones then, how do you drive a drone submarine underwater? without being next to it, how do you target for these supercavitation torpedoes? Whats the speed of the most sophisticated drone 400 knots? How are you going to find the said super expensive submarines, (they can't now so how is a drone) stop talking shite and believing your x box you bellend
“Allow me to disagree completely….
In 1997 I could beat a good chess computer.
In 1999 I could manage to draw. (if lucky)
In 2001 I didn’t even bother anymore.
In 2010, a gratis smart phone chess App could pulverize 1,000 Grand Masters in a mater of namoseconds.
A. I. is a Yotta-million fold superior to human idiocy in such a primitive game as War.
No question about that.....
How pathetic this guy (Camoron). Desperate to sell something because we all know the UK DOES NOT GROW, economy is SHRINKING and sucking up to the people of India, who don't want to buy their (in partnership with the Germans..aka Eurofighter) crappy airplane.
Drones are for now the so called future, but not for long and let's be honest about the so called F35, it's a flop and many governments so called “allies” of the US are thinking more than twice to buy it.
Don't need to.
It's Argentinean.
Tender and juicy....
So you are about as good at chess as me. My 9 year old could beat my smart phone chess app on level 2 last year, this year he can beat it on level 3. Have no fear of the Matrix, we will always out smart machines.
Chess is rule based with a finite number of scenarios. Real conflict is not. No question about that....
@31 We'll see and once again you will be shot down. The F35 has more orders than any aircraft in the world. 2nd The Eurofighter so eat shit and fook off
Evidently, you know nothing about Chess...
The Russians swarmed the Germans with T34s (though it turned out to be a good tank too) and the Chinese swarmed into Korea to force the current armistice against a technologically far superior USA and allies at the time. While the Americans would destroy Iran they may pay a higher price than anticipated. I'd expect the Iranians to conduct a swarm preemptive strike when war is imminent hoping to force a political settlement.
People above claiming manned fighters would turn a battle against UAVs into a turkey shoot seem to be describing a Battle of Britain type scenario for dogfighting. UAVs would simply not fight within those parameters. Air to air combat is mainly fought beyond visual range and a pilot heading for one might find having several others independently targeting them simultaneously might be difficult to defeat. They aren't all going to wait in line for one on one combat. I am not aware of any that are currently operational but you do wonder what American X projects have been developing in the last few years. Considering the stealth “fighter” and later bomber were developed in the 70's and 80's what have they been working on in the two decades since? They aren't allowed to weaponise space but what about extreme altitude UAVs bristling with anti aircraft missiles?
Manned aircraft are already second choice to be used only if a UAV can't perform the task. The anti aircraft role is clearly the next development.
We'll only find out when the chips are down and they are required to be used.
I said:
“Chess is rule based with a finite number of scenarios.”
You said:
”(33) Condorito
Evidently, you know nothing about Chess...”
...
I'll expand:
There are internationally agreed rules (ask Fédération Internationale des Échecs (FIDE) for more details) and there are 10 to the power 120 possible games (i.e. finite).
Rules and finite.
Stink know's nothing about anything bless him
“A. I. is a Yotta-million fold superior to human idiocy in such a primitive game as War.”
'The Skynet Funding Bill is passed.
The system goes on-line August 4th, 1997.
Human decisions are removed from strategic defense.
Skynet begins to learn at a geometric rate.
It becomes self-aware at 2:14 a.m. Eastern time, August 29th.
In a panic,
... they try to pull the plug. '
Think, it's not really true, it was a movie.
Even The Matrix wasn't real ... honest.
Why wouldn't they use exactly the same systems for an integrated UAV platform? The reaper could carry that weight so why can't an AA UAV? ...and as every Harrier pilot will tell you - speed isn't everything. Yes one on one would be advantage to the fighter jet but UAVs would simply not be used like that.
And you know even less about war......
(44) GeoffWard2
Give me some credit, laddie.....
I'm not a Waco or a Conspirationist.....
Not at all !!!
No Way!!!
Besides.....
Did you know that Neo's Passport expired on the 09-11-2001?
;-)))
Says the person who asks the questions @19.
www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/iran/9486815/Little-boat-big-danger-how-a-British-made-speedboat-has-become-a-weapon-in-Irans-standoff-with-the-US.html
While I'm sure the subs are perfectly safe there is a risk to the surface fleet. In recent conflicts surprise has been sacrificed in favour international protocols so nations have had fair warning they are going to come under attack. Would Iran wait until their command and control has been destroyed before releasing whatever capability they have?
Don't forget their shiny new stealth fighter, which is so invisible in flight that you need photoshop to see it...
www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/iran/9866347/Irans-flight-of-fancy-as-image-of-new-fighter-jet-is-faked.html
Even the genuine picture of it at its unveiling made it look like and undersized toy model that could never fly. The Iranians aren't stupid - or at least no more stupid than anyone else - so I can't quite work out what their game is with that nonsense.
Maybe it's another of those “for domestic consumption” ploys?
Why do posters keep harping on about a manned combat aircraft against a single unmanned UAV/Drone?
Just look at our first attempt at a unmanned fighter jet, Taranis. It's a supersonic stealth jet that can(if testing goes well) fly, avoid potential threats and even seek out targets for itself then land, it only requires a human to press fire. The X-47B during tests is said to have preformed outstandingly and has shown the US Navy that unmanned drones will be able to take off and land on carriers completely and is scheduled to attempt autonomous aerial refueling.
This is in just over a decade of development and has been very cheap.
It is absolutely the way forward and they are much, much further ahead than you guys seem to think.
“MiG Skat”
Seriously......? That thing is a pile of crap.
Quite why northern hemisphire countries refuse to follow the CFK/Argentine model is beyond me.
Nobody should use the manless drone, she is the president of Argentina ffs.
Nobody should use the manless drone, she is the president of Argentina ffs.
LOL good one
Man less drone !!
LOL
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