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July 2010 Issue |
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The issue in your hand celebrates the success of the Light Combat Helicopter which recently had its first public flight. There are many good things about the LCH: the IAF as a user is happy. It is also hopeful that this machine learns a lot from in-house expertise. It is the first indigenous effort to make an attack helicopter in a low-weight category, and there are reasons to believe that it will meet the timelines for induction into service. We requested former IAF chief, Air Chief Marshal F.H. Major, FORCE’s aerospace editor, who lives in Bangalore and was present during the LCH maiden flight ceremony, to write the opening article for the issue. His impressions are important as he is a distinguished helicopter pilot. We are also fortunate to get the Chairman, HAL, Ashok Nayak and the Vice-Chief of Air Staff, Air Marshal P.K. Barbora to comment on the LCH. I hope the coverage on the LCH will be read with interest.
Another highpoint of this issue is the profile of the new Chief of Army Staff, General V.K. Singh. While interviewing a service chief is one thing (which we will do for the July issue), introducing the person he is, out of uniform in a more relaxed ambience, is quite another. FORCE is lucky to be the only defence magazine to have profiled nearly all service chiefs since 2003. This month, we also bring a few reports on a spate of visits by FORCE journalists to global defence establishments. FORCE visited MBDA facilities in France, Airbus Military production units in Spain, and Lockheed Martin’s Fort Worth establishment in the US. We find these visits extremely useful for three reasons: One, through FORCE reports, our readers get first hand impressions of the facilities. Two, the visits enable FORCE journalists to acquire a perspective which helps in reporting. And three, these are opportunities to meet senior officials of global companies and learn about their successful business strategies. We have also covered homeland security in this issue. While this is both a vast subject and with immediacy, this month we have focussed on a few global defence industries who are seeking a foothold in the Indian security market. Some of their wares are indeed interesting and of great relevance.
This month we have increased our coverage of industry news. This has been spurred by the barrage of news release that comes to us from various professional agencies hired mostly by global defence companies. We certainly wait for the readers’ response on how much news interests them in each issue. On this note, happy reading. |
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