Defence News Questions and Answers

Answer: C

The weapon is an ASAT (anti-satellite) weapon.

Anti-satellite weapons are designed to destroy or disable satellites. India demonstrated a direct-ascent ASAT missile in Mission Shakti on 27 March 2019, destroying a satellite in low earth orbit.

IRS is the Indian Remote Sensing satellite series, HAMSAT an amateur radio satellite, and SARAL an Indo-French satellite for ocean altimetry. All three are satellites, not weapons against them.

Answer: C

The BSF guards the borders with Pakistan and Bangladesh.

The Border Security Force, raised in 1965 after the war with Pakistan, is the border guarding force for India's land frontiers with Pakistan and Bangladesh, in peace time. It is the largest border guarding force in the world.

The borders with Nepal and Bhutan are guarded by the Sashastra Seema Bal (SSB), and the border with China by the Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP). The Myanmar border is guarded by the Assam Rifles. So every option pairing Pakistan with Nepal, Bhutan or China is wrong.

Answer: A

Operation Namaste is associated with the Indian Army.

The Indian Army launched Operation Namaste in March 2020 to protect its personnel from COVID-19 and to support the civil administration in fighting the pandemic, with measures such as quarantine facilities and helplines.

The Navy's pandemic evacuation effort was Operation Samudra Setu, not Namaste. The Air Force and the Border Security Force are not linked with the name.

Answer: A

Operation Namaste is associated with the Indian Army.

The Indian Army launched Operation Namaste in March 2020 to protect its personnel from COVID-19 and to support the civil administration in fighting the pandemic, including setting up quarantine facilities.

The Indian Navy's pandemic operation of the same period was Samudra Setu, for bringing Indian citizens home by sea. The Air Force and the Border Security Force did not run an operation by this name.

Answer: D

Statements 1 and 2 are true, so the answer is 1 and 2 only.

Agni-5 is a nuclear-capable, three-stage, solid-fuel surface-to-surface missile with a range of over 5,000 km, which India describes as an intercontinental ballistic missile (1). For guidance it carries a ring laser gyro based inertial navigation system (RINS) (2).

Statement 3 is false: Agni-5 also has a highly accurate micro navigation system (MINS), which, along with RINS, keeps the missile on course to the target. So any option containing 3 is wrong, and '1, 2 and 3' fails with it.

Answer: C

'Dragon drones' are combat drones capable of dispensing molten thermite onto enemy targets.

The name comes from footage in the Russia-Ukraine war, where drones released a shower of burning thermite, an incendiary mix of aluminium powder and iron oxide that burns at well over 2,000 °C, over trees and positions. The falling stream of molten metal looks like a dragon breathing fire.

They are weapons, not cargo, surveillance or filming drones, which rules out the other three descriptions.

Answer: D

All four statements are correct: 1, 2, 3 and 4.

Zorawar is a light tank of about 25 tonnes developed by DRDO's Combat Vehicles Research and Development Establishment together with Larsen & Toubro. It was designed after the 2020 stand-off in eastern Ladakh for mountain warfare, where heavy main battle tanks of 45 tonnes or more are hard to move and deploy.

Its low weight is the point of the design: it can be moved by road, rail and sea, and airlifted by transport aircraft to high-altitude airfields in Ladakh and the Northeast.

Answer: A

The gun criticised was the Dhanush.

Dhanush is a 155 mm towed howitzer developed by the Ordnance Factory Board, based on the Bofors design. In 2017 the CBI registered a case after it emerged that a part (wire race rollers) supplied as German-made had in fact been made in China, raising questions about components used in the gun.

The Bofors FH-77B is the Swedish gun of the 1980s. The AK-47 is a rifle, not artillery. The M-777 is a light howitzer bought from the USA and BAE Systems, and was not the subject of this complaint.

Answer: A

Garud Shakti-24 was held between India and Indonesia.

Garud Shakti is the joint special forces exercise of the Indian Army and the Indonesian Army's special forces (Kopassus). The 2024 edition was held in November 2024 in Jakarta, Indonesia.

India's exercises with the other countries have different names: Surya Kiran with Nepal, Mitra Shakti with Sri Lanka and Dustlik with Uzbekistan.

Answer: D

The submarine is INS Arihant.

INS Arihant is India's first indigenously built nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarine (SSBN), built under the Advanced Technology Vessel project at Visakhapatnam. It was quietly commissioned in August 2016, giving India the sea leg of its nuclear triad.

INS Vikramaditya is an aircraft carrier bought from Russia, INS Viraat was an aircraft carrier from Britain (retired in 2017), and INS Sindhurakshak was a Russian-built diesel-electric submarine lost in a 2013 explosion.