Indonesia Defence Forum

[Reashot Xigwin]

Army to build road along
border in Kalimantan
Nani Afrida, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta | National | Wed, April 29 2015, 6:07 AM

National News
The Army will deploy personnel to the border between Indonesia and Malaysia to take part in a road construction project that will connect areas along the border.

“The Army personnel will be deployed soon. Meanwhile, we have delivered the needed heavy equipment to the area to speed up construction,” Army spokesman Brig. Gen. Wuryanto said.

Wuryanto said that the road would be 249 kilometers long and connect areas in West and North Kalimantan.

In West Kalimantan, soldiers will construct 171 km of the road, while in North Kalimantan soldiers will complete a project on a 78-km section of the road.

“We expect the road project to be completed this year,” he said.

Earlier on Monday, the Public Works and Public Housing Ministry and the Army signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) that would allow the Army to take part in the construction project.

The ministry has allocated Rp 499 billion (US$38.5 million) for the project.

Public Works and Public Housing Minister Basuki Hadimuljono said the road project had met no significant hurdles with regard to carrying out a construction project in protected forests.

He also said that the project had not been faced with land-clearing issues.

According to Basuki, the 249-km section of the road to be constructed by the Army would be part of a 1,583-km road to be opened within the next three years in Kalimantan.

Basuki said the project would likely meet problems as about 600 km of the road would be constructed in a virgin forest.

The project in Kalimantan is part of a national project that will also be carried out in border regions in East Nusa Tenggara (NTT) and Papua.

Basuki said the government had earmarked Rp 2 trillion to build roads in the border areas in Kalimantan, Papua and NTT in 2015.

“The biggest chunk is for Kalimantan with Rp 1.1 trillion,” Basuki said.

Wuryanto said that for the construction project in Kalimantan, the Army would deploy six battalion. Also taking part in the project are personnel from the Tanjung Pura and Mulawarman Military Command headquarters.

Army chief of staff Gen. Gatot Nurmantyo has pledged that soldiers will work hard to complete the project.

“Border areas in Kalimantan mean a lot to Indonesia’s defense and security. Besides, the area is a gate for economic activities with our neighbor, Malaysia,” Gatot said.

According to Gatot, economic conditions in Kalimantan’s border area should improve once the road construction project is complete.

The MoU is the first between the military and Public Works and Public Housing Ministry. The military previously signed deals with the Transportation Ministry, Law and Human Rights Ministry and Religious Affairs Ministry.

In early April, the military struck a deal with the Religious Affairs Ministry to carry out a joint campaign to stop radicalism, including the spread of the Islamic State (IS) movement in the country.

The military has also signed a deal with the Law and Human Rights Ministry that would allow the military to deploy personnel to guard prisons throughout the country as the ministry has run short of qualified prison guards.

See more at: Army to build road along border in Kalimantan | The Jakarta Post

 

[Taygibay]

this guy is Silmy Karim CEO of PT PINDAD, arm makers company in Indonesia including small arms and infantry support system

Do we know where the picture was taken milady? I wouldn't be surprised by SOFINS
[VIDEO] SOFINS, l’innovation au service des forces spéciales
It's a Special Forces defense market that was held from the 14 to 16th near Bordeaux.

In any case, FELIN is the most complete already functioning system of the type.
Interest in it especially from your very active defense industry would be no surprise
especially considering the good relations between both nations in that sector.

Have a great day, Tay.

 

[Reashot Xigwin]

Indonesia commits to ambitious defence budget increase
Posted by Maki Catama on 4:35 AM

The Indonesian Air Force Sukhoi Su-27 and Su-30 MK2 Fighter Jets.

JAKARTA, -- Indonesia's House of Representatives (DPR) announced on 28 April a commitment to support government efforts to increase the country's defence budget to IDR200 trillion (USD15 billion) by 2020. The target is around double the IDR100 billion allocated to defence in 2015.

In comments published by the state-run Antara news agency, Ahmad Hanafi Rais, the vice chairman of the DPR's defence commission, said the commitment is in line with the government's stated pledge to increase military spending as a proportion of GDP from the existing 0.8% to 1.5%.

He added that the funds will be sourced from the state budget and will support an emphasis on military procurement in order to strengthen Indonesian territorial defence and security. Rais added: "This is our commitment to support the military to become better, stronger and more professional."

The DPR's commitment also conforms to a government pledge to reduce its part dependency on sourcing military procurement funds from export credit, loans, and military aid. Such fiscal mechanisms have long supported Indonesia's defence acquisitions and have been required to overcome the country's traditional shortfall in spending.

 

[Nike]

Joko Widodo had visited Dock Kodja Bahari and asking the ministry of State owned Enterprise to reform and enlarged the facilities there, in this picture Indonesian Navy order of LST 02 is in progress

left side from the picture bellow is actually an LST 02

 

[Nike]

amphibious version of Anoa credit to original uploader

 

[Nike]

amphibious version of Anoa credit to original uploader

View attachment 217822

 

[pr1v4t33r]

Indonesia’s foreign policy : A thousand jilted friends

WHEN Joko Widodo came to power last year, he promised to be decisive and to stand up for Indonesia. On April 29th he seemed to fulfil both promises when Indonesia went ahead with the executions of eight convicted drug-smugglers, all but one of them foreign.

Their fates, which hung on the pen of the president, have strained Indonesia’s foreign relations. Australia has snapped, withdrawing its ambassador, for now (see article). The executions may throw light on how Jokowi, as he is known, intends to conduct his foreign policy. If so, he risks damage to Indonesia’s international standing. Only a few months ago, pundits said the chief risk under Jokowi was that handling foreign matters would hardly feature at all.

In terms of its population (250m) and its economy ($870 billion), Indonesia is the giant of South-East Asia. But geographically disparate, chronically underdeveloped and wracked by political instability after the fall of Suharto in 1998, it has punched below its weight diplomatically. That began to change under Jokowi’s predecessor, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono. Indonesia joined the G20, took an increasingly assertive role in climate-change talks and encouraged pluralism among developing countries at the Bali Democracy Forum. Indonesia assumed a larger role within the often dithering ten-country Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN). Other members welcomed it.

Mr Yudhoyono pursued a foreign policy of “a thousand friends and zero enemies”. By the end, it came to look less like an expression of universal goodwill than an excuse to avoid hard choices. Still, Indonesia began to play a role on the world stage that was more commensurate with its size. Mr Yudhoyono seemed a foreign-affairs heavyweight compared with Jokowi, a former mayor with no foreign-policy experience.

Yet even before the latest executions (Mr Yudhoyono introduced a moratorium on capital punishment), Jokowi had signalled a break with the past. He abandoned the “thousand friends” policy after returning from his first foreign trip as president. He said that he would favour those countries “who give the most benefit to the people. What’s the point of having many friends if we only get the disadvantages?”

Closest to home, the approach entails a more hard-nosed view of ASEAN. Rizal Sukma, a Jokowi foreign-policy adviser and a one-time advocate of Indonesia playing a more assertive regional role, says that whereas Indonesia once called ASEAN “the cornerstone of our foreign policy, now we change it to a cornerstone”. An ambassador in Jakarta says Jokowi would like ASEAN to be “a place where he can get business done”. He seems to have little patience for its consensual, process-driven flummery.

Executing justice: charting the world's most enthusiastic death penalty practitioners

If that counts as a kind of assertiveness, then it is on display along with another aspect of what is presented as Jokowi’s foreign policy, his new “maritime doctrine”. Millions of Indonesians live off the sea, mainly from fishing, while much of the vast archipelago’s trade moves by sea. Jokowi wants to spread prosperity by making fisheries more productive, assert control over Indonesia’s sovereign waters and build marine infrastructure to help bring Indonesia’s poor and far-flung eastern islands into Java’s relatively prosperous orbit. But that entails a crackdown on illegal fishing by other countries’ vessels—as many as 5,000 a day, according to the president. Indonesia has few working patrol boats. Jokowi has promised to boost the naval and coastguard budgets as he doubles the share of GDP spent on defence (to 1.5%) over the next five years.

In the meantime, Jokowi has plumped for theatrical displays of deterrence. Since he took office in October the navy has blown up 30-odd foreign boats fishing illegally, most of them from Thailand or Vietnam. ASEAN neighbours complain about Indonesian shin-kicking. Even an Indonesian foreign-policy hand calls the boat-burning “the act of an insecure power” designed to appeal to a domestic audience.

Indonesia says it has no territorial disputes with China in the South China Sea, unlike Vietnam and the Philippines. But Indonesia would prefer not to pick a fight, even as it hedges its bets by boosting defence ties with Japan, calling for a more visible American military presence and sending more soldiers to its Natunas islands (which China does not claim, but whose waters fall within the “nine-dash line” it has drawn around nearly all of the South China Sea).

Does this add up to a new foreign policy of clear-eyed realism? Regrettably not. It is true that Jokowi cares deeply about a drugs scourge and the damage to national interests caused by illegal fishing. But his prescriptions of executions of drug-traffickers and blowing up fishing boats are more the outward manifestations of a domestic nationalism than anything more considered. Such displays may have to grow less frequent. Having friends counts for something.

http://www.economist.com/news/asia/...edly-different-course-thousand-jilted-friends

 

[Nike]

fixing the picture

 

[pr1v4t33r]

 

[anas_nurhafidz]

For Nepal

Sebanyak 1,6 ton makanan siap saji bantuan TNI untuk korban gempa bumi berkekuatan 7,9 skala richter yang terjadi di Nepal beberapa waktu lalu, telah tiba di Bandara Internasional Tribhuvan, Kathmandu, Nepal, Kamis (30/4/2015). Selain membawa bantuan dari TNI yang merupakan bagian dari 9,1 ton bantuan pemerintah Indonesia, pesawat TNI jenis Boeing 737-400 A-7305 yang dipiloti Letkol Pnb Achmad Zailani juga mengangkut 69 orang Tim Kemanusiaan dan Evakuasi serta bantuan kemanusiaan dari PMI, BNPB, Kemenkes dan Kemenlu.

 

[Reashot Xigwin]

Akhirnya ada berita bhs inggris:

Tank Turret Turns Light Boat Into Deadly Fighter
From the action figure school of design

By Kelsey D. Atherton Posted 14 hours ago
4

X18 Tank Boat

PT.Lundin, used with permission

North Sea Boats’ new X-18 Tank Boat feels like it should be a G.I. Joe toy. The 60-foot long catamaran can travel up rivers, carry a small inflatable boat on its back, and deliver either 20 Marines or Navy SEALs to shore. It also has a tank cannon in a turret on top of the main cabin, and if that isn’t enough, it’s possible to put an automated heavy machine gun turret on top of the tank turret.

Designed for a crew of four, the Tank Boat punches well above its weight. The smaller turret can be outfitted with guns ranging from 7.62 machine guns to 30-mm light cannons, and the bigger guns punch through armored targets up to 3 miles away. The 105-mm cannon can also angle up to 42 degrees, letting it lob explosives over 6 miles. Landing on beaches is never easy, but a landing craft with deadly firepower makes it a lot easier.

Right now, the 18 appears to be just a concept, with small mock-ups appearing at defense trade shows. When asked for more information about the boat, Indonesian defense firm PT Lundin, which owns North Sea Boats, sent along a brochure, so it appears they are at least marketing the idea.

The X18 would hardly be the first tank boat. Starting in the 1930s and going into World War II, Soviet Russia experimented with heavier armed river boats, using already-made tank turrets as the turrets for their riverine vessels. Not just experiments, these ships saw battle, participating in fights on the Black Sea and the Baltic sea. During WWII, the U.S. Navy tried putting tank turrets on landing craft, but found the guns were too heavy and the boat engines too weak. With modern construction techniques, and 70 years of development since, it's unlikely the X18 will have these problems.

http://www.popsci.com/tank-turret-makes-light-boat-deadly-fighter

 

[Zarvan]

The government has made a plan to double defense budget step by step until 2019, and Parliament has also backed that idea, the news can cheer up @Zarvan a little bit Today..........

Finally some good news by the way what is current budget ??

 

[initial_d]

Akhirnya ada berita bhs inggris:

Tank Turret Turns Light Boat Into Deadly Fighter
From the action figure school of design

By Kelsey D. Atherton Posted 14 hours ago
4

X18 Tank Boat

PT.Lundin, used with permission

North Sea Boats’ new X-18 Tank Boat feels like it should be a G.I. Joe toy. The 60-foot long catamaran can travel up rivers, carry a small inflatable boat on its back, and deliver either 20 Marines or Navy SEALs to shore. It also has a tank cannon in a turret on top of the main cabin, and if that isn’t enough, it’s possible to put an automated heavy machine gun turret on top of the tank turret.

Designed for a crew of four, the Tank Boat punches well above its weight. The smaller turret can be outfitted with guns ranging from 7.62 machine guns to 30-mm light cannons, and the bigger guns punch through armored targets up to 3 miles away. The 105-mm cannon can also angle up to 42 degrees, letting it lob explosives over 6 miles. Landing on beaches is never easy, but a landing craft with deadly firepower makes it a lot easier.

Right now, the 18 appears to be just a concept, with small mock-ups appearing at defense trade shows. When asked for more information about the boat, Indonesian defense firm PT Lundin, which owns North Sea Boats, sent along a brochure, so it appears they are at least marketing the idea.

The X18 would hardly be the first tank boat. Starting in the 1930s and going into World War II, Soviet Russia experimented with heavier armed river boats, using already-made tank turrets as the turrets for their riverine vessels. Not just experiments, these ships saw battle, participating in fights on the Black Sea and the Baltic sea. During WWII, the U.S. Navy tried putting tank turrets on landing craft, but found the guns were too heavy and the boat engines too weak. With modern construction techniques, and 70 years of development since, it's unlikely the X18 will have these problems.

http://www.popsci.com/tank-turret-makes-light-boat-deadly-fighter

I like the comando attack boat the army made rather than this

 

[Reashot Xigwin]

Used F-16 jets: A tradeoff
between quality and quantity
Jon Keneddy Ginting, Jakarta | Opinion | Tue, April 28 2015, 6:53 AM
Opinion News

The F-16 jet fighter accident at Halim Perdanakusuma air base recently has again raised questions over the Indonesian Military’s (TNI) choice to acquire used weapon platforms to develop its capability.

Such a query makes sense despite the fact that the concern normally arises right after an accident happens. The TNI has long been exposed to a situation where it has to compromise on two primary issues regarding its capability development: combat effectiveness and force building.

With the defense budget accounting for less than 1 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) for years, as against the current — and growing — defense and security issues, this tradeoff has posed a constant problem to Indonesian and TNI leaders.

Taking the latest accident as an example, a tradeoff had to be made by the TNI and the Indonesian Defense Ministry when in 2010 the US government offered to grant 24 F-16C/D block 25s that had served within the US Air Force (USAF), including in the Gulf War.

At about the same time, the TNI had just established its capability development blueprint known as Minimum Essential Force (MEF), describing what it will achieve in the 15-year timeframe of 2009 to 2024.

The MEF blueprint of the Indonesian Air Force (TNI AU) states that it will need one more fighter squadron to cover the western part of the motherland and also new fighters to replace its aging F-5 Tigers.

To deal with the first, the government was then forced to compromise between achieving a certain level of combat effectiveness and crew proficiency maintenance — as for so long the limited number of aircraft available had been raising an issue other than aerial protection capability: the degrading skill of the crew.

To cope with the combat effectiveness issue, new jet fighters would have been the choice. The TNI AU would have had combat planes with recent technology and capability that would have equaled, if not exceeded, that of our neighboring countries.

However, the quantity of jets acquirable with the defense budget provided would have been at most half a squadron, or six. With that small number, pilots would have to queue just to fly to maintain their flying skills, which is risky from the perspective of aviation safety.

The degrading skill of the crew was then another issue, requiring a different approach. This was what the Defense Ministry thought at that time, with some acceptable considerations.

The more frequently the pilots fly, the higher the skill they will achieve. The higher the skill pilots acquire, the better the combat capability they will bring into aerial warfare, should it happen.

So what about our aircraft capability compared with development of the capability surrounding us?

Well, the reason saying “there will be no open, armed conflict within the next two or three decades” might have appeared acceptable, although it is against the global defense philosophy: “Ci vis pacem para bellum,” meaning “If you wish peace prepare for war.”

The point is the TNI AU and the ministry were in a difficult situation at that time, but they had to choose and move forward.

With some US$400 million (which then increased by $200 million because of the depreciation of the rupiah against the US dollar in 2013), the ministry was exposed to complicated risks inherent in each choice it had to take: having a low quantity of aircraft to cover a very huge aerial territory and subsequently having a lack of crew flying skill on one hand and having a slightly lower capability level than some of our neighboring nations’ on the other hand.

Given the intelligence forecast of a low possibility of warfare in the region within the next decades, the ministry then preferred to bear the latter.

To be honest, there’s nothing wrong with the decision to take the grant. It was the best option among bad ones and after a comprehensive analysis, the ministry and the TNI AU deemed it was the most valid one.

Moreover, a grant doesn’t necessarily mean accepting rubbish or used aircraft. Indonesia spent some $600 million to upgrade the capability of those 24 F-16C/D block 25s so they reach a level of F-16C/D block 52+, by improving their structure through an Airframe Structural Integrity Program, which extends the lifetime of the airframe from 8,000 to 12,000 flying hours, improving systems like avionics, weaponry and many others.

In terms of capability, those F-16s are only slightly different from the Royal Singapore Air Force (RSAF) F-16 block 60+, although that is not an excuse, anyway.

Regarding the US grant, the TNI AU once operated Sikorsky S-58 helicopters granted by the US government in the 1980s until their retirement in 2009 because of the difficulty to find spare parts on the market.

A better example might be the Bell-47G “Soloy” helicopters granted by the Australian Army back in the 1980s, which are still serving today for the TNI AU’s new helicopter pilots at the Suryadarma air base in Kalijati, West Java.

So, rather than resorting to a blame game, which does not offer a solution, let’s be fair. The decision might seem unrealistic today, but it was valid at the time it was made.

As long as it was taken after a comprehensive study, it had to be the best solution for the problem at that time. Today we might still be exposed to the same problem, but with a different situation. We might take a different approach and will very likely end up with a different answer.
____________________

Pilots would have to queue just to fly to maintain their flying skills, which is risky from the perspective of aviation safety.
_____________________

The writer works at the Defense Ministry. The views expressed are his own.

- See more at: Used F-16 jets: A tradeoff between quality and quantity | The Jakarta Post

 

[Nike]

refit progress of Fatahillah class, there is two ships of this class undergoing of major refit and rearmament programme