1. Parliament on Tuesday passed a bill that seeks to provide the commander-in-chief and officer-in-command of inter-services organisations disciplinary and administrative powers over personnel from other forces serving in such establishments.
2. DRDO TO BEGIN TAPAS UNMANNED AERIAL VEHICLE (UAV) TO BEGIN MILITARY TRIALS THIS MONTH:DRDO’s TAPAS is capable of operating at altitudes up to 28,000 feet with an endurance of over 18 hours.
3. Australia will host the four-nation naval exercise ‘Malabar’ involving Australia, India, Japan and the United States from August 11-21 off the eastern coast of Australia. The grouping of these four nations also called Quad will witness the capability and capacity of air defence systems, and sea operations and also detect under-sea threats with stress on interoperability.
From the Indian Navy’s side, destroyer INS Kolkata and multi-role stealth frigate INS Sahyadri will be participating in the exercise. Australian Navy will be deploying its two warships — HMAS Choules and HMAS Brisbane.
4. India is working to boost defence cooperation with Saudi Arabia, the Indian Navy has said after one of its vessels visited Jeddah last week and conducted an exercise with the Royal Saudi Navy.The Indian Navy’s largest, indigenously designed missile destroyer INS Chennai was deployed for a mission on the Red Sea on 03 Aug.
5. In the face of increasing cyber and malware attacks on defence as well as critical infrastructure across the country, the Defence Ministry has decided to replace the Microsoft Operating System (OS) in all computers connected to the Internet with a new OS, Maya, based on open-source Ubuntu developed locally.