More Muscle: A Democracy Re-arms
The United States has offered India advanced weapons like Patriot PaC II anti-missile systems, network-centric early warning and battlefield control and command systems as a follow up of Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice's announcement of plans to engage New Delhi in closer strategic partnership.
"We intend to follow up on the rhetorics to reality and re-draw the strategic map of Indo-US relations," senior US Embassy officials said. In the coming weeks, the two countries proposed to engage more closely with External Affairs Minister Natwar Singh going to Washington and Commander-in-Chief of the US Pacific Command Admiral William J Fallone making his maiden trip here. A high-level US delegation has been here recently and made presentation to Indian defence officials about the Patriot PaC II systems which is a follow-up of three Indian observers being present in Texas during the live demonstration trials of the missile shield system, officials said. They said US aviation majors Lockheed Martin and Boeing would aggressively bid for India's plan to buy 126 multi-role combat aircraft and were hopeful of bagging the contract as the fighting falcons and F-18s were the lowest priced and offered cutting edge technology. US armed forces, the officials said, proposed to give a new dimension to military-to-military engagement between the two countries by undertaking company level joint exercises in California in June and taking these manoeuvres first to battalion and then to brigade level by 2007.
Indian Air Force's wishlist to engage in joint manoeuvres with F-16 and air early warning aircraft would be realised, US officials said referring to the planned joint exercises in November over Kalaikunda base in West Bengal. This would be the first ever brush of the IAF with this advanced technology. India has ordered three AWACS from Israel, the first of which is likely to be delivered only in 2007. Strongly asserting that US was committed to a "serious energy dialogue" with India, including on civilian use of nuclear energy, the officials said this issue would receive a boost with the upcoming visit to Washington by Singh and Petroleum Minister Mani Shankar Aiyer.
"India and US are both energy deficit countries and a close cooperation in this field is viewed by us as mutually advantageous," they said. Declaring that US viewed its strategic engagement with India in a global context rather than regional, US officials said an indication of this was that from zero in 2000, defence sales between the two countries had shot up to 200 million US dollars in 2002. Reading out details, officials said in government to government sales, US had now supplied two ANTPQ-37 firefinding radars which are currently undergoing acceptance trials.
India has earlier received two similar radars on lease from the US Army. Besides this, Washington has supplied combat free fall parachutes for the special forces. Spare parts for the Sea King helicopters, aircraft protection systems for the VVIP aircrafts, night vision devices and precision guided weapons were listed by US officials as other military sales made to India. But they insisted that this was just the begining with much bigger sales in the pipleine, including upgraded P3C Orions, naval long range maritime and anti submarine helicopters and Seahawk H60C helicopters.
(Source: TimesOfIndia.com)
"We intend to follow up on the rhetorics to reality and re-draw the strategic map of Indo-US relations," senior US Embassy officials said. In the coming weeks, the two countries proposed to engage more closely with External Affairs Minister Natwar Singh going to Washington and Commander-in-Chief of the US Pacific Command Admiral William J Fallone making his maiden trip here. A high-level US delegation has been here recently and made presentation to Indian defence officials about the Patriot PaC II systems which is a follow-up of three Indian observers being present in Texas during the live demonstration trials of the missile shield system, officials said. They said US aviation majors Lockheed Martin and Boeing would aggressively bid for India's plan to buy 126 multi-role combat aircraft and were hopeful of bagging the contract as the fighting falcons and F-18s were the lowest priced and offered cutting edge technology. US armed forces, the officials said, proposed to give a new dimension to military-to-military engagement between the two countries by undertaking company level joint exercises in California in June and taking these manoeuvres first to battalion and then to brigade level by 2007.
Indian Air Force's wishlist to engage in joint manoeuvres with F-16 and air early warning aircraft would be realised, US officials said referring to the planned joint exercises in November over Kalaikunda base in West Bengal. This would be the first ever brush of the IAF with this advanced technology. India has ordered three AWACS from Israel, the first of which is likely to be delivered only in 2007. Strongly asserting that US was committed to a "serious energy dialogue" with India, including on civilian use of nuclear energy, the officials said this issue would receive a boost with the upcoming visit to Washington by Singh and Petroleum Minister Mani Shankar Aiyer.
"India and US are both energy deficit countries and a close cooperation in this field is viewed by us as mutually advantageous," they said. Declaring that US viewed its strategic engagement with India in a global context rather than regional, US officials said an indication of this was that from zero in 2000, defence sales between the two countries had shot up to 200 million US dollars in 2002. Reading out details, officials said in government to government sales, US had now supplied two ANTPQ-37 firefinding radars which are currently undergoing acceptance trials.
India has earlier received two similar radars on lease from the US Army. Besides this, Washington has supplied combat free fall parachutes for the special forces. Spare parts for the Sea King helicopters, aircraft protection systems for the VVIP aircrafts, night vision devices and precision guided weapons were listed by US officials as other military sales made to India. But they insisted that this was just the begining with much bigger sales in the pipleine, including upgraded P3C Orions, naval long range maritime and anti submarine helicopters and Seahawk H60C helicopters.
(Source: TimesOfIndia.com)
posted by Shaking Shenoy at 4/08/2005 10:22:00 AM
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