New Delhi – The visit of US President Barack Obama to India has positively affected the Indo-US defence ties and both countries are on the verge of finalising several trade pacts as well. As per the White House statement, India and the US have finalised agreements on two lucrative defence deals worth nearly $5 billion.
Firstly, US aviation major Boeing and the Indian Air Force (IAF) have reached a preliminary agreement on the purchase of ten C-17 Globemaster III military transport aircraft. The second major development is that India has also declared the lowest bidder and selected the US-based General Electric Company for a contract to provide the Indian Aeronautical Development Agency with 107 F414 engines to be installed on the indigenous Tejas light combat aircraft (LCA). The defence deal related to ten C-17 Globemaster III military transport aircraft is valued at approximately $4.1 billion and the deal for General Electric engines for Tejas LCA is around $820 million.
[Ajai Shukla] In Rajasthan, this May, the indigenously developed Nag (Cobra) missile will undergo a final round of trials before entering service in the Indian Army’s arsenal. Developed by the Defence R&D Laboratory (DRDL) in Hyderabad, the army is delighted with how the Nag has performed in a series of earlier trials. A senior army officer calls it “the world’s deadliest anti-tank guided missile (ATGM)”. Indian infantry formations urgently want a potent ATGM to handle Pakistani tank forces that now bristle with capable Ukrainian T-80 and Chinese T-85 tanks.
