Indian Military

[Stratpost]

The Indian Defense Secretary on Wednesday dismissed the possibility of India planning the acquisition of a fifth generation fighter aircraft, alternate to the Russian PAK FA.

Pradeep Kumar, who is the top civil servant in the Ministry of Defense told reporters on Wednesday that, while the agreement for design and development of the PAK FA is expected to come through with Russia, after the Indian Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS) approves the details, “You can’t have two types (of fifth generation fighters).

Pointing out that even the US was, even now, working on the development of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, Kumar categorically repeated, “There is no question of having two fighters.”

The Indian Navy, in a Request for Information (RFI) for carrier-borne fighter aircraft issued last year, had asked for information on the F-35 from the US defense and aerospace major, Lockheed Martin. The company, along with other vendors, had made presentations on the aircraft to the navy, but presumably, the idea of acquiring the F-35 has gone no further than that.

Image via Wikipedia

New Delhi –The Indian Army has come under the scanner once again following the recent mysterious leaking of a classified report related to the field trial of the M777 ultra-light Howitzer that was concluded recently. The pages of the classified report that have leaked contain evidence that the M-777 howitzer had failed the field trials concluded in December 2010.

The company that now own Bofors, the BAE Systems of US, makes the ultra light Howitzer M777 which is to be procured through a Foreign Military Sales (FMS) route by India from the US. The acquisition is to be made through the government-to- government FMS route and is worth over $647 million for 10 regiments (160) guns. However, according to the leaked pages of the report, the Howitzer gun appears to have failed the recent trials on several parameters.

[Stratpost]

The purchase of 24 Harpoon Block II anti-ship missiles for the Jaguar aircraft of the Indian Air Force (IAF), agreed earlier this month after being in the works for the past couple of years, was a milestone as it settled the niggling issue of the parameters of the end use monitoring between the Indian and US governments.

After much political controversy in India, the end use monitoring framework was agreed by both governments in July last year, during the visit of US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. But it is only with the Harpoon deal that the framework has been tested with both sides agreeing to a compromise that sources in the Indian Ministry of Defense say, will be a model for future such agreements.

The USD 170 million Harpoon sale also attracted certain ‘enhanced’ end use monitoring requirements that impose more stringent conditions to ensure non-proliferation or leakage of technologies and systems. These typically apply to advanced technologies and weapon systems and also include ‘large aircraft with onboard infra red counter measures’.

[Stratpost]

India is going to be disappointed with President Barack Obama’s visit beginning Saturday after next. The upside of this is that the Indo-US relationship has come a long way in so short a time as to engender expectations that could induce performance anxiety.

This sense of anticlimax comes after the much tom-tommed civilian nuclear commerce double play by the two countries, which continue to relay over multiple hurdles. US Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs William Burns said at a White House press briefing on the visit on Wednesday, “We’ve worked hard in this administration to follow through, completing, for example, a reprocessing agreement between the US and India six months ahead of schedule.” He also marked the Indian accession to the Convention on Supplementary Compensation on Wednesday, important especially after the Nuclear Liability Bill passed in India, imposing liabilities on nuclear suppliers as well. “We look forward to US companies contributing to Indian civil nuclear development.

[The Telegraph] For 22 years, the Bofors shadow stymied the army’s efforts to buy heavy artillery. But now the defence ministry has come out with a list of big guns that it says it is “in the process of buying”.Topping the list of competitors is — no prizes for guessing — Bofors in a new avatar. Also, the US government and BAE Land Systems have taken the edge over a rival Singaporean firm with the government confirming that the army was going to buy ultra-light howitzers through the Pentagon’s direct foreign military sales route, skirting competition.