I am afraid our close ties with China and allegations of letting Chinese to look into Western -supplied military hardwares would prevent us from buying anything advanced enough from the West be it France or Germany. In-fact it appears that through such maneuvers we are being actively persuaded to distance from China and rely totally on the West. Can we really distance ourselves from China in order to procure supposedly 'superior' quality military hardware from the West is a big question. I don't know but if I were to protect my house, I would purchase weapons through a reliable source that would not ding me while I would need them most. Of-course protecting one's motherland is far more complicated a business and we need to go for a mix of both the quality and quantity. Europe is increasingly becoming bitchy; for instance, Germany refused to sell the Leopards to KSA despite the fact that this deal would have benefited German economy tremendously. How sure are we that even after inking the agreement and what not we will indeed get the subs from Germany in due course of time? Our needs for subs are real and imminent for at this point of time we have only one Agosta 90B Sub equipped with AIP, not sure about the other two, whereas the remaining two Agosta class subs are too old and need replacement. We are already too late and I am not sure we could (or we should) delay new sub acquisitions for another several years.