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Defence deals with the US
Will Antony wilt?
By M K Bhadrakumar
Influential lobbies in Delhi are coming up with a specious plea that India needs to redefine its concept of self-reliance in defence.
Iraq has come from behind and is kicking the Indian defence ministry on its backside, while storming past it. This might sound an incredible feat for a badly-broken country, but it is true. Reports quoting the defence ministry spokesman in Baghdad Major General Mohammed al-Askari says Iraq will buy armaments worth $13 billion from the US by 2013 and will spend an equivalent amount on American weapons later.
Askari revealed that contracts have already been concluded for weapons that include aircraft, helicopters, tanks, other armoured vehicles, warships and missiles. In brief, an oil-for-weapons programme has just begun in Mesopotamia.
A big power like the US steps up the pedal or applies brake on its foreign policies in orchestrated manner. The left hand more or less knows what the right hand is doing. The US priority is to establish a long-term military presence in Iraq so as to influence the regional politics in West Asia and control the flow of Arab oil (our resources, as George Kennan once famously described).
The Washington Post recently reported that despite the end-2011 deadline for complete withdrawal of US forces from Iraq, the contours of a large and lasting American presence here (Baghdad) are starting to take shape. Washington has found an ingenious method whereby American bases in Iraq can be put under the US embassy rubric so that the US military infrastructure could also remain in Iraq.
Thus, the statement by the US secretary of commerce Gary Locke merits great attention. He is leading a jumbo trade mission to India early February and is on record that the US government views high technology defence deals as a cornerstone of the US-India strategic partnership. Locke is candid enough that he intends to robustly campaign for securing for American arms manufacturers Indias $10 billion deal for purchase of 126 Medium Multi-Role Combat Aircraft (MRCA).
Simultaneously, influential lobbies in Delhi are coming up with a specious plea that India needs to redefine the entire concept of self-reliance in defence that surrounds deals such as the MRCA. In short, why cant our defence ministry be as pragmatic as its Iraqi counterpart? They argue that India should rather aspire to be part of the global defence supply chains (whatever the idiom means).
This thought-process aims to take a hit at the norms of technological transfer that the tender for the MRCA deal stipulates. The tender stipulates that India will outright buy only 18 aircraft from the foreign supplier while the remaining 108 should be indigenously produced through technology transfer. But the catch is, unlike Russia, US is notoriously averse to co-production with its foreign clients even for spare parts.
Advancement
As it is, MRCA deal, which provides for fourth-generation aircraft, may have already become redundant. Conceived before Russia offered and India accepted the joint venture for development of a Fifth-Generation Fighter Aircraft (FGFA), even if MRCA timeline is held, realistically speaking, those 108 aircraft to be co-produced simply cannot come out before 2022 or so and, ironically, the cutting-edge FGFA will by then have been inducted into the IAF. (Russian air force intends to deploy FGFA by 2015.). Again, it is not as if MRCA fills in a vacant niche, either.
The IAF is getting enormous versatility thanks to the large-scale procurement-cum-assembly (by HAL) of Russian Su-30MKI, which combined with BraMos offers India unrivalled combat performance. Experts describe Su-30MKI as the engineering zenith in design among fourth-generation heavy-duty fighters. With the IAFs acquisition of Su-30MKI and Tejas (plus FGFA), it virtually acquires the capability to undertake any conceivable range of combat missions.
Unsurprisingly, American companies that were virtually certain of wrapping up MRCA in the wake of the nuclear deal, are getting desperate to clinch the deal under the current political dispensation in Delhi, which of course is showing withering signs of fatigue lately.
The MRCA guarantees the US with not only lucrative business over a 30-40 year period but it forms a strategic vector of the US regional policies. Conversely, there is panic that if the MRCA door gets closed, US may have to wait for another 40 years to get another similar breakthrough. The glitch is over technology transfer and co-production. The Indian dalals are burning midnight oil to orchestrate a campaign that self-reliance in defence is passé.
Well, is it passé? Is Indias defence equipment capability to be measured in terms of the quality of its machine tools industry? Self-reliance is vital to Indias medium and long-term capacity to optimally navigate the waters of an increasingly polycentric world. In the defence sphere, India should ditto emulate Chinas exemplary efforts to develop self-reliance no matter what it takes.
Our discourses on crucial issues of defence policy are lacking intellectual content. Our defence experts prefer to opinionate on geopolitics. As for political parties, they are disinterested unless la affair can be somehow fitted into their feeder chain for electoral politics.
Meanwhile, a tiny cluster of dalals, lobbyists and fat cats monopolise the centre stage. They viciously campaign that the ministry of defence is seen as among New Delhis more fossilised bureaucracies. Put simply, they want Raksha Mantri A K Antony to be as efficient and innovative as his outgoing Iraqi counterpart, Lt Gen Abd al-Qadr Muhammed Jassim al-Obaidi proved to be.
(The writer is a former diplomat)
Will Antony wilt?
By M K Bhadrakumar
Influential lobbies in Delhi are coming up with a specious plea that India needs to redefine its concept of self-reliance in defence.
Iraq has come from behind and is kicking the Indian defence ministry on its backside, while storming past it. This might sound an incredible feat for a badly-broken country, but it is true. Reports quoting the defence ministry spokesman in Baghdad Major General Mohammed al-Askari says Iraq will buy armaments worth $13 billion from the US by 2013 and will spend an equivalent amount on American weapons later.
Askari revealed that contracts have already been concluded for weapons that include aircraft, helicopters, tanks, other armoured vehicles, warships and missiles. In brief, an oil-for-weapons programme has just begun in Mesopotamia.
A big power like the US steps up the pedal or applies brake on its foreign policies in orchestrated manner. The left hand more or less knows what the right hand is doing. The US priority is to establish a long-term military presence in Iraq so as to influence the regional politics in West Asia and control the flow of Arab oil (our resources, as George Kennan once famously described).
The Washington Post recently reported that despite the end-2011 deadline for complete withdrawal of US forces from Iraq, the contours of a large and lasting American presence here (Baghdad) are starting to take shape. Washington has found an ingenious method whereby American bases in Iraq can be put under the US embassy rubric so that the US military infrastructure could also remain in Iraq.
Thus, the statement by the US secretary of commerce Gary Locke merits great attention. He is leading a jumbo trade mission to India early February and is on record that the US government views high technology defence deals as a cornerstone of the US-India strategic partnership. Locke is candid enough that he intends to robustly campaign for securing for American arms manufacturers Indias $10 billion deal for purchase of 126 Medium Multi-Role Combat Aircraft (MRCA).
Simultaneously, influential lobbies in Delhi are coming up with a specious plea that India needs to redefine the entire concept of self-reliance in defence that surrounds deals such as the MRCA. In short, why cant our defence ministry be as pragmatic as its Iraqi counterpart? They argue that India should rather aspire to be part of the global defence supply chains (whatever the idiom means).
This thought-process aims to take a hit at the norms of technological transfer that the tender for the MRCA deal stipulates. The tender stipulates that India will outright buy only 18 aircraft from the foreign supplier while the remaining 108 should be indigenously produced through technology transfer. But the catch is, unlike Russia, US is notoriously averse to co-production with its foreign clients even for spare parts.
Advancement
As it is, MRCA deal, which provides for fourth-generation aircraft, may have already become redundant. Conceived before Russia offered and India accepted the joint venture for development of a Fifth-Generation Fighter Aircraft (FGFA), even if MRCA timeline is held, realistically speaking, those 108 aircraft to be co-produced simply cannot come out before 2022 or so and, ironically, the cutting-edge FGFA will by then have been inducted into the IAF. (Russian air force intends to deploy FGFA by 2015.). Again, it is not as if MRCA fills in a vacant niche, either.
The IAF is getting enormous versatility thanks to the large-scale procurement-cum-assembly (by HAL) of Russian Su-30MKI, which combined with BraMos offers India unrivalled combat performance. Experts describe Su-30MKI as the engineering zenith in design among fourth-generation heavy-duty fighters. With the IAFs acquisition of Su-30MKI and Tejas (plus FGFA), it virtually acquires the capability to undertake any conceivable range of combat missions.
Unsurprisingly, American companies that were virtually certain of wrapping up MRCA in the wake of the nuclear deal, are getting desperate to clinch the deal under the current political dispensation in Delhi, which of course is showing withering signs of fatigue lately.
The MRCA guarantees the US with not only lucrative business over a 30-40 year period but it forms a strategic vector of the US regional policies. Conversely, there is panic that if the MRCA door gets closed, US may have to wait for another 40 years to get another similar breakthrough. The glitch is over technology transfer and co-production. The Indian dalals are burning midnight oil to orchestrate a campaign that self-reliance in defence is passé.
Well, is it passé? Is Indias defence equipment capability to be measured in terms of the quality of its machine tools industry? Self-reliance is vital to Indias medium and long-term capacity to optimally navigate the waters of an increasingly polycentric world. In the defence sphere, India should ditto emulate Chinas exemplary efforts to develop self-reliance no matter what it takes.
Our discourses on crucial issues of defence policy are lacking intellectual content. Our defence experts prefer to opinionate on geopolitics. As for political parties, they are disinterested unless la affair can be somehow fitted into their feeder chain for electoral politics.
Meanwhile, a tiny cluster of dalals, lobbyists and fat cats monopolise the centre stage. They viciously campaign that the ministry of defence is seen as among New Delhis more fossilised bureaucracies. Put simply, they want Raksha Mantri A K Antony to be as efficient and innovative as his outgoing Iraqi counterpart, Lt Gen Abd al-Qadr Muhammed Jassim al-Obaidi proved to be.
(The writer is a former diplomat)
