There’s a quick formula that helps keep feet firmly on the ground when a Westerner praises you. Slash the praise by half, evaluate remaining 50% for kernels of correct takes – the outcome is a reality check. That means keep aside compliments India received in Washington, and realistically evaluate Trump’s offer of an arms sale – F-35 fighters – to New Delhi.
US pundits have several questions about F-35 fighters. But more important are geopolitical and strategic reasons to have a long think on Trump’s offer.
There’s a persistent belief among many Indians that US cannot be trusted as an all-weather friend, given the historical baggage of India-US relations. But that’s not the point. No nation-state can be blindly trusted in geopolitical power plays. At the bargaining table, it’s always each nation guarding its own interests, and turf.
Take Russia, for instance, India’s ‘accepted’ bad-weather friend. The then USSR promptly looked the other way in 1962 when the Chinese attacked India because Moscow wanted Beijing on its side during the Cuban missile crisis. It’s a different matter that Moscow came around later as our ‘trusted’ friend with the Indo-Soviet Friendship Treaty that stood us in good stead in the 1971 war.
Thereafter, it has been a dependable ally for India’s armament requirements. The only catch was that, although reliable, Russian products were technologically inferior to Western ones. As a quid pro quo, India retained its neutrality, sidestepping repeated attempts to make us lean West.
French govts have been extraordinary merchants. With their independent stance vis-à-vis Americans and Nato, and no geopolitical ambitions in our part of the world, they sold their wares to anyone who had the money. However, New Delhi has never received any niche technology from Paris – and they’ve been selling us defence ware since the 1950s.
The British have been no saints – even as we bought their military hardware in the 1950s and 1960s, they teamed up with the Americans during the 1965 war by delaying wheat imports in those food scarcity years, in a bid to coerce New Delhi into arriving at an agreement with Pakistan on Kashmir.
America was a ‘great friend’ with economic aid in the early years following Independence. However, it twinned this with measures to ‘balance’ India by propping up Pakistan with aid and armoury. Islamabad was ‘used’ as long as it suited Washington’s geopolitical need. It needed Pakistan as a buffer against Moscow’s expansion into Afghanistan – only to be thrown out like the proverbial fly in a teacup on USSR’s withdrawal.
After Pokhran II, US was the first country to impose wide-ranging sanctions on India. Restrictions on some select entities remain in force to this day. So, as op-ed columns reverentially note Trump’s offer to sell F-35s, Stryker armoured vehicles etc, think, first, not of India’s interests, but America’s, because that’s where US govt’s coming from.
Why F-35? Might the delay attributed to ‘supply chain issues’ in the delivery of GE-F404 aero engines for India’s vital Tejas programme – that caused Air Chief’s outburst in AeroIndia – be as innocent as it is made out to be? Further, given that Americans take contractual agreements seriously, even the nine-month-and-counting wait for the supply of Apache attack helicopters for the army becomes suspect.
So, what should India do to safeguard its interests? As always, New Delhi is on its own even as the China-Pakistan nexus strengthens. Yes, Beijing has operationalised its fifth generation fighter and flown the next generation prototype. But wars are not going to be fought only with high-end, super-costly trinkets. Missiles and unmanned aerial vehicles are revolutionising warfare. India is doing reasonably well in these sectors.
However, knowing HAL’s state of aircraft production, and the likely development trajectory of Tejas Mk2 and Advanced Medium Combat Aircraft (AMCA), some aircraft must be bought to tide over the immediate crisis of IAF’s squadron depletion.
Europe, firmly in Trump’s crosshairs, offers India with options. No country requires the numbers IAF does – 110 at a minimum. While our fifth generation AMCA is at least a decade away, the interim purchase need not be a small number of ultra-pricey F-35s, like the 36 Rafales we bought. Such an F-35 deal would mean getting too little after spending too much on a machine that would come with its cutting-edge avionics and radar denied to us. It would also, most likely, mean American end-user restrictions of F-35 utilisation vis-à-vis Russian radars deployed by India.
New Delhi has buyer’s clout. It should flex that clout to purchase a 4.5 generation machine to make up the numbers urgently. Having done that, GOI should push HAL to deliver Tejas Mk2 and AMCA.
The writer is a retired Air Vice Marshal
US pundits have several questions about F-35 fighters. But more important are geopolitical and strategic reasons to have a long think on Trump’s offer.
There’s a persistent belief among many Indians that US cannot be trusted as an all-weather friend, given the historical baggage of India-US relations. But that’s not the point. No nation-state can be blindly trusted in geopolitical power plays. At the bargaining table, it’s always each nation guarding its own interests, and turf.
Take Russia, for instance, India’s ‘accepted’ bad-weather friend. The then USSR promptly looked the other way in 1962 when the Chinese attacked India because Moscow wanted Beijing on its side during the Cuban missile crisis. It’s a different matter that Moscow came around later as our ‘trusted’ friend with the Indo-Soviet Friendship Treaty that stood us in good stead in the 1971 war.
Thereafter, it has been a dependable ally for India’s armament requirements. The only catch was that, although reliable, Russian products were technologically inferior to Western ones. As a quid pro quo, India retained its neutrality, sidestepping repeated attempts to make us lean West.
French govts have been extraordinary merchants. With their independent stance vis-à-vis Americans and Nato, and no geopolitical ambitions in our part of the world, they sold their wares to anyone who had the money. However, New Delhi has never received any niche technology from Paris – and they’ve been selling us defence ware since the 1950s.
The British have been no saints – even as we bought their military hardware in the 1950s and 1960s, they teamed up with the Americans during the 1965 war by delaying wheat imports in those food scarcity years, in a bid to coerce New Delhi into arriving at an agreement with Pakistan on Kashmir.
America was a ‘great friend’ with economic aid in the early years following Independence. However, it twinned this with measures to ‘balance’ India by propping up Pakistan with aid and armoury. Islamabad was ‘used’ as long as it suited Washington’s geopolitical need. It needed Pakistan as a buffer against Moscow’s expansion into Afghanistan – only to be thrown out like the proverbial fly in a teacup on USSR’s withdrawal.
After Pokhran II, US was the first country to impose wide-ranging sanctions on India. Restrictions on some select entities remain in force to this day. So, as op-ed columns reverentially note Trump’s offer to sell F-35s, Stryker armoured vehicles etc, think, first, not of India’s interests, but America’s, because that’s where US govt’s coming from.
Why F-35? Might the delay attributed to ‘supply chain issues’ in the delivery of GE-F404 aero engines for India’s vital Tejas programme – that caused Air Chief’s outburst in AeroIndia – be as innocent as it is made out to be? Further, given that Americans take contractual agreements seriously, even the nine-month-and-counting wait for the supply of Apache attack helicopters for the army becomes suspect.
So, what should India do to safeguard its interests? As always, New Delhi is on its own even as the China-Pakistan nexus strengthens. Yes, Beijing has operationalised its fifth generation fighter and flown the next generation prototype. But wars are not going to be fought only with high-end, super-costly trinkets. Missiles and unmanned aerial vehicles are revolutionising warfare. India is doing reasonably well in these sectors.
However, knowing HAL’s state of aircraft production, and the likely development trajectory of Tejas Mk2 and Advanced Medium Combat Aircraft (AMCA), some aircraft must be bought to tide over the immediate crisis of IAF’s squadron depletion.
Europe, firmly in Trump’s crosshairs, offers India with options. No country requires the numbers IAF does – 110 at a minimum. While our fifth generation AMCA is at least a decade away, the interim purchase need not be a small number of ultra-pricey F-35s, like the 36 Rafales we bought. Such an F-35 deal would mean getting too little after spending too much on a machine that would come with its cutting-edge avionics and radar denied to us. It would also, most likely, mean American end-user restrictions of F-35 utilisation vis-à-vis Russian radars deployed by India.
New Delhi has buyer’s clout. It should flex that clout to purchase a 4.5 generation machine to make up the numbers urgently. Having done that, GOI should push HAL to deliver Tejas Mk2 and AMCA.
The writer is a retired Air Vice Marshal
