India, Israel To Expand Defence Ties

India, Israel To Expand Defence Ties

(NSI News Source Info) BANGALORE - February 14, 2009: Away from prying eyes, kickback allegations and political sensitivities, India and Israel continue to quietly expand their already expansive defence ties, with joint R&D projects ranging from missile systems to ISR (intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance) platforms as well as arms deals. "We have a very special defence relationship with India.

It's now moving towards joint development of equipment. There are several new projects in the pipeline,'' Major-General Ehud Shani (retd), the chief of Israeli defence export and cooperation agency Sibat, told TOI on Thursday. India is already the largest customer of Israeli weapon systems, notching up imports worth over a whopping $8 billion since the 1999 Kargil conflict.

From UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles) and anti-missile defence systems to night-vision capabilities and advanced radar systems, India has bought them all from Israel.

So, it's no wonder that Israeli companies are present in full strength in the ongoing Aero India-2009, displaying even their latest offerings like the G-550 "conformal'' AWAC (airborne warning and control system) at the show here. But with both India and Israel careful about keeping their defence ties under wraps, the Israeli companies are not conducting high-voltage publicity campaigns like others to grab eyeballs. The third-generation G-550 AWAC, however, is one of the main attractions of Aero India.

Only two of these AWACS, with a Gulfstream business jet as the basic platform, have so far been inducted into the Israeli air force, said Yair Ramati of the Israel Aerospace Industries. India, in turn, will get the first of its three `Phalcon' AWACS, ordered for IAF under a $1.1-billion deal in March 2004, before the middle of this year, said Israeli officials.

The AWACS, coupled with the nine more Israeli EL/M-2083 Aerostat radars being ordered to add to the two already inducted, will give India potent "eyes in the skies'' to detect enemy air intrusions much earlier than ground-based radars.

"Israel specializes in ISR platforms, the need for which has become even greater after 26/11. It is one of the few countries which gives us top-notch defence technology without strings attached, even though it charges quite a bit,'' said an Indian defence ministry official.

Major examples of the increasing focus on the joint Indo-Israeli projects are the ones to develop a supersonic 70-km range Barak-2 medium range surface-to-air missile (MR-SAM) for the Indian Navy at a cost of Rs 2,606 crore and its longer range 120-km variant (LR-SAM) for IAF for Rs 10,000 crore.

IAF, incidentally, plans to induct nine air defence squadrons of LR-SAM initially. The two projects had run into some rough weather because of the kickbacks case being investigated by CBI into the original Rs 1,160-crore Barak-I deal.

Though the Left has been demanding scrapping of the two projects, the UPA government has pushed ahead with the projects.