NEW DELHI 29 May: India and Israel are in the process of inking a $4.5 billion (Rs 20,000 cr) arms deal for air-to-ground and air-to-air missiles and other related systems. The deal could put Israel in the forefront once again as one of India's leading arms suppliers, reports Anuradha Mukherjee in The Sunday Guardian.
Official sources told The Sunday Guardian that the deal could contain a package of Derby and Python missiles, and even a hybrid of them, and other related equipment. The indigenous fighter, Tejas, is to be fitted with Derby air-to-air missiles from Rafael Advanced Systems.
Recent visits by the deputy chief of staff of the three services to Israel as part of a delegation led by Union Defence Secretary Pradip Kumar a few weeks ago indicated that the deals were meant for both the Air Force and the Navy. DRDO chief V.K. Saraswat was also in Israel recently to participate in the talks.
India's defence deals with Israel have faced criticism for the shroud of secrecy surrounding them. "We are buying arms without competitive bidding and transparency. To some extent, in the arms business, you have to make government to government deals. In our case, we don't even try to play one supplier against another to get competitive prices. The way India is making these procurements, we are paying much higher prices," said Brahma Chellaney, strategic analyst and professor with the Centre for Policy Research.
Saraswat's presence was required since these technologies were supposed to be undertaken as joint development programmes in which the DRDO usually ended up with a peripheral role, sources said.
Experts said that if the deal was cleared, it would be a major breakthrough from 2010, when several Israeli companies were blacklisted for irregularities in striking deals. The Israeli arms industry, which was beset by allegations of corruption, had also hit a bad patch in clinching the arms deals. The Ministry of Defence had admitted as much in Parliament in November 2010, but stopped short of naming the companies.
The Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI), one of the most powerful Israeli arms manufacturers, was blacklisted by the MoD for its alleged involvement in the Ordnance Factory Board scam. Several other foreign companies were also blacklisted.
Chellaney said that with its offset policy Indian indigenous defence research did not stand much of a chance in the face of defence procurements from foreign countries. India diluted its offset policy earlier this year. The offset policy mandated that 50% raw material used in such joint projects had to be sourced from India. "Now it is not needed," said Chellaney. (Writer-South Asia)
