Major decisions and policy announcements aimed at beefing up India’s defence are going to be on the front burner of Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the next few weeks, Firstpost reported.
Multi-billion dollar deals for acquisition of submarines, attack helicopters, heavy-lift helicopters, missiles and fighter aircraft are on Modi’s radar screen. In fact, the prime minister’s foreign policy in near term too will have heavy defence agenda. Here is a sneak peek into the Modi government’s defence agenda in near future.
Submarines
This is a crucial sector and a major area of concern as the former defence minister AK Antony did more harm than good to the cause of modernisation of Indian armed forces. Antony brought the defence armaments’ acquisition process to a virtual halt for a major part of his tenure. After INS Sindhurakshak was lost to the Indian Navy due to a massive fire and multiple explosions in Mumbai naval dock yard on 14 August, 2013, and operational issues with several other aging submarines, the navy has been left with just 13 conventional diesel-electric submarines, 11 of which are 20-27 years old.
Interestingly, it was the previous NDA government of the then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee which had approved in 1999 a long-term ambitious project, called Project 75i, aimed at adding 30 new submarines to the naval fleet by 2030. It is for the Modi government now to put this project back on the rails. A major decision of clearing pending submarines project is awaiting the nod of the new Indian government.
Helicopters
This is another area where the Indian armed forces are feeling distressed for years but no decision could be taken by the UPA government.
The armed forces are in dire need of attack helicopters and heavy-lift transport helicopters. The US is the frontrunner for grabbing the deal for off-the-shelf purchase of these two types of helicopters — 16 Chinuk heavy-lift helicopters and 22 Apache attack helicopters.
The helicopter deal, likely to cost up to $3bn, is going to dominate the India-US conversations in the coming weeks in the run up to Prime Minister Modi’s bilateral visit to the US in September this year. Modi is likely to hold a summit meeting with President Barack Obama in Washington on 30 September.
But then, this won’t be an easy decision for the Modi government as several major foreign powers, including Russia, have been wooing India for this lucrative deal.
MMRCA Project
This mega project of Medium Multirole Combat Aircraft, though awarded in principle to France by the UPA government in January 2012, is still in a limbo as final commercial negotiations with the French company Dassault are lingering on. The Modi government has to come up with its decision of ‘clearing’ the deal.
The project is going to cost a whopping $20bn involving 126 fighter aircraft. The project is of utmost necessity for the Indian Air Force which is currently down to just 34 fighter squadrons as against a minimum requirement of 44 fighter squadrons.