Biden has bright chance to clinch lucrative fighter jet engine manufacturing deal with India, during PM’s visit
India has been striving to become Atmanirbhar in defence production. Achieving self-reliance in defence, reducing import dependency for military hardware and increasing defence exports is important for India to maintain its strategic autonomy.
In the last few years, India has been successful in indigenising its military manufacturing at a fast pace. The government released a few days ago a fresh list of 928 components and subsystems that will only be procured from domestic firms once import bans on them kick in, over a period of five-and-a-half years.
However India still remains the biggest importer of Arms and Equipent and many countries look towards bagging a part of the Indian defence expenditure. Even the USA wants to gets a much bigger pie out of the Indian Defence Budget. Though to succeed, it has to act like a SIMPLE MERCHANT and not try to dictate things or tie strings to its products, as it will not workout with India.
Sharing of advanced defence technology has emerged as a new factor in India-America ties, as India certainly wants to be in frontline of emerging technologies. The US has so far been very cagy of sharing defence technology even with India so far. The China-US tensions have left few options with USA but to court India.
India has no doubt rejected the obsolete F16 and F21 which USA wanted to sell desperately. Whereas India wants only critical defence and computing technology from the US to act as gap fillers till indigenous items are available.
A major interest for India presently is domestic production of jet engines of America’s General Electric Aviation with full technology transfer. GE Aviation is open to the transfer of technology to India for the indigenous manufacture of engines for India’s TEJAS MK-2 Light Combat Aircraft as it does not want to lose a big market to Europe.
Russia, France and Britain too are eager to offer their own engines but India has approved the GE engines. So during PM Modi’s visit to USA, Bidden will get a chance to clinch a few lucrative deals by offering its ware like a good merchant, without any added tricks. The GE engine deal not going through will only be a very temporary set back for India but a very bad one for the USA.
The Biden administration has gone ahead and cleared the GE Aviation’s application to co-produce GE-F414 jet engines in India complete with technology transfer. Now to clinch this lucrative deal as a next step Bidden must ensure Congressional review and approval under the Arms Export Control Act, which governs the transfer of all high-end defence technology.
The US on its own designated India a major defence partner in 2016 but it still did not equate India with other partners like Australia and Japan in the Arms Export Control Act, knowing fully well that India will never be a lackey.
Some members of Congress though are not liking the the industry push to sell sensitive technology to India. India has taken its own independent stand on Ukraine conflict and has point blank refused to tow the American and West European line. Also in spite of pressures, it has just brushed aside all sanctions imposed on Russia by USA and Western Europe. India will not Dutch its time tested friend Russia for anything. Also can Indians forget those slimy actions of Nixon during 1971 Indo Pak War.
America’s National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan who is quite pragmatic has acknowledged that the partnership with India isn’t without its risks, given the weapons trade between India and Russia, but he stressed that the initiative wasn’t sparked by the war in Ukraine or efforts to drive a wedge between New Delhi and Moscow, Bloomberg has reported.
GE Aviation already has a significant presence in India’s aerospace sector due to approved availability of quality talent in software, simulation and electronics. Insure started a back office operation here more than decade ago to develop new products. Its India team had worked on the GEnx engine, the fastest-selling, high-thrust jet engine in GE Aviation history. Most of GE Aviation products have a contribution of 20-40% from the India team.
USA may be able to sell some more products. India needs another 20 x P 8Is and uf USA is ready to sell from its reserves may be another 8x C17 transport aircrafts. Ofcourse it can forget selling F18 Hornets as Indian Navy has liked tgeNaval Rafales.
