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Indian liaison officers for US Strategic Command
Building rapidly on the civilian nuclear deal, Washington has now invited India to appoint military officers to liaison posts in the US Strategic Command (Stratcom), its largest and most critical defence set-up mandated to control strategic nuclear assets, space and missile defence and global deterrence against weapons of mass destruction (WMDs).The Stratcom, whose area of operation spans the globe, controls all American nuclear delivery platforms, including ballistic missile submarines, B-52 Stratofortress strategic bombers, Minuteman-III intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) and Tomahawk land attack systems. Having an Indian liaison officer on board will allow a more efficient link between Stratcom centres and Indias relatively new Strategic Forces Command (SFC) which controls Indian military nuclear assets. The possibility of posting Indian officers at the Stratcom headquarters in Nebraska first came up when US Secretary for Defence Donald Rumsfeld brought up the idea with Indian counterpart Pranab Mukherjee on June 28 last year, the day the new Indo-US defence framework was signed. Nine months later, the offer is now formal. Posted by: Angaiting Anguse7157 2006-03-20 |
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