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| India-Pakistan |
| India asks Israel to snap it up with the radar deliveries |
| 2002-06-01 |
| India has asked Israel to speed up supply of a large number of Aerostat Ballons to give it capability to detect incoming attacks on targets upto 500 kms. The two countries have recently concluded an agreement to this effect and now Tel Aviv has been asked to speed up the delivery of the system, which is also capable of providing an in-depth battlefield surveillance as well as track incoming enemy artillery shells, top defence ministry officials said. "No, no. Thursday might be too late. Can you overnight 'em Fedex?" As part of measures to further bolster defence against missiles, officials said New Delhi was according top priority to upgrading border radar systems as well as looking keenly at the United States anti-missile system, which is presently in testing stage. Officials said India was evaluating the American system, which was likely to be fielded by 2005-2006, with Washington inviting Indian experts to missile command post exercises in June. Asserting that India had information that Pakistan had deployed its clandestinely acquired Chinese and North Korean missiles, officials said "We have taken Islamabad's threats very seriously and taken counter-measures". I've never heard anything about whether the Indos have bought Patriot systems, or whatever the successor system might be — haven't been tracking the defense industry news. It would certainly seem to be a logical purchase, and it wouldn't make much sense to have the warning system without having something to do on warning other than launch and incinerate. |
| Posted by:Fred Pruitt |
| #2 Reading the original article, the Indians are starting to import 155mm arty ammo to augment their depot stocks. This means that the mobilization to date is JUST getting serious. It also means that India is going to keep on shelling Azad Kashmir for a while. Sorry about typos above: should be "Bush-Putin entente" and "anti Cruise Missile" not "any..." |
| Posted by: Tom Roberts 2002-06-01 09:34:17 |
| #1 What the Indians want, and what Russian AND the US want to sell them is a combination ARROW/S-300&400 system. The Russians have some very good interceptors, but their C3I systems are relatively obsolete. The US sorta forgot to keep hiring rocket designers to replace the Werner von Braun crowd, but the NMD/theatre BMD system developments are going ahead rapidly now. Given the Putin-Bush and DepSec Armitage riding around New Delhi on elephants on a regular basis, I've read about some relatively big programs being done on a coequal basis between Israel-India-Russia-& US. Sorta what Ronald Reagan was talking about 15 years ago, but on a regional basis. The US is being slightly tight with the PAC-3 Patriot upgrade. I've read that there is serious consideration that we may sell it to Taiwan and Israel in order to provide an any cruise missile capacity to those countries' ADA systems. But in both of those cases the US has identified their national security as being critical to US interests. The US has not represented India in the same catagory of diplomatic interests, if for no other reason than that it would enrage the Pakistanis who are our supposed "allies" in Afghanistan. Long term, I'm betting that "money talks" and that our need for Islamabad's poor variety of ally diminishes rapidly. Incidently, last week there was a US offer to increase US-Indian joint efforts "in space techology" if India stood down its mobilization. What does that offer represent, precisely???? My bet is theatre BMD and modern IR/visual satellite recon systems. The fact that the launchers also would be defacto solid fueled ICBM delivery sytems is a gimme in that scenario, and as such would represent a significant, if not order of magnitude, improvement in Indian nuclear delivery technology. |
| Posted by: Tom Roberts 2002-06-01 09:27:40 |