NEW DELHI, 9 September 2005 — The Indian government has approved a long-pending multi-billion dollar arms deal to buy submarines from France, a defense official said yesterday, five days before Prime Minister Manmohan Singh visits Paris.
The deal, initially estimated to be worth about $1.8 billion, is the latest in a series of defense purchases by New Delhi which is on a modernizing spree of its ageing, largely Russian-origin military equipment.
It comes on the back of $5.7 billion worth of arms purchases by New Delhi last year, which took it past China to become the developing world’s leading buyer, according to a US Congress study. The French submarine deal involves the manufacture of six Scorpene SSK-class submarines at a naval dockyard in Bombay. The new submarines will replace ageing vessels in the Indian Navy’s fleet of 16 diesel submarines.
Although the Indian Navy approved the submarine and the two countries agreed in 2001 to go in for joint production, New Delhi had delayed giving final clearance, partly because of a change of government last year.
The delay in closing the deal was expected to have pushed the final price up, said the defense official. “The PM is expected to announce it in Paris next week,” he said, referring to Singh’s Sept. 11-13 visit to the French capital, en route to New York to attend the UN General Assembly.
“The contract is likely to be signed at a later date. It should take five or six years after that for the first submarines to be ready.”
The Scorpene project is expected to be handled by France’s Armaris, the marketing arm of state-owned DCN International, the main naval contractor for France, and Thales SA, one of the world’s largest defense electronics firms. The Indian military, the world’s fourth largest, has launched a massive program of modernization, ordering trainer and fighter jets, airborne warning and control systems and a refurbished aircraft carrier.
The Indian Navy operates one of the largest forces in the Indian Ocean with a fleet of 140 vessels but many of its ships and submarines are old and due for replacement.
The deal will be the first time the Indian navy will be buying submarines from France, which has sold submarines to nuclear rival Pakistan. India operates mostly Russian and some German-built submarines.
“Submarines make a difference in a long war but we need to have a good number of them,” said Raja Menon, a retired Indian Navy admiral and defense analyst.
“The numbers will come when we acquire submarine building capability from such a deal,” he said. “If we treat this well, the spin off from the technology could allow us to build nuclear submarines.”
Pentagon Team in Delhi
A US military team led by a senior Pentagon official was set to meet the Indian defense establishment yesterday to try to sell F-16 falcon fighter aircraft and the F-18 Super Hornet planes.
According to Defense Ministry sources, executives from Lockheed Martin, which manufactures the F-16 multi-role combat aircraft, were to make presentations before the Indian Air Force (IAF) officials. The IAF has sought technical details about the fighter jets.
Following this, the team from Pentagon, led by General Jeffrey Kohler head of Pentagon’s Defense Security Cooperation Agency was scheduled to meet top Indian defense officials in connection with the aircraft.
“It will be only after these presentations and meetings that an air force to air force level contact in regard with the aircraft can be made,” an official said. Boeing, which manufactures F-18 Super Hornet, has already made the presentations before the Defense Ministry officials.
— Additional input from DPA.
