NEW DELHI, 7 October — India will use imported radars from Israel to detect cross-border movement of militants in Kashmir, a Defense Ministry source said yesterday.
The source said the deal was signed recently, but reports said New Delhi had already received the first of the 1,022 portable radars, which can detect human movement up to 10 kilometers away.
Some of these radars have already been installed along the Line of Control — the de facto border dividing Kashmir into Indian and Pakistani administered regions, the Press Trust of India news agency said in a report.
The decision to purchase the radars in bulk was taken after the Indian Army reported considerable success in checking infiltration of militants into Indian-administered Kashmir following a trial of the sensors.
PTI quoting unidentified defense officials said India had signed the deal, worth about $70 million, with Israel’s EL-OP company for short-range radars and long-range observance and reconnaissance systems, after bids by French electronics giant Thales and Sagem were rejected.
However, officials said the negotiations for close-range sensor detectors with the United States were still going on, PTI said.
“We are evaluating the US offer made directly by the Pentagon,” PTI quoted Defense Ministry officials as saying.
The idea to install sensors to detect cross-border infiltration gathered momentum after a visit by US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to South Asia in June, on a mission aimed at cooling tensions between India and Pakistan.
The issue of infiltration is at the core of the current military standoff between the nuclear-armed neighbors, who between them have had around one million troops massed on their common frontiers since January.
The showdown was sparked by an attack on Parliament House in December which New Delhi blamed on two Pakistan-based militant groups battling Indian rule in Kashmir.
India says Pakistan arms and funds the militants. Islamabad denies the charge, although earlier this year it told the United States it was trying to rein in the militants.
The portable radars would be used by border patrols, while the 10 km range sensors would be installed in built-up defense areas to observe attempts to infiltrate from a distance and chalk out an effective strategy to intercept infiltrators, the PTI report said.
PTI said most of the portable radars would be delivered by the end of this month.
Officials said the deal with Israel also covered the acquisition of 600 Elbit thermal-imaging systems to equip the Indian Army’s T-72 main battle tanks and 300 Russian BMP-II armored personnel carriers.
Besides the portable radars, India has also signed a deal to acquire eight more Israeli Searcher-II unmanned air vehicles for deployment in the mountainous regions of Kashmir to monitor cross-border activity, the PTI report added.
