India buys six Lockheed planes

Washington, February 6
India has agreed to buy six Lockheed Martin Corp C-130J military transport planes in a breakthrough deal with the USA worth about $1 billion that opens a door to closer strategic ties, US officials said.

India and the USA signed an agreement on January 31 for the Lockheed to start delivering the four-engine Super Hercules turboprop aircraft in 2011, said Bruce Lemkin, who handles US Air Force international affairs, yesterday.

The deal marks a major shift in weapons-buying policy by India, which for decades relied heavily on Russian arms and transport aircraft.

The USA had been eager to boost strategic ties with India as a hedge against China’s military clout.

Nicholas Burns, the No 3 US state department official, whose retirement was announced last month, wrote last year that in reaching out to India, the USA was betting the planet’s future lay in democracy and market economics rather than “despotism and state planning,” an apparent swipe at communist-ruled China.

“It really provides the centerpiece of a growing relationship between our two air forces,” Lemkin, a deputy undersecretary of the Air Force, who had been working on the matter for almost two years, said in a telephone interview.

James Clad, deputy assistant USA secretary of defense for South and Southeast Asia, said the deal dwarfed all USA defense sales to New Delhi since Indian independence from Britain in 1947.

“This kind puts us in a new environment,” he said in an interview. “With this sale, India is telling us it’s ready to buy top-quality US equipment on its merits. It positions us to be in the Indian defense market for years to come,” he said.

Lemkin said the agreement provided for the US logistics support, training and spare parts as well as the aircraft.

Indian airmen would start training in the USA, probably in Little Rock, Arkansas, in 2010, the year before deliveries start, he said.

The Pentagon’s Defense Security Cooperation Agency, which handles government-to-government arms sales, notified the Congress of the possible sale in May 2007, putting its potential value at $1.06 billion if all options were exercised.

Lockheed, the Pentagon’s No 1 supplier by sales, and Boeing Co, its next-biggest supplier, are bidding against Russian and European rivals for a potential $10.2 billion deal to sell the Indian air force 126 new multi-role fighter aircraft.

Bethesda, Maryland-based Lockheed said it was pleased to see the acquisition process moving forward in India. — Reuters