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An internal assessment on the military procurement conducted by the Indian Defence Ministry has projected that Israel has emerged as the leading defence supplier to New Delhi in the last two years bypassing Russians, Europeans and the US defence firm who are making a beeline in the Indian market.
According to the government data, Russia, which has been the top defence supplier since the past decades has, for the first time, lost its top ranking.
However, the Indian Defence Ministry officials refused to disclose the data related to different country’s military supplies to India. The officials admitted that Moscow has slipped from its top-ranking on account of steep price escalation demands on various defence projects, notably the Admiral Gorshkov aircraft carrier besides other defence deals.
Though the Americans have been relatively new entrants in the emerging Indian military market, some defence deals have been rapidly mooted through direct commercial sales and foreign military sales between the two governments.
The armament sales graph for European defence firms has been dipping mainly due to their expensive price tags and Europeans, in turn, are urging the Indian government for more reforms and transparency in defence procurement procedures.
The European defence firms have also conveyed to the Indian government, particularly in the case of firms, that New Delhi should stop procurement of arms from Israel on single vendor nomination basis instead of floating a global tender. European defence firms have also alleged that the foreign military sales (FMS) and joint development program are hampering their scope and are directly in favour of American and Israeli defence firms.
In the last few years, India has forged joint development of several missile systems with Israel and also procurement of very high-tech defence technology from Israel without a tender process. The two nations are now formalizing a very ambitious project for the joint development of medium range surface-to-air missiles (MRSAM) for the Indian Air Force.
One Indian Defence Ministry official source disclosed that though this project is technically a joint development between Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI), Rafael of Israel and Defence Research and Development Organization (DRDO) of India, a large chunk of the contract value worth $2.5 billion will go to Israeli firms. The two nations are also working out a programme for new generation Barak missiles for the Indian Navy.
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