India will buy at least 8,000 Spike anti-tank guided missiles, more than 300 launchers, Indian official says.
India has opted to buy Israel’s Spike anti-tank guided missile, an Indian Defense Ministry source said on Saturday, rejecting a rival U.S. offer of Javelin missiles that Washington had lobbied hard to win.
India will buy at least 8,000 Spike missiles and more than 300 launchers in a deal worth 32 billion rupees ($525 million), the source said after a meeting of India’s Defense Acquisition Council.
On Thursday, Haaretz reported that India will buy hundreds of Israeli-made Barak missiles for its battleships late next year, following approval of a weapons deal between the two countries that had been delayed for years.
India is also said to be deliberating about purchasing Israel-made AWACS surveillance aircraft, in line with a similar purchase about a decade ago. If the AWACS deal, which is estimated at over $1 billion, goes ahead, it would be a major win for Israel’s defense industries.
Israel’s defense ties with India have long been regarded as close, but Israel observers expect them to get even closer under new Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
The Indian defense minister visited Israel in July to discuss additional arms packages with the local defense industries.
In recent years, Israel has been regarded as a central weapons supplier to the countries of southern Asia, with exports to the region amounting to $3.9 billion dollars in 2013.
Israel has extensive security relations with India and is considered a major arms supplier to several south Asian countries. With a staff of six, its military delegation in India is second only to that of the United States.
Modi’s five-month-old government wants to clear a backlog of defense orders and boost India’s firepower, amid recent border tensions with China and heavy exchanges of fire with Pakistan across the Kashmiri frontier.
“National security is the paramount concern of the government,” the source quoted Defense Minister Arun Jaitley, who also holds the finance portfolio, as telling the procurement panel.
“All hurdles and bottlenecks in the procurement process should be addressed expeditiously so that the pace of acquisition is not stymied.”
Among other business cleared by the panel, India will issue a request for proposals to supply six submarines, added the source, who was not authorized to comment on the record and did not elaborate.
Spike is a man-portable ‘fire and forget’ anti-tank missile that locks on to targets before shooting. It is produced by Israel’s Rafael Advanced Defense Systems, which declined to comment.
It beat out the rival U.S. Javelin weapons system, built by Lockheed Martin Corp and Raytheon Co, that Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel had pitched during Modi’s visit to Washington at the end of September.
Senior U.S. officials had said they were still discussing the Javelin order as part of a broader push to deepen defense industry ties with India by increasing the share of production done in the country.
HaAretz
This makes no sense.
If Israhell is working against US interests in selling arms to other countries (as they have for years), why is the US donating arms to the lunatics of the Mid-East? (I know why, but really; is against our econimic interests, minimally.)
How many billions of dollars in arms will we DONATE to Israhell this year?
During its long term history; India has never been a real free country…. For a couple of hundred years they were British puppets, now are following the US and Israeli policies… It is shame…
Israel has stolen many state of the art military equipment with the complicity of the Pentagon. They have even taken nuclear weapons which are never paid, also chemical and biological weapons like white phosphorus that Israel experimented and used in its customary massacres against the Palestinians since 2006-2008, 2009, 2012 and the most recent onslaught in 2014. We need to ask Donald Rumsfeld what he did with the 2 trillion dollars he lost in the Pentagon.
Ok!!!!! Somebody can explain to me … if Israel has soooo much and can make its weapons and sell to other countries… why in the heck americans and other countries in the world give them billions and billions of dollars per year??? Why is Israel is taking american weapons and amunitions to attack Gaza if they already make their own????????????????
Why is American and French and German and who ever else just stop paying them these billionssssss and keep this money for their own people, to help their poor and elders, for their kids education… ???????????????
and where does Israel get the weapons to begin with? hmmm could it be the United States since we give them over 3 billion a year?
The question is why in the hell is the United States and Israel collaborating to arm India so Heavily?
#4 xplorexpress. You are absolutely right. I have said that over and over again and many are people still sleeping in their laurels. Not only that. Remember the Democrats and RepubliCONS disagree on every thing even where the sun raises and where the sun sets. But when it comes to vote for Israel every one gives this diabolical entity billions and billions of our taxes. Not counting all the wars the US is fighting on behalf of these parasites that have cost the US government going into a monumental debt of 18.5 trillion dollars and counting.
As long as IsraHELL controlls those STOOGES in Washington things are not going to change. We need to wake people up.