India's Phalcon: Long-range
problems By Ramtanu Maitra
On
February 29, Israel's security cabinet approved the
US$1.1 billion sale of the Phalcon Airborne Warning and
Control System (AWACS), one of the world's most
sophisticated long-range warning and control systems, to
India. Approval of the deal, worked out last December,
was a foregone conclusion, but its timing could poison
the India-Pakistan talks now in progress and upset
regional political equations more broadly.
Islamabad responded immediately to news of the
deal: "The sale of sophisticated weapons to India will
accentuate strategic and conventional imbalance in South
Asia," Foreign Office spokesman Masood Khan told state
television. "Such transactions undermine the spirit of
peace and stability being pushed by Pakistan, India and
the international community in the region," Khan added.
A European defense expert monitoring
AWACS-related developments quoted by Pakistan's
Defence.com stated that high level consultations between
Beijing and Islamabad on the Phalcon deal were in
progress and that both Pakistan and China had conveyed
their intention to counter the Indian move.
But
despite the European defense expert's claims, the
official Chinese reaction has been relaxed, even
indifferent. "This is something between Israel and
India," a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson said.
The spokesperson declined to comment on whether the sale
of three Phalcon radar systems would alter the regional
security situation.
Meanwhile, New Delhi is
keeping quiet. London Financial Times correspondent
Edward Luce, in New Delhi, reported that Indian
officials would not comment on Pakistan's reaction,
however, officials did point out that India's defense
calculations also include neighboring China, which
defeated India in a border war in 1962 (the two have
recently embarked on talks to resolve their border
dispute). "India's defense requirements are not all
targeted at Pakistan," they said.
Official
reactions notwithstanding, the Phalcon deal is a very
important development. It is an important benchmark in
the Indo-Israeli defense relationship that has burgeoned
in the past two years. Significantly, Israel is today
India's second-largest weapons supplier after Russia.
Indeed, it may be some time before the political and
strategic implications of this become clear.
An Israel-India-Russia deal The
Phalcon deal is a three-way transaction involving
Israel, India and Russia, one that will greatly enhance
the surveillance capability of the Indian Air Force
against incoming surface-to-surface missiles, while also
providing India with the means to strike deep into enemy
territory.
On October 11 last year, Indian
Defense Secretary Ajay Prasad signed the preliminary
agreement with retired Israeli Major General Yasi Ben
Hanan, head of Sibat, the Israeli Defense Ministry's
licensing agency for the Phalcon. Russia was represented
by Mikhail Denisov, the first deputy chairman of
Russia's State Committee for Military Technical
Cooperation, who also signed.
Under the terms of
the agreement, Israel will purchase an Ilyushin-76 cargo
aircraft from Uzbekistan, which will then be sent to
Russia to be fitted with new high-powered engines. After
structural modifications, the aircraft will be sent to
Israel to be mounted with the AWACS radar system, and
the complete aircraft will then be delivered to India.
Following approval by Israel's security cabinet,
a senior official of the Beriyev Design Bureau, based in
Russia's port-city of Taganrog on the Sea of Azov and a
unit of Irkut Aerospace Corporation, told the Press
Trust of India that Russia hopes to sign the contract -
to supply the fitting of the IL-76 with new engines -
with Israel by April at the latest.
The decks
were finally cleared for the supply of Phalcon AWACS to
India with the visit of Israeli Deputy Prime Minister
Silvan Shalom to New Delhi in February. "We have agreed
on the sale of Phalcons," Shalom said. "We had some
problems with the Americans till recently," he added,
"[But] we have now opportunity to finalize the deal."
Shalom told reporters after top-level meetings with
Indian leaders, including Defense Minister George
Fernandes, that Israel expects to make deliveries
shortly.
Negotiations kept under
wraps Indian interest in the Phalcon AWACS goes
back to 2001, but negotiations were kept under close
wraps. It was the unwillingness of the US - the "patron
saint" of Israel - that stalled the deal. It is evident,
though, that India and Israel could not have discussed
the Phalcon, or the Arrow missile system for that
matter, without American blessings.
According to
a report appearing in Global Online on March 27 last
year, the Bush administration had informed Israeli
officials in Washington that it opposed Israel's selling
of three Phalcon AWACS planes to India. Reports from
Washington claimed that the administration had informed
Israel that its $1 billion special military grant from
the US was contingent on canceling the Phalcon deal.
"If the objection is for commercial reasons, it
is not legitimate," Israeli Knesset Foreign Affairs and
Defense Committee chairman M K Yuval Shteinitz (Likud)
said at the time. "The deal with India is completely
different from the one with China." In 1999, under
pressure from then US president Bill Clinton,
then-Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak had cancelled a
deal to sell four Phalcon planes to China.
A
likely reason for the US resistance to the Phalcon deal
with India was the prevailing high level of tension
between the two unaccepted nuclear powers, India and
Pakistan, coupled with the US's preoccupation with its
war in Iraq. The US was worried that supplying AWACS to
New Delhi might accelerate the arms race in an already
tense sub-continent. There is no American equipment on
the plane, but since the US veto of the sale to China,
which set off a diplomatic crisis with Beijing, Israel
coordinates its defense sales with Washington.
Taking a more cynical stance, many argued that
the US administration was trying to improve Boeing's
opportunities in the global AWACS market by pressuring
Israel Aircraft Industries subsidiary Elta Electronics
Industries not to sell AWACS to the Chinese air force or
the Indian air force.
But as Indo-Pakistani
tensions along the border began to subside, Washington
changed its mind and okayed the sale. In August 2003,
the Israeli daily Ha'aretz reported that the US had
given the green signal. Ha'aretz cited US State
Department deputy spokesman Philip Reeker, saying that
the US no longer had any objections to the deal. Reeker
added that in the past, the US had refused to okay the
sale on the grounds that it was wrong to sell such
intelligence technology to India given the tensions
along its border with Pakistan. But, said Reeker, the US
now feels that developments on the ground have eased the
concerns on this score.
Sharon's
groundbreaking visit During Israeli Prime
Minister Ariel Sharon's three-day (September 8-10, 2003)
visit to New Delhi, India and Israel expressed their
resolve to strengthen cooperation in defense as well as
in the fight against terrorism. At the time, the two
sides discussed both the $1.1 billion deal for the
Phalcon systems and the $2.5 billion anti-ballistic
Arrow missiles system.
Sharon's highly
publicized visit to India was the first-ever visit by an
Israeli prime minister since the two countries
established full diplomatic relations in 1992. Sharon's
visit had deeply worried Pakistan, which does have
diplomatic relations with Israel, concerned about the
close defense cooperation between India and Israel.
According to news reports, Pakistani President
General Pervez Musharraf, Prime Minister Zafarullah Khan
Jamali and other senior Pakistan officials held a
meeting to discuss Sharon's visit to India. Musharraf
had said that no compromise would be made on his
country's defense and all available resources would be
allocated for this purpose. The sale of Phalcon systems
was a matter of serious concern for Pakistan, he added.
Pakistan Foreign Minister Khurshid Mahmud
Kasuri, commenting that Israel's sale of weapons to
India could disturb the balance of power in South Asia,
said: "By visits of that nature in which the primary
purpose seems to be the sale of ultra-modern and
strategic weaponry aimed at disturbing the balance of
power in South Asia, ultimately it will be the poor
people of South Asia who will pay."
Expanding
defense ties Indo-Israeli defense cooperation
has, in fact, expanded rapidly. Currently, there are
reports that Indian intelligence officers will be
trained by Israeli intelligence personnel from the
Mossad, Israel's secret service. Reports also indicate
that, following a decision by India's cabinet committee
on security, Israel will in addition train four new
special forces battalions of which the Indian army is
raising to fight the Kashmiri insurgency. Officers and
men from the proposed battalions, trained by Israeli
specialists in irregular warfare and armed with Israeli
weaponry, will be attached to the Northern Command, in
charge of the Kashmir frontier and internal security
operations in the war-torn region.
India has
already purchased a number of Barak missile systems for
its Delhi class destroyers and Israel is apparently
willing to transfer technology to India on some of its
latest, most sophisticated projects - the Advanced Naval
Attack Missile and the Next Generation Defense Missile -
provided India is willing to invest money in their
development. Another potential project is an aerial
attack vehicle configured for striking at ballistic
missiles in their boost phase.
With Pakistan
acquiring short and medium range ballistic missiles -
capable of striking deep inside the country - from North
Korea, India turned to Israel for advanced surveillance
equipment and an anti-ballistic missile defense system.
Consequently, it acquired two Israeli Green Pine radars
and supplemented its capability with aerostat balloons
and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to meet immediate
needs against a potential Pakistani missile assault.
India has also acquired an unspecified number of
Israeli Searcher UAVs, or drones, some of which have
reportedly been put to use by the army in Kashmir.
Reports also say that the Indian navy is acquiring six
Heron UAVs, at a cost of $3 million each, for
surveillance and monitoring purposes in the Arabian Sea
and areas around the Andaman and Nicobar chain of
islands.
Recently, India concluded a $20 million
agreement with Israel Military Industries for Tavor 21
5.56 millimeter standard assault rifles and Galil 7.62
mm sniper rifles, in addition to varied night vision and
laser range-finding and targeting equipment.
According to a Brookings Institute analyst in
Washington, this system will allow India to execute a
counter-air campaign against Pakistan more effectively
and will also provide it with an enhanced capability to
prevent a Pakistani air counter-attack. Furthermore,
with the technology required to assess radar systems
non-existent in Pakistan, Islamabad is likely to take a
more conservative view of Indian strategic defenses once
the radar system is deployed.
At the same time,
the purchase of the Phalcon by the Indian Air Force
could presumably justify the US's selling of a F-16
AWACS to Pakistan, which Islamabad has long sought.
Disturbing implications The most
contentious aspect of the whole deal is that it steals
the limelight at a time when India and Pakistan, after
an absence of three years, have only just begun to talk
to resolve a number of bilateral disputes, including the
difficult Jammu and Kashmir imbroglio. The first round
of meetings took place in mid-February and the next
round of talks are scheduled for May-June, leading to a
ministerial-level meeting in early autumn.
Finalization of the Phalcon acquisition at this
juncture carries some political risks that are not
inconsequential. Israel is looked at with deep suspicion
in the sub-continent. Tel Aviv's policy toward the
Palestinians is strongly resented in the region's Muslim
countries and also by a large number of Indians. Israel
has always been considered a stalking horse of the US.
Now, in the wake of the Iraq invasion and the dubious
American policy in Afghanistan, the high-profile
presence of either the US or its shadow, Israel, gives
little comfort to the general population.
Israel's growing presence in the sub-continent
also raises questions about Iran, with whom India
maintains friendly relations. Having failed to achieve
the status of a nuclear weapons-capable state through
covert means, Iran is under massive political pressure
from the US and others. Reportedly the leak about Iran's
illegal nuclear fuel enrichment came from the inside,
where Israel still nurtures a few assets left over from
the days of the Shah. It is well known that Israel would
not like to see Iran possess nuclear weapons capability.
Israel developed its own nuclear weapons capability in
the 1960s with the help of Western nations, never
signing the non-proliferation treaty. In 1995, Israel
talked openly of bombing Iran's nuclear installations.
At this point in time, Iran needs support from
India and other nations who do not want to see the
country isolated and destabilized. Iran is now actively
engaged in drawing support from wherever it can, but the
looming presence of Israel in the region may create
serious doubts in the Iranian mind about India's true
intent. The Phalcon may be important, but for India, it
is a lot more important to secure its friendship with
both Iran and Pakistan.
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