Israel steals huge defense contract from US
Israel's defense industry gets huge kudos this morning after India has chosen Israel's Spike anti-tank missile system over the United States' Javelin system.
The contract is worth half a billion dollars.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government will buy 8,356 Spike
missiles and 321 launchers from Israel in a deal worth 32 billion rupees
($525 million), defense ministry sources told AFP.
The government is moving to speed up long-delayed defense orders and
bolster its military. The Israeli deal comes after recent firing along
India's border with nuclear-armed rival Pakistan and tensions with giant
neighbor China.
The procurement deals, worth 800 billion rupees ($13.1 billion) in
total, were cleared at a meeting of India's Defense Acquisition Council,
headed by Defense Minister Arun Jaitley, on Saturday.
"It (the council) has cleared a deal for Spikes," a defense ministry official, who asked not to be named, told AFP.
"It's a fire and forget kind of missile," the official said, referring to the fact the missile locks onto targets before firing.
"You can say there was a rival bid from the US for its Javelin
missiles," the official said, adding that India's army trialed the Spike
missiles "successfully last year".
Significantly, this latest development comes just one month after
India agreed to buy 262 Israeli-made Barak 1 surface-to-air missiles for
its navy, to the tune of $144 million.
India is currently the largest buyer of Israeli defense hardware, and
Israel's military delegation to India is second only in size to its
delegation to America. The two countries also have a Joint Working group
on counter-terrorism, with bilateral ties flourishing under India's new
Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
...
Modi and US President Barack Obama agreed on greater defense
cooperation during a meeting in Washington last month, when the US
reportedly lobbied for its Javelin missiles.
"The DAC (Defense Acquisition Council) took the decision based on
purely technical reasons and based on hard facts. It had been on the
agenda for some time," another unnamed defense ministry official told AFP.
Israel's defense industry has demonstrated once again that it is capable of independence. That has huge implications for future relations with the United States. Change - but good change for once.
Labels: India, Narenda Modi, Rafael
#BDS_Fail: They get Venezuela, we get India
Meet Narenda Modi, a right-wing Hindu nationalist, who was just elected Prime Minister of India. He is
strongly pro-Israel.
Modi is a Hindu
nationalist and considered to be right-wing in Indian politics. Born
into a poor family where he sold tea with his father as a child, he rose
to prominence as the Chief Minister of Gujarat, a Western province in
India.
There he gained
recognition as a charismatic leader as he reversed economic trends in
the province to make it one of India's most important Industrial and
financial centers.
Part of his success was due to a public relations campaign and
financial incentives to encourage investment in development within
Gujarat. Israel was reportedly one of Modi's greatest allies in economic
progress according to the International Business Times. He has visited
Israel in the past and has publicly supported it.
Modi came to power as leader of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)
which has supported his close political and financial ties with Israel,
who invested billions of dollars in Gujarat during Modi's time as its
leader.
In the latter half of
2013, agreements were signed with Israeli company Tower Semiconductor
and a Swiss company to open two semiconductor fabrication plants (one of
which would be in Gujarat) at a cost of $10.4 billion.
The two plants are projected to create 22,000 jobs. Indian
consumption of the semiconductor products for electronic chips to be
made at the plants is due to rise from $7 billion in 2014 to $55 billion
in 2020, paving the way for investment in additional plants.
"Gujarat is a business-oriented state and this (memorandum of
understanding) will help both Israeli and Gujarat-based companies in
developing and strengthening the industrial relationship," said Israel's
Consul General in Mumbai, Jonathan Miller, to Israel National News.
"Our focus is on increasing research ties with Gujarat. Israel
is keen to increase research and development and cultural ties with
Gujarat," said Miller who also added that a free-trade agreement may be
on the horizon for the two countries.
Miller also spoke on Indian TV to discuss Israeli involvement in
agricultural projects. "Israel is a world leader in advanced
agriculture technologies. Israel's success lies in the determination and
ingenuity of farmers and scientists and in the close cooperation
between R&D and industry," said Miller.
...
Yet, it isn't only
for financial gain that Israel finds itself naturally partnered with
Modi's BJP. Anti-Pakistan and anti-Islamic rhetoric from BJP officials
over the years has drawn India closer to Israel politically and
ideologically as they also search for ways to cooperate in fighting
terrorism.
The National security adviser from a previous BJP government said in
Washington that India, Israel, and the US must, "jointly face the same
ugly face of modern-day terrorism." The comments came in the wake of the
September 11 terrorist attacks in New York City and preceded the first
state visit from an Israeli Prime Minister to India.
The US and the Europeans don't particularly care for Modi. While he was Chief Minister of Gujarat, they denied him visas because they felt he didn't do enough to stop Muslim on Hindu rioting.
Sounds like just the kind of ally we need these days. How did our Leftist foreign ministry ever let this happen?
Labels: India, Narenda Modi
