The US on Thursday approved a US$4 billion sale of state-of-the-art drones to India, which is eager to modernize its military in the face of China, after a delay following an alleged assassination plot on US soil.
The sale marks a milestone in Indian purchases of US weapons after New Delhi’s historic reliance on arms from Russia, which have been increasingly controversial due to sanctions over the invasion of Ukraine.
Indian officials had discussed the drones during a state visit by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi last year at the invitation of US President Joe Biden, following Indian skirmishes both with China and its historic adversary Pakistan.
Photo: Reuters
After months of discussion with US lawmakers and India, the US Department of State formally informed the US Congress of the sale which includes 31 MQ-9B Sky Guardians, the most advanced among the Predator drones built by General Atomics.
“The proposed sale will improve India’s capability to meet current and future threats by enabling unmanned surveillance and reconnaissance patrols in sea lanes of operation,” a US Department of State statement said. “India has demonstrated a commitment to modernizing its military and will have no difficulty absorbing these articles and services into its armed forces.”
While India had long enjoyed wide support in the US Congress, the mega-deal faced a holdup after US prosecutors alleged a plot to kill a Sikh separatist leader with US citizenship in New York.
Most explosively, the US Department of Justice alleged that an Indian government official directed the plan remotely.
India promised to look into the claim, in a more measured response than the Modi government’s furious response when Canada earlier alleged involvement by New Delhi in the killing of a Sikh separatist near Vancouver.
However, some US lawmakers questioned whether both Modi and the Biden administration were taking the allegations seriously enough — and put off their informal green-lighting of the sale.
The US Congress still has 30 days in which it can block the sale, although most observers expect it to go through.
“The notification gets the sale back on track, but it could still encounter some choppy seas in Congress. The assassination allegations against India continue to cast a shadow over US-India relations,” Wilson Center’s South Asia Institute director Michael Kugelman said.
“Strategic imperatives tend to carry the day in this partnership, and that will likely ensure the sale eventually goes through, but one can’t rule out the possibility of some hiccups during the finalization process,” he said.
In New Delhi, the Indian Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal told reporters that the US was following its “internal processes” on the sale, declining further comment.
The Sea Guardians can monitor the seas as well as submarines and can remain airborne for 35 hours at a time and fire Hellfire missiles and carry about 450kg of bombs.
The Indian Navy has been operating two Predator drones on lease through which it has monitored Arabian Sea to protect ships from attacks by Yemen’s Houthi rebels and Somali pirates.
In 2019, India broke precedent by crossing into Pakistani airspace to strike an alleged militant training camp.
Tensions have also been rising on the Himalayan frontier between India and China, the world’s two most populous nations. A 2020 clash left dead 20 Indian troops and at least four Chinese.
US policymakers have largely seen common cause with India due to shared worries about China, even as some lawmakers voice alarm about Modi’s human rights record.
CLASH OF WORDS: While China’s foreign minister insisted the US play a constructive role with China, Rubio stressed Washington’s commitment to its allies in the region The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) yesterday affirmed and welcomed US Secretary of State Marco Rubio statements expressing the US’ “serious concern over China’s coercive actions against Taiwan” and aggressive behavior in the South China Sea, in a telephone call with his Chinese counterpart. The ministry in a news release yesterday also said that the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs had stated many fallacies about Taiwan in the call. “We solemnly emphasize again that our country and the People’s Republic of China are not subordinate to each other, and it has been an objective fact for a long time, as well as
‘CHARM OFFENSIVE’: Beijing has been sending senior Chinese officials to Okinawa as part of efforts to influence public opinion against the US, the ‘Telegraph’ reported Beijing is believed to be sowing divisions in Japan’s Okinawa Prefecture to better facilitate an invasion of Taiwan, British newspaper the Telegraph reported on Saturday. Less than 750km from Taiwan, Okinawa hosts nearly 30,000 US troops who would likely “play a pivotal role should Beijing order the invasion of Taiwan,” it wrote. To prevent US intervention in an invasion, China is carrying out a “silent invasion” of Okinawa by stoking the flames of discontent among locals toward the US presence in the prefecture, it said. Beijing is also allegedly funding separatists in the region, including Chosuke Yara, the head of the Ryukyu Independence
UNITED: The premier said Trump’s tariff comments provided a great opportunity for the private and public sectors to come together to maintain the nation’s chip advantage The government is considering ways to assist the nation’s semiconductor industry or hosting collaborative projects with the private sector after US President Donald Trump threatened to impose a 100 percent tariff on chips exported to the US, Premier Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰) said yesterday. Trump on Monday told Republican members of the US Congress about plans to impose sweeping tariffs on semiconductors, steel, aluminum, copper and pharmaceuticals “in the very near future.” “It’s time for the United States to return to the system that made us richer and more powerful than ever before,” Trump said at the Republican Issues Conference in Miami, Florida. “They
GOLDEN OPPORTUNITY: Taiwan must capitalize on the shock waves DeepSeek has sent through US markets to show it is a tech partner of Washington, a researcher said China’s reported breakthrough in artificial intelligence (AI) would prompt the US to seek a stronger alliance with Taiwan and Japan to secure its technological superiority, a Taiwanese researcher said yesterday. The launch of low-cost AI model DeepSeek (深度求索) on Monday sent US tech stocks tumbling, with chipmaker Nvidia Corp losing 16 percent of its value and the NASDAQ falling 612.46 points, or 3.07 percent, to close at 19,341.84 points. On the same day, the Philadelphia Stock Exchange Semiconductor Sector index dropped 488.7 points, or 9.15 percent, to close at 4,853.24 points. The launch of the Chinese chatbot proves that a competitor can
RSS