US President Donald Trump won the high field by presenting him with force to visit Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi Lockheed Martin in the Fifth Generation F-35 Lightning II Furtal Fighter, among a host of other American military equipment. After meeting with Modi, Trump said that the United States would increase military sales in India and “opened the way to ultimately provide India F-35 fighters”. Pushed by his Maga (Make America Great Again) program, the president expressed his determination during his meeting with the Prime Minister of the White House on February 13 to extend American exports overall to India in order to reject, if not overcome, the commercial deficit of 36.8 billion dollars – on 10th The largest deficit in the United States in bilateral trade.
With exports to the United States at 77.5 billion dollars, and imports of relatively modest value of $ 40.7 billion in bidirectional trade worth $ 118.2 billion in 2023-24, India had a trade surplus of $ 36.8 billion compared to the United States, its largest trading partner. Although the United States has sold nearly $ 15 billion in India weapons over the past seven years, according to data from foreign military sales (FMS) compiled by the arms trade forum, Trump wants Modi to pivot his government’s defense expenses in the United States, far from Russia. “Since 2008, around 62% of India’s defense imports (by value) come from Russia,” noted the “in focus” report last December on the Congressional Research Service (CRS) of the United States.
However, sales of weapons from the United States in India are via the FMS and direct commercial sales (DMS), which are not presented in standard bilateral trade statistics because they are considered to be more “security assistance” than commercial transactions. Governments directly undertake these sales with political and strategic considerations that go beyond the simple market dynamics. If they had been one of the standard commercial figures, the United States’s trade deficit with India would have been proportionally less.
Citing India as the largest importer of weapons in the world per value, representing a tenth of the global importance of arms from 2008 to 2023, “in focus” of CRS provides in New Delhi spending “at least 200 billion dollars in the next decade to modernize its armed forces”. He adds: “The American government actively encourages India to reduce its dependence on articles of defense of Russian origin.” The International Stockholm Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) estimates that the United States’s share in India arms imports increased from 8% to 13% between 2009 and 2023, while Russia decreased by more than half during this period, from 76% to 36%. There were also media reports on February 14 on the score of an agreement of 2022 to 2.2 billion dollars between India and Russia for fighter planes MKI MIG-29 and SU-30.
The joint declaration after the Modi-Trump meeting said that India has accelerated the purchase of six long-range maritime patrol planes to improve its maritime surveillance scope in the Indian Ocean region. The two parties also praised “the significant integration of articles of defense of American origin into the inventory of India to date”, in particular the military transport aircraft of Boeing, the Tandem-Rotor helicopter CH-47F Chinook and Twin-Turboshaft Hélicopter Ah-64e Apache, Ca-Locked’s C-3J Hélicopter Multi-Mission, McDonnell Douglas Harpoon All-Temps, Over-The-Horizon, Anti-Navire Missile and Armed Drone Skyguardian Skyguardian MQ-9B.
Opposition and policies and defense analysts of India have many times censored the Prime Minister for the facilitation of the United States and other developed countries to forge largely transactional links with India and to obtain compensation agreements. They also criticized him for not having taken into account his own call to Clarion of “Atmanirbhar Bharat” (Hindi for “autonomous India”) invented in 2020, although India has a proven military industry capable of verifying the country’s dependence on imports. They particularly denounced his consideration of Trump’s height for the F-35, which the administration of the latter himself questioned. Elon Musk, “employee of the special government”, who directs the newly created DOGE (Department of Effectiveness of the Government), has often denied the fighter, his rhetoric reaching a culmination point when he said: “Some American weapons systems are good, although too expensive money, but please, in the name of all that is holy, we stop the worst military value for history which is the program F-35!
The Government Government Office of the United States Controller (GAO) noted in its April 2024 report, F-35 Sustainment: Costs continue to increase while the expected use and availability has decreasedThat the F-35 is the “DOD) of the Ministry of Defense (DOD)” the most ambitious weapon system and its most advanced plane “. “The dod’s projected costs to maintain the F -35 fleet continue to increase – from 1.1 billion of dollars in 2018 to 1.58 dollars in 2023,” added the report. Musk’s Doge was responsible for reducing the pentagon’s $ 850 billion budget, which, according to Trump, may well be reduced by half if the United States, China and Russia had to conclude a kind of agreement. It seems unlikely that the impulsive president and the rhetoric of Musk put an end to the F-35 program, as a fifth generation fighter who would be the advanced war advanced at present is the choice of the United States and the 19 of his allies, including many NATO countries, Israel, Japan, Australia, Singapore and South Korea. A thousand F-35 operates with these countries, and if Trump manages to bring a lucrative agreement with India, this would help even more to maintain the production lines F-35.
In the Indian context, defense purchases and their calendar are largely a political decision taken by the highest leadership that draws over the military hierarchy which expected the defense and security requirements would not prevail the defense and security requirements, and follow a careful selection procedure. One cannot help reminding one of the most secret – and questionable military contracts of India when, during his visit to France in 2015, the Prime Minister Modi unexpectedly finalized the purchase of 36 Rafale Multi -Roles Baignade planes from the Dassault France aviation for 7.87 billion euros. None in his office, including the Minister of Defense, Manohar Parrikar, was aware of this proposal. Modi had not even included Parrikar in his entourage, having rather taken the industrialist in bankruptcy Anil Ambani, who, fifteen earlier, had incorporated a company called bindiance defense limited that Dassault selected as a compensation for the agreement, ignoring the references of India of 84 years of major state, Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL). Then, the French Prime Minister François Hollande then declared that the French part had no choice of the selection, because Reliance had been recommended by India.
The Indian Air Force (IAF), whose squadrons (18 fighters in each) decreased to 31 compared to a sanctioned force of 42 squadrons, had been encouraged by the government’s 2012 Defense Agreement at the previous congress worth $ 22 billion (including life cycle costs) for 126 Multirole Multirole Dassault (MMRCA). The Modi agreement in 2015 had canceled this contract. Although the Secretary of Foreign Affairs of India, Vikram Misri, called the Trump field for the F-35 “a proposal, without an official process in progress”, his assertion was relevant by the announcement of the Minister of Commerce, Piyush Goyal, on February 17 that he “held a meeting with a delegation led by Mr. Michael Williamson, President of Lockheed Martin International”. Lockheed had also presented his F-35 to the Aero India show held in Bengaluru from February 10 to 14.
Presented alongside the most advanced Russian in Russia which he offered to IAF, his first fifth-generation multirol fighter, Sukhoi su-57. At a press conference during the Aero India, a spokesperson for the Russia Public Sector Defense Company, Rosoboronexport, said that his company had offered a technology transfer to HAL to obtain licenses to the export version, SU-57E. “We propose to locate the production of the fifth generation fighter plane in India, and production in Hal can start this year,” he said. Rosoboronexport also offered assistance for the AMCA project (AMCA), an indigenous medium fighting fighting project, which includes technological transfers linked to key components such as motors, active electronic radars (AESA), optics, artificial intelligence, software and advanced weapons.
Cuttless technologies owners closely controlled by the F-35 prevent the possibility of supply of the United States. This and excessive costs for lifetime are not the only dissuasive for India, which will also have to face the fact that neither the F-35 data link can be compatible with the Integrated Air Command System (IACCS), nor its radio communication equipment with the Russian-origin communication suites of Russian origin from India. The design of the F-35 could also not allow him to use an aerial refueling, which is currently configured for the Russian IL-78 in the IAF.
A main question is whether the F-35 can be integrated into the current IAF structure which is largely addressed to the Sukhois and the Russian Migs, the French mirages and the gusts and the Indian tejas which would be very incompatible for an American fighter. If India concludes an agreement for the F-35, it would be the first American fighter in the IAF fleet. The introduction of the F-35 would require significant changes in the logistics, maintenance and support system, as well as completely specialized training for pilots and soil support.
The GAO report makes revealing revelations: “However, the DOD plans to pilot the F-35 less than at the origin, partly due to reliability problems with the plane. The overall availability of the F-35 fleet has tended considerably over the past 5 years, and none of the plane variants (that is to say the F-35A, F-35B and F-35C) achieves availability objectives. »With a top speed of Mach 2 and a range of 1,900 km, the Su-57 with two comparatively more recent engines is largely not tested in operational deployments outside Russia, with Algeria its only foreign customer so far. The largely operational unique engine F-35 has a top 1.6 top speed and a 1,500 km combat range, and has higher information and collection of information collection capacities.
Even if Rostec (Russian Technologies State Corporation) provided only an estimate of the approximate costs of the SU-57, the analysts deduced the potential cost of a SU-57 jointly produced Indigenous production of India from other Russian fighters such as the SU-30MKI and arrived at an estimate of 75 million dollars in mass, if the prices of the Chabage and India. However, if India was to reject the F-35 offer, Trump could thwart it to settle for the SU-57 by a punitive actions. Its administration may well invoke the opponents of American opponents through sanctions (CAATSA) against India, because Rosoboronexport has been under American sanctions since July 2014.
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