Old weapons, new threats fuel India’s military build-up

Some argue India is playing catch-up, but others sense a more combative impulse.

NEW DELHI:

India’s planned purchase of 126 fighters from France’s Dassault marks the latest stage in a huge military procurement cycle that has turned the world’s largest democracy into its biggest arms importer.

The final Dassault contract is expected to be worth $12 billion and India is preparing further big ticket purchases over the coming years, including of helicopters and artillery.

In a report to be published next week, Jane’s Defence Weekly forecasts that India’s aggregate defence procurement spending between 2011 and 2015 will top $100 billion.

What is less clear – and the subject of some heated debate – is why New Delhi is so hungry for costly modern weaponry and where the country’s strategic priorities lie.

Some argue that India is simply playing catch-up and using its growing economic wealth to effect a pragmatic, and long overdue, overhaul of a military arsenal still loaded with near-obsolete, Soviet-era hardware.

But others sense a more combative impulse, driven by the military modernisation efforts of its rivals and neighbours Pakistan and China, as well as the need to secure energy resources and supply lines outside its borders.

In testimony to a Senate Select Committee on Tuesday, the director of US national intelligence, James Clapper, said India was increasingly concerned about China’s posture on their disputed border and the wider South Asia region.

“The Indian military is strengthening its forces in preparation to fight a limited conflict along the disputed border, and is working to balance Chinese power projection in the Indian Ocean,” Clapper said.

“The Chinese have a huge, huge lead,” said strategic analyst Uday Bhaskar. “India is simply seeking what it sees as a level of self-sufficiency ... That’s why we top of the list of arms-importing nations,” Bhaskar said.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 3^rd, 2012.