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Just to build on my recent post re: America's Asian Alliances....
India Defence notes India's Air Chief Marshal S.P. Tyagi's recent remarks that Indian Air Force (IAF) plans to acquire more advanced fighters, sophisticated defence systems and smart long-range weapons, as the country's "strategic boundaries have been redefined" by its growing energy needs and participation in disaster management operations. Tyagi said the current scenario "necessitated a strategic reach to safeguard our national interests".
That's a positive sign, and one of the things the USA was looking at when it made the India alliance a priority.
A "Mumbai Doctrine" can't even begin to gather steam until Indians themselves begin to see the world in this way. Once they do see a larger global role for themselves, however, there's a natural desire for strategic reach from the Straits of Malacca in the east to the Persian Gulf and the Desi communities of East Africa in the west.
India will face competition from China, via China's "string of pearls" strategy that's establishing bases in Burma/Myanmar, Gwadar (Pakistan), and soon beyond. In our China scenarios & futures post, Winds noted that China need to secure its resource lifelines to the extent that it can. It's trying, and will continue to do so. That effort may develop a hard edge via a quasi-imperialist "janissaries for dictators + Chinese business colonists" approach, or it may take softer forms. What is certain is that the mineral resources of Africa will be a locus of future competition. India is beginning to prepare.
Of course, the USA will remain the pre-eminent naval power for a rather long time to come - and the critical choke-points of the Persian Gulf, Red Sea/ Suez and Straits of Malacca will be ceded to no-one. But then, it was the British Royal Navy that enforced the USA's Monroe Doctrine at first, and they eventually found America's naval cooperation to be quite welcome without having to cede anything.
Naval power will be the foundation of India's growth on the world stage. Yet the linchpin of naval power remains power projection, and shifts in air power doctrine are usually a good harbinger of things to come.
If you're a military buff, you'll find the Air Chief Marshal's comments re: fighter numbers, the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, et. al. interesting. DID has the details...
Interesting indeed.
Most of India's air hardware is of Soviet vintage and its given plenty decent service so far. The MiG-21s are an exception with a pathetic crash record. US hardware is perceived to be simply more expensive and not much more functionally superior, IMHO.
Some is Soviet vintage. Some is just Russian. The IL-78 tankers? Russian, bought in 2003. IL-76 Phalcons? New build Russian/Israeli, coming. SU-30MKIs? New-build Russian/Indian, and only the F-22 is a better in-service fighter plane anywhere.
The MiG-21s do have a deserved "widow-maker" reputation, and the DID article covers that aspect very well. Having said that, they performed awfully well in COPE India exercises against US fighters that cost 6 times as much. To be crass about it, India can afford a couple of pilots in order to keep its numbers & coverage up while they wait for other stuff to be ready.
As for US stuff, India is very lukewarm on the F-16, but seems to really like the F-18 E/F Super Hornet. Its AESA radar (a radar that doesn't move and has much greater capabilities than conventional fighter radars) is attracting especial interest, and that isn't the only US equipment India is looking at by any means (others include AH-64 Apaches, Patriot PAC-3 missiles, and E-2 Hawkeye 2000 naval AWACS).
I think the "American stuff is junk" thing has largely gone away.
Still, their experience in license manufacture of Soviet/Russian designs is going to weigh.
Robin, the standardization thing will weigh even more.
India already operates MiG-29s and Mirage 2000s. With Russia offering MiG-35s (upgraded MiG-29s) and France the Mirage 2000 v5, I still say they're the front runners. India's experiences with the MiG-29s haven't been fabulous, either, so I say the edge goes to France.
Yet recent discoveries re: the capabilities of AESA radars could tip things the Americans' way. We'll see.
Regardless, India is very likely to buy E-2 Hawkeyes, and other US equipment will appear in their arsenals as well.
Whether the US firms win or lose the fighter contract isn't a very big deal in geo-strategic terms. The key things are that cooperation is progressing on multiple fronts, and India's view of its own place in the world is shifting.
In the 60s, the US had agreed to sell India military aircraft (I think it was the F-104s), but when India was ready to place the order, the LBJ administration held back - reason, Pakistan had attacked India in the Rann of Kutch, and the fact that India was actually going to need those planes. That opened the way for the Soviets to sell their MiGs, and the rest is military history.
As Joe writes, the fact that the United States has offered military hardware is just one facet of the cooperation. But for Indian defence planners to prevail over the entrenched Russian arms middleman lobby, and to overcome their own doubts about supplies and spares in times of need, de-hyphenation (ie separation of US-India and US-Pakistan relations) is a must. The Bush adminstration is striking the right chords. The question is whether its policies will have any sort of bipartisan, institutional basis.