They maybe, they maynot be, lets discuss
Sanctions are useful when the components are not manufactured in the country. In India's case every company has said that it would manufacture the planes in India. Just like US has a policy that anything that the US buys has to be manufactured there itself.
Ok so there is a nick in the engine blade, who do you think is going to send you a spare for it if you have sanctions. There are many millions of LRUs and FRUs involved here and its not possible for India to manufacture these...a majority of them require facilities and machinery which India will not posses. You need to understand the difference between assembly and manufacturing....the two are quite different and leave a gaping hole to be exploited by sanctions.
Its not India that went to the US for the planes mate. Trust me, the arms companies have every powerful lobies, they practically made the India-US honeymoon possible. They donot want to lose out the estimated 35Billion$ worth of arms to be imported by India in the near future.
Once again, military lobbies are sub-servient to US interests.....otherwise US military sales to China would be the highlight of the defence industry....not comparing China with India, simply pointing out that there are many ways of skinning the cat when it comes to sanctions.
By all means, that is true, however the US companies want to come to India to sell the wares, we have their ambassador saying that the companies want to come to India , to sell their planes and to open RnD and their centres and stuff. US wants its companies to prosper. They are in the end private companies. Its the US that came to India with its offer mate, India did not goto US, we can buy our defense equipment from countries that we have always bought from, there is suddenly no urgency to buy from the Americans.
The proof of the pudding is in the eating. When you have fool-proof guarantees against sanctions on the sale of aircraft like the Hornet, then we can believe all of the diplomatic niceties like the ambassador saying this or that. While there is scope for setting up R&D for non-military stuff, the US military complex still views India's close collaboration with the Russians with some degree of caution. US companies will sell anything to anyone if they have the clearance....after all its a business that generates money, however its tempered by US foreign policy...reserving the right to apply sanctions, pressures is something that is an inherent part of the US foreign policy. Its been applied to others (Example is the tussel between UK MOD and the US companies working on the JSF who said no way we would give all of the source codes to the Brits....they worked it out however India and US are not at the same level as the UK-US relations so to assume that US will give everything to India without any preconditions is a bit naive.
They dont give it away mate. Its license manufactued. India cant sell it or use it anywhere else. And i beg to differ, India does have the capacity to absorb weapon systems like F/A-18, its private sector is huge.
You can beg to differ however the reality is otherwise. I could point out about hundred and one things as to why India would not be able to absorb the ToT and secondly the US would not want to part with many of the sensitive technologies that go into advanced aircraft manufacture...but I leave you to your own understanding.
Again, license manufacturing, The engines will be manufactured here. Its not GE that deals with these issues, India deals with Boeing, and Boeing will decide what comes and goes.
Boeing offers the aircraft...the deal on sub-systems (like engines etc) is made with the specific producers as they decide what they can offer in terms of ToT and what does not make sense for them to do. If ToT was such an easily passable thing then you would have seen more than 3 or so countries with the know-how of high performance propulsion technologies.
Yes, but there are also restrictions on the usage of F-16's. They cannot go into heavily defended airspace, etc, etc. They can only be used in the defence of their own country(which is obviously what was planned for them ofcourse) but nevertheless, they cannot be used to go deep in India.
That is all trash! The only mention about "heavily defended airspace" was for the politicians and specifically wrt a component called DRFM. PAF will have DRFM in the near future. If there is a war, PAF F-16s would be spearheading operations inside of India. There is no technical inhibition or a realistic way of stopping Pakistan from using the F-16s in any manner she deems suitable.
Yes it would. But like i said, politics in India donot make that possible. If there are restrictions of any sort on the planes on offer to India, no govt can ever dream of getting them, it will haunt them at night. India does not depend on the US for arms, they will get it from somewhere else, as they always have. The US companies want in, not the other way round.
Yep sure I buy that
The nuclear deal with its many stipulations and constraints is an example of getting around the Indian politics. I am not sure if I would be wowed by the domestic concern in the minds of the Indian governments.
