SL leadership is indeed smart enough in this sense. They wouldn’t want to upset India, but I think Chinese help (which played a major part in routing of LTTE) is unlikely to be ignored either. Both SL govt and leadership have their own interests, and having a counterweight to Indian influence within SL might be considered advantageous by some…though it would mean delicate balancing of relations.
Chinese help played huge part when it came to the war… No doubt… and make no mistake we are extremely grateful for this.
India said it could only provide defensive equipment, support. RADARs, A/D system, intelligence, training, etc….
Most of our equipment are from PRC.
from the Type-56 rifle to 152mm, 122mm, 130mm big guns, Mortars, 122mm MLRS, ATGM, J-7G, K-8 and the list goes on and on. But these are not strategic weapons which will effect India. On the other hand a very advanced, powerful 3D RADAR and other surveillance type equipment can have an effect on India.
After PRC it would be the Czech republic specially the RM-70, then Pakistan and so on…
But the last thing the SL govt. would do is get into a tug-o-war between 2 big powers (India-PRC). The current SL Govt. has made that clear. SL will be more like the “little kid brother” who says “please don’t fight”…to his big brothers 🙂
They have also said that they want to get closer to Russia. And they have been doing so the past 2-3 years. This is were the MiG-29 and other Russian weapons come in. The MiG-29 is a reasonable choice especially considering India having tons of experience with the Fulcrum. IIRC, there is a new Mi-17 deal with Russia soon….
IMHO, future modernization of the SL armed forces will include more Russian equipment, since that would be less unacceptable to India.
The current SL govt. made it very clear that it wants to get closer with Non-western nations at same time being self-sufficient in certain areas (especially economically) while being much less reliant on western nations. IMHO that is the right way do go…
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