the main opponents to India @ NSG are china and japan. uk, russia, france and usa are all in favour and not in need of more carrots.

japan and china are not bidders for MRCA deal.

so I guess the carrot is to encourage US to browbeat the japanese and chinese ethusiastically to overcome their opposition. I think the US would do it anyway, a chinese “owned” south asia isnt exactly part of their strategic vision 🙂

believe there’s around 100 U and FL types left. most dangerous of the lot and these will be retired when the Hawks come over. GOI needs to press BAE to expedite delivery. ironic the youngest pilots get to train on the most unreliable and dangerous ac in the whole fleet.

so far 23 instructor(?) pilots have completed hawk training in UK.

hope it means we get to keep tabs on what the chinese are upto in central asia. nebraska isnt really a very interesting place otherwise :diablo:

http://www.expressindia.com/fullstory.php?newsid=64652

Indian liaison officers for key US Strategic Command

SHISHIR GUPTA
Posted online: Tuesday, March 21, 2006 at 0332 hours IST

India-US WASHINGTON, MARCH 20: Building rapidly on the civilian nuclear deal, Washington has now invited India to appoint military officers to liaison posts in the US Strategic Command (Stratcom), its largest and most critical defence set-up mandated to control strategic nuclear assets, space and missile defence and global deterrence against weapons of mass destruction (WMDs).

The Stratcom, whose area of operation spans the globe, controls all American nuclear delivery platforms, including ballistic missile submarines, B-52 Stratofortress strategic bombers, Minuteman-III intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) and Tomahawk land attack systems.

Having an Indian liaison officer on board will allow a more efficient link between Stratcom centres and India’s relatively new Strategic Forces Command (SFC) which controls Indian military nuclear assets.

The possibility of posting Indian officers at the Stratcom headquarters in Nebraska first came up when US Secretary for Defence Donald Rumsfeld brought up the idea with Indian counterpart Pranab Mukherjee on June 28 last year, the day the new Indo-US defence framework was signed. Nine months later, the offer is now formal.

> The same goes for the ECM, targeting and datalink technologies from the Sanders
> company of Nashua, New Hampshire, USA that was bought by BAE.

Ah! the famous facility on Spit brook road – they used to have a wooden board at the entrance announcing open positions. always wondered what went on there…