India, US sign 10-yr defence agreement

India, US sign 10-yr defence agreement
Ashish Kumar Sen writes from Washington

INDIA and the USA on Tuesday entered into an agreement that “charts a course for the US-Indo defence relationship for the next 10 years”. The landmark agreement will facilitate joint weapons production, co-operation on missile defence and the transfer of technology.

The document, signed in Washington by US Defence Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and Indian Defence Minister Pranab Mukherjee, seeks “new opportunities for technology transfer, collaboration, co-production and research and development.”

“The United States and India have entered a new era,” a statement issued after the signing of the agreement said. “We are transforming our relationship to reflect our common principles and shared national interests.”

The Indian and US sides agreed to set up a new subgroup — “defence procurement and production group” — to oversee defence trade, as well as prospects for co-production and technology collaboration. A newly constituted Defence Joint Working Group, subordinate to the Defence Policy Group (DPG) will meet at least once every year to review the work overseen by DPG and its subgroups.

Noting that the two nations had advanced to “unprecedented levels of cooperation” since 1995, when the two countries signed the “Agreed Minute on Defence Relations,” the statement said the defence relationship would be part of the broader US-Indo strategic partnership.

In January 1995, US Defence Secretary William Perry signed the “Agreed Minute on Defence Relations” with his Indian counterpart, S. B. Chavan. However, the Clinton administration’s preoccupation with questions of nuclear non-proliferation had inhibited any significant expansion of military-to-military cooperation or dual-use technology transfers.

According to the agreement signed on Tuesday, the USA and India “will work to conclude defence transactions, not solely as ends in and of themselves, but as a means to strengthen our countries’ security, reinforce our strategic partnership, achieve greater interaction between our armed forces, and build greater understanding between our defence establishments.”

It noted that since the last Agreed Minute “changes in the international security environment have challenged our countries in ways unforeseen 10 years ago.” The agreement defined its goals as strengthening “our countries’ security, reinforce our strategic partnership, and build greater understanding between our defence establishments.”

“Both sides agreed that US-India defence relations are an important pillar of their transforming bilateral relationship,” the statement said. “Today, we agree on a new framework that builds on past successes, seizes new opportunities and charts a course for the US-Indo defence relationship for the next 10 years.”

The framework stated that both India and the US were entering a new era, “transforming our relationships to reflect our common principles and shared national interests.”

It added that the two sides would expand interaction with other nations in ways that promote regional and global peace and stability, and enhance capabilities to combat the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.

Speaking at the release of a report of the Joint Task Force of the Pacific Council on International Policy and Observer Research Foundation at the Brookings Institution on Tuesday, Mr Mukherjee lauded the contribution of the Indian American community to the US-India ties.

US-India relations, he said, have been nourished by a “highly professional relationship in which Indians who have settled in the US have made a huge contribution.”

“Today, when the relationship changes as the report has described, ‘from uneasy cooperation to incipient partnership, it would be fair to recognize the role played by those in the strategic community as well as the range of Indian professionals who have contributed to this re-evaluation of India and the US-India relations,” he added.

Key members of the task force include former Indian ambassador to the US, Abid Hussain, former US ambassador to India, Richard F. Celeste, and former Indian Army Chief of Staff Gen V.P. Malik.

The task force’s report recommended removing barriers to strategic cooperation, particularly in the area of technology development, and expansion of commercial ties between India and the USA.

Mr Mukherjee had made a similar recommendation himself in a speech to a Washington think tank on Monday in which he appealed to the Bush administration to remove “anachronistic” restrictions on dual use nuclear and space technology cooperation.

The minister said the task force’s recommendations were “particularly timely” on the eve of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s July 18-20 visit to the United States “which we hope will be a prelude to President Bush’s visit to India, the first after President Clinton’s visit in March 2000.”

ISRO eyes mission moon

ISRO eyes mission moon
Jangveer Singh
Tribune News Service

Bangalore, June 27
Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) is now aiming for the moon with the organisation in place to launch its first such probe, Chandryan-1, for the Moon in 2007-08.

The organisation is also set to launch a satellite, Astrosat, in 2007 which is expected to enable coverage of visible, ultra violet, soft x-ray and hard x-ray regions, equipping the space agency to engage in new generation experiments.

Disclosing this here today at an international conference on Planetary Exploration and Space Law, ISRO Chairman G Madhavan Nair said Chandryan-1 would place a spacecraft weighing 525 kg around a 100 km orbit of the moon. He said the spacecraft would enable high resolution chemical, mineralogical and photo geological mapping of the lunar surface.

This, Mr Nair said, would enable defining the process leading to the formation and chemical evolution of the moon besides systematic topographic mapping of the Moon’s surface for preparing a three dimensional atlas and to improve upon the gravity model of the Moon. He said besides planning to instal a host of sophisticated instruments, including a Terrain Mapping Camera, a Hyper Spectral Imager and a X-ray Spectrometer in Chandryan-1, ISRO had also selected a number of international experiments of instruments of reputed laboratories worldwide.

Mr Nair said this had been done following a decision to involve other international instruments and providing opportunities for cooperative pursuit of the study of the moon.

The John Hopkins and Jet Propulsion Laboratories of the United States, the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory of the United Kingdom, Swedish Institute of Space Physics and Max Plank Institute of Aeronimie, Germany are among the international participants in the programme.

ISRO chairman also signed a memorandum of understanding with European Space Agency (ESA) Director-General Dr Jean- Jacques Dordain today for carrying another three European instruments aboard Chandryan-1.

As regards the Astrosat programme, Mr Nair said this would be an Indian multi-wavelength satellite which would have a wide spectral coverage. He said it would provide an opportunity to Indian astronomers to carry out cutting edge research in frontier areas of x-ray astronomy and ultraviolet astronomy. “This satellite will also allow Indian astronomers to address some of the outstanding problems in high-energy astrophysics”, he added.

I’m sorry to go off-topic , but I cant access BR for the last couple of days and can only access it in google’s cache. Is it just me or is everyone having the same problem ?

Yep HuntingHawk Iam too facing same kind of problem…. I also cant access the BR site 😡

There are rumours they use the South African Darter Radar Guided Missile on their mirages

😀

India, USA may sign missile development MoU

What type of missile development? :confused:

India, USA may sign missile development MoU
Tribune News Service

New Delhi, June 24
India may sign a memorandum of understanding with the USA on missile research development training and evaluation (RDTE) during the nine-day visit of Defence Minister Pranab Mukherjee, starting tomorrow.

Senior Defence Ministry officials said here ahead of the start of the visit that no major shopping list was on the agenda of the Defence Minister, who would be the first Indian Defence Minister to visit washington in a long time.

The issue of Mr Mukherjee’s visit to the USA also came up for discussion at the meeting of the Cabinet Commitee of Security (CCS) here this morning. The CCS chaired by the Prime Minister held detailed discussions over the issues which were expected to crop up during the visit. The CCS meeting was also attended among others by Mr Mukherjee, Home Minister Shivraj Patil, External Affairs Minister K Natwar Singh and Finance Minister P. Chidambaram.

Coming out of the CCS meeting Mr Mukherjee said he was not going to the USA with a shopping list of military hardware and that his visit was mainly “exploratory” in nature to expand Indo-US relations. “I am not going with a shopping list. This is a visit by an Indian Defence Minister to the USA after a long time,” Mr Mukherjee told reporters on being asked whether India will enter negotiations on the purchase of F-16 warplanes offered by the USA. Later, when the MoD officials were asked specifically whether India was considering to buy F-16s despite opposition from Left parties, they said no decision had been taken but only technological and commercial aspects of the aircraft were being assessed.

On the purchase of P3C Orion surveillance aircraft for the Navy from the USA, they said it was a “good” plane and various aspects relating to it were being examined.

Some kind of an assurance with regard to uninterrupted supply of defence material and safeguards to this effect could also come up for discussion during the visit, the officials said.

Mr Mukherjee, who is undertaking the visit at the invitation of his US counterpart Donald Rumsfeld, will be accompanied by Defence Secretary Ajai Vikram Singh and other senior officials.

Mr Mukherjee will have meetings with US Vice-President **** Cheney, National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley and his counterpart Donald Rumsfeld during his stay.

Meanwhile, under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Nicholas Burns today met the Foreign Secretary here to discuss a range of issues.

Mr Mukherjee said the CCS also discussed the Home Ministry report on security in J and K, North and Naxalite-affected areas. The security situation was reviewed and assessed but no decision taken, he said.

I dont knwo if any body posted earlier.. this news is bit late but anyhow it is important piece of news

A world first in N-power programme
Arup Chanda
Tribune News Service

Kalpakkam (Tamil Nadu), June 11
India has made a big leap forward in its nuclear power programme by achieving reprocessing of nuclear fuel with high plutonium content with a high burn-up mark for the first time in the world.

Addressing a press conference here today at the Indira Gandhi Centre for Atomic Research (IGCAR), about 70 km from Chennai, Dr Anil Kakodkar, Chairman, Atomic Energy Commission and Secretary of Department of Atomic Energy, said for the first time the plutonium and uranium-rich carbide fuel with a high burn-up mark of 147.8 giga watts day per tonne had been achieved.

He said: “The fast breed test reactor here is unique because it is using carbide fuel. It was a bold step and as a part of cautious approach the target for burnup was fixed at 25,000 mega watts day per tonne. But what has been achieved is six times of the target.”

Dr Baldev Raj, Director, IGCAR, said: “The department is committed to efficiently closing the fast reactor fuel cycle by safely reprocessing future discharges of spent fuels with increasing burnups and in achieving the energy security for the country”.

He said while the fast breed reactors (FBR) had been using oxide and carbide fuel the facility had decided to “ leapfrog into using metallic fuel in specially designed FBRs”.

Dr Kakodkar said: “The IGCAR is focused on developing metallic fuel for specially designed FBRs. We have been using oxide and carbide fuel but we will leapfrog into using metallic fuel in the next 10 years.”

He said scientists at the IGCAR had been working on reprocessing of nuclear fuel and had been successful.

Explaining the scientific process of reprocessing of nuclear fuel and how much energy it can generate he said: “To put it for a layman I would say 100,000 mega watts day per tonne mean that just one gram of fuel can keep a 50 watt bulb lighted for three to four years.”

He said the country was going to be living with energy shortage as 50 years from now the demand would be 1300 to 1400 giga watts day per tonne in India. “We have to extract maximum energy from the minerals and hence reprocessing is very important,” he added.

Asked how much plutonium was extracted, Mr Kakodkar said: “I have no answer for such questions and you should know which questions not to ask”.😀

The extraction of plutonium or uranium is one of the country’s top secrets as it will give away the stocks and also indicate how much of it was being diverted for manufacturing nuclear weapons. 😎

He said: “We have a plan to rapidly go on to the second phase of our nuclear power plan which will consist of more FBRs. They will be designed to meet India’s request which is different from rest of the world. The modest quantity of uranium in our soil was enough to meet the requirement”.

“Our nuclear programme is unique dictated by our own conditions. We are placing very high emphasis on research.

We will take more steps to strengthen domestic research and technology,” he added.

well all i can say is any project is good as long as it provides you the necessary
push to start building things fresh… hoppe it proves good for israeli aviation Industries…
but why India and Israeel are not cooperating on CAT(combat air trainer)!?

regds

I guess that shouldn’t be a problem, if India coughs up the money to develop a recce variant of the MiG-31. It would be a shame to have the Indian Foxbats retire, even more so since i’ve never seen one…
.

Arthur I think India was intrested in this aircraft but it was Russia who denied
it as said in the article

India had also been bidding for the Beyond Visual Range Missile version of the fighter, but the Russians did not part with this technology.

The acquisition of such a version of the MiG-25 would have given the IAF the capability of shooting down any enemy fighter from almost near outer space, the pilots said.