India becomes world’s 2nd largest arms buyer: SIPRI
Akhtar Jamal
Islamabad—The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) has reported in its recent report that India has become the world’s second largest arms purchaser during last five years competing with China.
The report said that India’s imports of arms went as high as seven per cent of the world’s arms exports.
The SIPRI report also said that from 2005 to 2009, India’s annual arms imports doubled: $1.04 billion (2005); $1.25 billion (2006); $2.2 billion (2007); $1.8 billion (2008) and $2.1 billion (2009).
It added that India’s major imports included 82 Sukhoi-30MKI fighters and T-90 tanks from Russia, and an A-50/Phalcon Airborne Early Warning (AEW) system integrated by Israel.
The United States is currently India’s sixth-biggest arms supplier may also become in second position once New Delhi starts paying for a series of recent and ongoing acquisitions. SIPRI report was prepared before purchase of C-130J Super Hercules transport aircraft for $1.1 billion; or the $2 billion acquisition of P8I long-range maritime patrol aircraft from the United States. It is also important to note that India is hoping to receive ten C-17 Globemaster airlifters, worth an estimated $2.4 billion; and for 145 M777 ultralight howitzers worth about $647 million from the United States.
Meanwhile it was also reported that India would soon receive a nuclear-powered Russian attack submarine, nuclear power reactors, aircraft carrier Admiral Gorshkov and MiG-29Ks.
Defence observers revealed that India and Russia quietly reached an unpublicized agreement under which Moscow had agreed a 10-year lease of the K-152 Nerpa submarine during Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s recent visit to India.
India is dispatching a 50-member submarine crew, including 8-10 officers, to Russia to train on the Akula-II class nuclear submarine by the first week of April to get an intensive training on Nerpa and then bring it to India on the 10-year lease.
India had earlier leased a ‘Charlie-I’ class Russian nuclear submarine from 1988 to 1991. That submarine, too, had been named INS Chakra but the expertise gained was steadily lost since India did not operate any other nuclear submarine thereafter. The 12,000-tonne Nerpa is nuclear-propelled and can handle long-range nuclear-tipped missiles.
