India denies NATO Missile Defence and F-35 offers

Indian Defence Minister AK Antony has denied that India has been offered to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Missile defence programme and the United States has offered partnership in the development of the world’s most advanced fighter plane, F-35 joint strike fighter. Defence Minister AK Antony was replying to separate written questions in the upper house (Rajya Sabha) today.

In 2007, Defence Production Rao Inderjit Singh had said that there was no offer from the United States for transfer of high technology weaponry including its 5th generation joint Strike Fighter F-35. The same year AK Antony has said that US government has not proposed to provide a fifth generation fighter F-35 aircraft to India. This lays rest to the speculation, which had been rife on the offer of F-35 jets to India after US lost its bid for the IAF’s MMRCA tenders. Both the Lockheed martin F-16 and Boeing F-18 jets were rejected on technical grounds after stringent evaluations. India has also teamed with Russia to build the Fifth Generation fighter Aircraft (FGFA).

The NATO Missile defence programme offer has been rubbished as India is already developing its own Ballistic Missile Defence systems. There is a speculation that the US led NATO had asked for basing a radar on the Indian territory, which could close some gaps in NATO Missile defence Shield with respect to Chinese airspace.