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New Delhi, Jan. 22: The Narendra Modi government has asked the defence establishment to resurrect an 11-year-old proposal from the Pentagon that will enable India and the US to grant mutual access to each other’s military bases, refuel and replenish warships and fighter planes and, in a contingency, participate jointly in multi-nation military operations.
“The US has given us non-papers on LSA. We are now ready to look at the fine print. We have asked them to explain how these ‘foundational’ agreements benefit us. Yes, we have the political nod,” a senior defence source told The Telegraph today.
The LSA is short for “logistics support agreement”. A non-paper is a diplomatic instrument for background information before an agreement is signed (or not signed).
The crucial element the Indian establishment is grappling with is: will signing the agreements get construed politically as a military alliance? Within the establishment there is a growing belief that they can weather such an allegation because it can translate to economic benefits domestically. Also, there is awareness that the impact of fundamental policy changes can only be assessed years after the changes have been made.
“People have long looked at this relationship (India-US) and seen the fundamentals in place for a really, really close partnership, and yet it’s been a challenge in translating that into outcomes,” Ben Rhodes, deputy national security adviser in the White House’s National Security Council, said in a tele-conference from Washington last night.
A political commitment to find convergence on the three “foundational” agreements — logistics support, CISMOA (communications interoperability and security memorandum of agreement) and BECA (basic exchange and cooperation agreement for geo-spatial cooperation) — will be written into the text of the new framework agreement for India-US defence cooperation that is likely to be signed during US President Barack Obama’s visit.
US law requires the country to sign these three pacts before agreeing to transfer sophisticated military technology and weapons.
The framework agreement was first signed for 10 years in July 2005 when Pranab Mukherjee, now President, was the defence minister in the first term of Manmohan Singh’s UPA government. The agreement is due for renewal in July this year but the two sides are ready to do it now.
While the 2005 agreement laid out the basis for a relationship during which the US has supplied $10-billion worth of weapons to India — and Indian forces have been in wargames with the American military more than 70 times, the most with any country — it did not commit New Delhi to signing the “foundational agreements”.
The Left parties, on which UPA I initially relied for support, protested and alleged that India was giving up the independence of its foreign policy. In Parliament, Pranab Mukherjee defended the LSA and said it “will not affect the independence of India’s foreign policy” and that it would enable “mutual logistic support when deploying defence resources in disaster relief operations or joint exercises”.
But the UPA government abandoned the idea of signing the agreements, continuously seeking clarifications as a delaying tactic.
The LSA was put in cold storage because of protests not only from the Opposition and from within its own ranks but also from within the forces. In October 2010, Air Chief Marshal P.V. Naik, who then headed the Indian Air Force, said: “Government had asked us about our opinion on these agreements and we told them that they will not make any substantial difference to our operational capabilities.”
The resurrection of the idea now is a consequence of a change in the environment in South Block. Officers say there have been two major shifts since the last time the LSA was looked at seriously.
First, President Obama announced in January 2012 a “rebalance to Asia” policy and referred to India as a “strategic partner”. This means many of US military assets — such as aircraft carriers — will be increasingly deployed to the south and east of India after the intense stationing in and around the Persian Gulf for Iraq and Afghanistan.
Second, the Modi government not only has the heft, without having to depend on coalition partners, but also the intent of doing away with hitches that US officials have repeatedly described as obstacles to larger transfer of technology and weapons to India.
“Let us say that while the last agreement centred around the DPG (India-US defence policy group), this one will be giving DTTI (defence trade and technology initiative) a lot of attention,” the source said.
The defence policy group (DPG), headed by India’s defence secretary and his US counterpart, monitors the overall cooperation between the militaries. The DTTI was proposed by the US two years ago through which it offered to co-develop sophisticated weapons with India.
Delegations led by India’s defence production secretary, G. Mohan Kumar, and the US undersecretary for defence acquisitions and technology, Frank Kendall, were in talks today ahead of announcements to be made during the Modi-Obama summit.
In the DTTI list being drawn up, India and the US will propose to enter into joint ventures to produce unmanned aircraft, among other technologies. The DTTI list will enable US and Indian companies to enter into joint ventures tailored to suit Modi’s “Make in India” policy.
Policy wonks in the US refer to the LSA, CISMOA, BECA and an End User Monitoring Agreement as the ‘foundational documents’ for military-to-military relations. US law requires that it sign these agreements before agreeing to transfer sophisticated military technology and weapons.
The LSA: A version of an arrangement that the US originally had only with members of the NATO alliance that was called Acquisitions & Cross Servicing Agreement (ACSA). The US now has such arrangements with more than 80 countries. The agreement enables three types of transactions between the US military and friendly militaries – in cash, replacement in kind (RiK) and EVE (Equal Value Exchange). They do not always cover supplies of lethal equipment. The agreement by itself alone does not give the US the right to base its military on foreign soil but it grants it access to military stations of signatory countries.
CISMOA: The Communications Interoperability & Security Memorandum of Agreement asks of buyers of sophisticated military communication and detection systems to ensure that the hardware used is compatible with other American systems.
BECA requires secrecy provisions to be signed before using US equipment for communications and access to satellite networks.
India has frozen an End User Verification Arrangement with the US but insists that all inspections of US equipment with the armed forces of India must be non-intrusive.
TelegraphIndia
“The US has given us non-papers on LSA. We are now ready to look at the fine print. We have asked them to explain how these ‘foundational’ agreements benefit us. Yes, we have the political nod,” a senior defence source told The Telegraph today.
The LSA is short for “logistics support agreement”. A non-paper is a diplomatic instrument for background information before an agreement is signed (or not signed).
The crucial element the Indian establishment is grappling with is: will signing the agreements get construed politically as a military alliance? Within the establishment there is a growing belief that they can weather such an allegation because it can translate to economic benefits domestically. Also, there is awareness that the impact of fundamental policy changes can only be assessed years after the changes have been made.
“People have long looked at this relationship (India-US) and seen the fundamentals in place for a really, really close partnership, and yet it’s been a challenge in translating that into outcomes,” Ben Rhodes, deputy national security adviser in the White House’s National Security Council, said in a tele-conference from Washington last night.
A political commitment to find convergence on the three “foundational” agreements — logistics support, CISMOA (communications interoperability and security memorandum of agreement) and BECA (basic exchange and cooperation agreement for geo-spatial cooperation) — will be written into the text of the new framework agreement for India-US defence cooperation that is likely to be signed during US President Barack Obama’s visit.
US law requires the country to sign these three pacts before agreeing to transfer sophisticated military technology and weapons.
The framework agreement was first signed for 10 years in July 2005 when Pranab Mukherjee, now President, was the defence minister in the first term of Manmohan Singh’s UPA government. The agreement is due for renewal in July this year but the two sides are ready to do it now.
While the 2005 agreement laid out the basis for a relationship during which the US has supplied $10-billion worth of weapons to India — and Indian forces have been in wargames with the American military more than 70 times, the most with any country — it did not commit New Delhi to signing the “foundational agreements”.
The Left parties, on which UPA I initially relied for support, protested and alleged that India was giving up the independence of its foreign policy. In Parliament, Pranab Mukherjee defended the LSA and said it “will not affect the independence of India’s foreign policy” and that it would enable “mutual logistic support when deploying defence resources in disaster relief operations or joint exercises”.
But the UPA government abandoned the idea of signing the agreements, continuously seeking clarifications as a delaying tactic.
The LSA was put in cold storage because of protests not only from the Opposition and from within its own ranks but also from within the forces. In October 2010, Air Chief Marshal P.V. Naik, who then headed the Indian Air Force, said: “Government had asked us about our opinion on these agreements and we told them that they will not make any substantial difference to our operational capabilities.”
The resurrection of the idea now is a consequence of a change in the environment in South Block. Officers say there have been two major shifts since the last time the LSA was looked at seriously.
First, President Obama announced in January 2012 a “rebalance to Asia” policy and referred to India as a “strategic partner”. This means many of US military assets — such as aircraft carriers — will be increasingly deployed to the south and east of India after the intense stationing in and around the Persian Gulf for Iraq and Afghanistan.
Second, the Modi government not only has the heft, without having to depend on coalition partners, but also the intent of doing away with hitches that US officials have repeatedly described as obstacles to larger transfer of technology and weapons to India.
“Let us say that while the last agreement centred around the DPG (India-US defence policy group), this one will be giving DTTI (defence trade and technology initiative) a lot of attention,” the source said.
The defence policy group (DPG), headed by India’s defence secretary and his US counterpart, monitors the overall cooperation between the militaries. The DTTI was proposed by the US two years ago through which it offered to co-develop sophisticated weapons with India.
Delegations led by India’s defence production secretary, G. Mohan Kumar, and the US undersecretary for defence acquisitions and technology, Frank Kendall, were in talks today ahead of announcements to be made during the Modi-Obama summit.
In the DTTI list being drawn up, India and the US will propose to enter into joint ventures to produce unmanned aircraft, among other technologies. The DTTI list will enable US and Indian companies to enter into joint ventures tailored to suit Modi’s “Make in India” policy.
Policy wonks in the US refer to the LSA, CISMOA, BECA and an End User Monitoring Agreement as the ‘foundational documents’ for military-to-military relations. US law requires that it sign these agreements before agreeing to transfer sophisticated military technology and weapons.
The LSA: A version of an arrangement that the US originally had only with members of the NATO alliance that was called Acquisitions & Cross Servicing Agreement (ACSA). The US now has such arrangements with more than 80 countries. The agreement enables three types of transactions between the US military and friendly militaries – in cash, replacement in kind (RiK) and EVE (Equal Value Exchange). They do not always cover supplies of lethal equipment. The agreement by itself alone does not give the US the right to base its military on foreign soil but it grants it access to military stations of signatory countries.
CISMOA: The Communications Interoperability & Security Memorandum of Agreement asks of buyers of sophisticated military communication and detection systems to ensure that the hardware used is compatible with other American systems.
BECA requires secrecy provisions to be signed before using US equipment for communications and access to satellite networks.
India has frozen an End User Verification Arrangement with the US but insists that all inspections of US equipment with the armed forces of India must be non-intrusive.
TelegraphIndia
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