A few weeks back, I get a call from my brother early morning. He was at the New Delhi IGI airport, flying to Mumbai on a business trip. Breathless from excitement he says "I'm at the Airport and am currently looking at a C-17 Globemaster! You should see it, its amazing."
Its not easy to impress my brother, a military buff to the core, he can rattle off statistics on every major weapon system in the world. I wasn't familiar with the aircraft myself, so I decided to look into it . The C-17 is US Military's Heavy Lift Aircraft and one of the largest aircrafts in the world. The one my brother saw at the IGI airport was probably there concluding its user trials by the Indian Air Force. This is one of the rare occasions that this aircraft has touched down on Indian soil.
We are close to signing a deal worth $ 3.5 Billion for 10 of these aircrafts making it one of the largest military deals between the two nations. This comes at the time when India is about to take the first delivery of the brand new C - 130 Super Hercules Medium Lift transport aircraft, again from the US.
Both the aircrafts will address a glaring gap in Indian military's logistics capabilities and bring the two nations much closer in military cooperation. This represents just the tip of the iceberg, there is much more to come.
In my next post I'll break down the dynamics of Indo-US defence engagements and the consequent geo-political outcome of the same.
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