SOURCE: AFI
Recent comments by the US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick, suggesting that India’s historical reliance on Russian military equipment “rubbed the US the wrong way” and that shifting to American suppliers would mend ties, oversimplify India’s defense strategy and ignore its geopolitical realities. While the US seeks to deepen defense trade with India, portraying India’s procurement choices as a diplomatic slight is both reductive and dismissive of India’s sovereign priorities.
India’s defense acquisitions have long been driven by strategic necessity, cost-effectiveness, and technological compatibility. Russia, a decades-long partner, has provided reliable platforms like the Su-30 MKI and T-90 tanks, tailored to India’s operational needs and offered at competitive prices. This relationship, rooted in Cold War-era cooperation, reflects practical choices, not anti-US sentiment. The suggestion that India’s purchases from Russia were meant to “get under the skin” of the US disregards the complex threat landscape India faces, particularly along its borders with China and Pakistan.
India has, in fact, diversified its defense procurement in recent years, engaging with US suppliers for systems like the C-17 Globemaster, AH-64 Apache helicopters, and M777 howitzers, valued at over $20 billion in the past two decades. These deals signal India’s willingness to strengthen ties with the US, but they are driven by capability requirements, not a desire to appease. The US push for India to pivot further ignores the reality of India’s indigenous programs, like the HAL Tejas, which shone in Operation Sindoor. The Tejas, with its advanced avionics and indigenous missiles like Astra, underscores India’s focus on self-reliance, reducing dependence on any foreign supplier—Russia or the US.
The Secretary’s remarks also sidestep the US’s own history of imposing sanctions and restricting technology transfers, which have pushed India toward alternative partners. For instance, delays in GE Aerospace’s F404 engine deliveries for the Tejas Mk-1A, Previous sanctions on the LCA Program when Indian team was kicked out of the US after Pokhran-II Expecting India to align exclusively with US suppliers disregards these challenges and the need for a diversified defense ecosystem.
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