In fact Raviku, its not the babus, its our military war fighting doctrine that keeps the war wastage reserves the way they are..Bharat Karnad writes about that in a bit of detail in his new book..About Kargil, it was a result of the same strategy - of keeping low levels of war wastage reserves and concentrating on new platforms...Its a doctrinal question, not something to do with any supplier, US or otherwise..You are welcome to the real world. In this world, the babus dont allow you to top war wastage reserves and seeing the money "saved" there as an achievement. Remember Kargil and all the stuff we had to buy urgently and this was for a war in a small small section of the border.
Well, there is no question of "belief" here..If our armed forces think the US wont - and they can check that out upfront by insisting on an Israeli radar and liteing pod - if they dont play ball they simply disqualify the aircraft!! My confidence (as opposed to belief) stems from the fact that these days more often than not we get our way (the nuke deal is one example, WTO negotiations is another, there are many more)..so you are saying that US will allow us to put in Russian radar, Indian HMDs, french engines and so on, if you wish.
and your "belief" in US comes from? Mine come from the history of US dealings with various countries including India.
Well, its not maybe stronger, for sure we will be (look at the underling data!!) - difference in confidence levels?!The fact that we may be stronger later infact means the exact opposite. Dont sacrifice and dont sell out your interests today! wait for the day and paddle like a duck till the time comes. Until then, just bide the time and what is needed immediately instead of trying to barter away the longer term interests
About waiting for the future, well, we need the MRCA today, the BMD systems today - cant wait for another 2 decades, can we? And we are influential enough TODAY...And we need to bargain and get these things today..Where is the "sellout"? Have we purchased anything material yet? Have we seen therefore any objectionable conditions in practice? By all accounts, the generic EUVA signed now is a darn better affair than the bespoke ones that we have signed till now for the few deals we have done with the US..
Friednship prices? Cost of that friendship was to keep mum at the Prague spring, the Hungarian uprising, Afghanistan, making stupid noises at NAM..Independent foreign policy did you say??really? and those single vendor situations gave us mig21 at friend ship prices. these multiple vendors are here to garner excessive profits and you need that strength to negotiate instead of giving away the exact points of strength/leverages we have, which is what this EUA is -especially seeing the time it is bartered away, at the threshold of testing for MRCA.
In any case, those days are gone - everyone deals in real hard cash, incl our erstwhile friends...We do as well - so whats the problem?
In fact by signing the EUVA today, we have bought an option to get serious American competition in our defence purchases - makes our "friends" shape up big time in their offerings...We dont have to buy the yankee stuff, you know..
how is the EUVA a sellout? I repeat, we havent bought anything yet...Its just an option (please read Hull et al for an elementary lesson on Options and Futures)...And I am not talking about anything 15-20 years later, I am talking about today..We are influential enough today to make the best of what is available, and we are doing exactly that - using our buying power to get offsets, get multiple vendors to compete, demand the bleeding edge in tech...Indians manage the largest corporations in the world, to think we cant manage weapons procurement to our best advantage is precisely the lack of confidence that I refuse to share...doesnt mean that EUM is not a sell-out? We can possibly gain some advantages from mirages which we can see today only as mirages doesnt mean we should give away the leverages we already hold. It might be a smaller sellout in the bigger (dreamy) scheme of things.
You may be right, for I have not seen the future 15-20 years down the line. So please excuse me if you want to base your premise of your view point on what may/may not happen at that time