GE 414 engine deal is about growing India-US ties, not China: Indian official

The South Block has dismissed Chinese concerns over the GE-HAL F-414 jet engine agreement by saying the deal was a progressive evolution of India-US defence cooperation over.

The past two decades and had little to do with Beijing or regional security. According to a senior official, India made economic corrections with the US in the 1990s and has made a defence correction now after engaging bilaterally and dealing with complicated technology transfer issues for the past two decades.

“The growing India-US ties have nothing to do with China, but Beijing is trying to project as if the ties between the two largest democracies are all calculated to target India’s northern neighbor,” said a former foreign secretary.

Fact is that the Narendra Modi government is in a Biden positive mode with the US President going out of his way to accommodate the Indian leader during the bilateral visit last week and giving the green signal to converge with New Delhi on key issues like trade, terror, technology apart from military ties.

The pathbreaking approval to transfer of vital “hot engine” technology by the Biden administration under the GE-HAL F-414 jet engine deal has clearly raised red flags in Beijing, which has now raised concerns over India-US defence cooperation by saying that it should not target third countries.

To add to Chinese discomfort is that the Narendra Modi government has bitten the price bullet and given approval to the acquisition of 31 Reaper drones from US, which will bring parity to the military imbalance between India and China to a large extent. The high-altitude long endurance (HALE) drone armed with air-to-ground missiles and precision-guided bunker-busting bombs will be a game changer in the region and will counter the challenge posed by China, which has supplied missile carting armed drones to its client state Pakistan.

The Chinese spokesperson’s response to expanding India-US ties is disingenuous, to say the least as over the past decades it is Beijing which has supplied high-end military platforms to India’s neighbours particularly Pakistan and in turn undermined the regional peace and stability of the Indian subcontinent. While Beijing raised concerns over growing India-US ties saying that it should not target a third party or even the interests of a third party, this is exactly what China has done to India by supplying armed drones, nuclear missiles, frigates, fighters and now possibly submarines to Pakistan. The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) cuts through Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, clearly targeting India and its security interests in the region.

The Chinese propaganda post PM Modi’s most successful visit to the US also is now pandering to the Indian ego by saying that a major power like India should not give up its strategic autonomy by aligning its interests with the US. While strategic autonomy for India is based on its national interests, China is pumping Indian pride by saying that it should be an independent power even at the cost of a weak and vulnerable Indian Air Force (IAF).

Even though India and the US had formed a joint working group on “hot engine” technology under the 2012 Defence Technology and Trade Initiative (DTTI), the group was hardly making any progress beyond routine bilateral meetings. It was only in 2022 that the Modi government which pushed DRDO and HAL to tie up with GE for the F-414 engine deal with National Security Advisors of both countries doing the grunt work under guidance of the top leadership of both countries. The India-US military cooperation now is the dawn of a new era after both countries realized that there is no clash of interests between them and there is largely convergence on most of the critical issues including Indo-Pacific. There is no space for China in the new India-US equation.